SHED exterior facade

What would a locavore’s paradise in wine country look like? For a certain type of well-heeled agrarian, a whole lot like SHED, Healdsburg’s 21st-century grange, grocery, farm store, cafe, bar and event space.

Healdsburg SHED exterior

At first glance, it looks like the prettiest airplane hanger you’ve ever been in, with its huge, boxy shape and garage-style doors, all metal and glass. Grab the handle of that spade doubling as a door handle, step inside, and the enormous space resolves itself into a luxuriously uncrowded farm-to-table playground.

But first, grab a cappuccino from the coffee bar front and center, because everything looks rosier with a foam heart in hand. Admire the spotless white marble counters, the equally pristine bunches of frilly lettuce, the baskets of fresh-from-the-farm eggs, ecru to aqua.

Tall, pale wooden shelves display crayon-bright Japanese coffee pots and Spanish earthenware casseroles. On a wide slab of salvaged sycamore dubbed the “story table,” massive flower arrangements worthy of a Dutch still life spill their blossoms over an educational display of German-made alternative beehives.

Bee Table at SHED

Afternoon sunshine lights up the Dutch and English gardening tools hanging on the walls, glowing across the copper jam pots and hand-carved wooden tortilla presses. It all feels like a Kinfolk magazine spread come to life and tastefully available for purchase. That soft-as-ricotta, brown-as-molasses yarn? Spun from gentle black sheep. The house-fermented cider vinegar? Tap it from the barrel, if you’ve remembered to bring your own bottle. Nothing is made of plastic; nothing has a plug.

Vinegar barrels at SHED

This is not make-do, duct-tape DIY; everything here, from the beakers of fruit shrubs (sweet-tart, vinegar-based drinks, infused with fresh fruit and fizzed with soda water) and bright-magenta beet kvass at the fermentation bar to the galvanized buckets of peonies and the baskets loaded with chocolate-brown loaves of bread the size of watermelons has been curated with an eye for beauty, taste, and usefulness.

Take butter, for example, so necessary with those huge loaves from M.H. Bread and Butter. (Baker Nathan Yanko used to work with bread star Chad Robertson at Tartine in the Mission, so his loaves are as close as the wine country gets to Robertson’s cult-status levains.) Some half-dozen types of butter–cow, goat, sea salted and packed into ceramic crocks–reside in the dairy case. But is that too easy for you? Then pick up a bottle of organic cream, a hand-cranked German butter-making jar, and a couple of wooden butter paddles for shaping the result into decorative pats. What else could you have to do?

Duck into the cleaning nook nearby and you’ll find all the necessaries for fulfilling those downstairs Downton Abbey fantasies: plumy ostrich-feather dusters with 40-inch handles, perfect for polishing chandeliers; crooked hand-carved broomsticks, possibly too witchy to pass muster with Mrs. Hughes but absolutely Quidditch-ready; wooden scrub brushes of which even Mr. Carson would approve, with nary an electric toaster in sight.

SHED co-owner Cindy Daniel

SHED is the vision of owners Doug and Cindy Daniel, who created it as a celebration of Sonoma’s agricultural heritage, as a place where all kinds of crops are grown and products made, not just the wine that puts in on the map. The Daniels provide much of the vegetables, flowers, fruit, and eggs on display from their own 16 acres in the Dry Creek Valley, which they’ve dubbed HomeFarm, where 11 acres are under mixed organic and biodynamic cultivation, and the other 5 as native riparian habitat. They have Rhone-varietal grapes growing for wine, French olive trees for oil, chickens, sheep, bees, heirloom-variety orchards, including curiosities like medlars, jujubes, and pineapple guavas, plus a market garden for vegetables and cut flowers. “It’s a patchwork of things that are all related,” says Cindy, much like the store she and her husband have created.

Mill at SHED

She’s particularly proud of the milling room, where small batches of locally grown, mostly heirloom strains of wheat and other grains are ground into flour every few days. (Most of the flour is sold in the shop; a portion of it goes to M.H. Butter for use in their breads.) The shop is also a pick-up point for grainshare subscribers to the Mendocino Grain Project, a CSA for locally grown grains, including wheat, oats, rye, and barley. Inspired by Native Seeds’ week-long Seed School workshop, Cindy found herself ever more interested in promoting Sonoma’s foodshed and encouraging self-sufficiency in the face of evolving climate change and energy crises. “There used to be a grain mill in Healdsburg,” she notes, glad to be reviving one of the area’s agricultural traditions, even if just on a home cook’s scale.

Larder at SHED

Nearby, the cool larder is “a room that talks about process,” as Cindy says, where customers can peer through the glass wall at wooden shelves filled with pickles and krauts fermenting, and cheeses and cured meats aging.

Hearth at SHED

It could hardly be a true 21st-century kitchen without a live fire burning somewhere, and so, of course, flames flicker in the hearth behind the open kitchen where chef Niki Ford oversees a daily-changing menu of eclectic breakfast and lunch fare. The heavy lifting of the kitchen gets done upstairs, in an additional production space off the main event room. The designer of Boulette’s Larder in the Ferry Building consulted, and it shows: the spacious, pristine kitchen is lavished with All-Clad saucepans hanging from racks above the counters, while tall woven baskets bristle with whisks as long as shinbones and massive stock pots steam on the stove.

Production Kitchen at SHED

In the morning, locals and visitors alike can perch at one of the blond-wood tables in the open cafe area, waiting for bowls of fiber-rich hot porridge slow-cooked overnight to reach a texture described by Ford as “between gruel and chewy grains,” lavished with butter, sea salt, and damson plum jam. Those that haven’t yet foresworn gluten can treat themselves to a “toast service” of thick slabs of Yanko’s bread, toasted with butter, jam by local “jamstress” Elissa Rubin-Mahon, and housemade chocolate-hazelnut spread, or dig into “Doug’s poached eggs” over toast with oregano, sea salt, and a drizzle of HomeFarm balsamic vinegar and olive oil. A Persian breakfast, inspired by the cooking of an Iranian friend of Ford’s, is a mix-and-match assortment of feta cheese, walnuts, sour cherry jam, herbs, and more of that great bread.

Fermentation Bar at SHED

Coming in at the civilized, city-brunch hour of 1pm, we’re sorry to have missed the 11am cutoff for Ford’s heirloom-grain waffles with quince jam and maple syrup. Instead, glasses of blueberry shrub in hand, we plunge straight into the savory side, with a briny bowl of clams bathed in cilantro and cream. A previous menu offered flatbread topped with nettles, cardoons, preserved lemon and local Highway 1 cheese, but today’s offering is as straightforward as any 5 year old could desire: a pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, on a pleasantly puffy-chewy crust. At the fermentation bar–which pours not only both wine and beer on tap but kefir, kombucha, kvass, and cider–we catch up with Ellen Cavalli and Scott Heath of Tilted Shed Ciderworks, who are lunching with their young son. The bar serves their ciders, and also ferments some of it into cider vinegar, using it as a base for the shrubs and offering it in bulk from a barrel on the other side of the store.

Ford, who shares a Chez Panisse pedigree (and friendship) with Suzanne Drexhange of Bartavelle, also shares a fondness for hand-carved boards laid out with savory deliciousness. Around us, many diners are nibbling the ploughman’s lunch, generous slabs of Fiscalini cheddar from Modesto, rye bread, apples, pickled onions, and chutney, or munching their way through the salads on the mezze plate, served with housemade crackers, feta, and olives. Nettle soup is greener than grass, bold as fresh money. “We want to make a lot of room for grains, legumes, vegetables, roots,” says Ford. “There’s a lot of sophistication in making vegetables.” It’s all part of an appreciation for “what we have in our hands, being thoughtful about the ingredients,” an attitude that Ford hopes the cooks will learn to share even during busy moments on the line, all deepened by the relationships they’re building with the farmers and gardeners supplying the kitchen.

The Daniels have plans for frequent events upstairs; already, they’ve hosted Deborah Madison in conversation with local food writer and author Michele Anna Jordan about Madison’s new book, Vegetable Literacy; sponsored a showing of Queen of the Sun, a documentary about the global bee crisis; and hosted a three-course, family-style Sunday Supper featuring the produce and farmers from Bernier Farms. On May 18, bring your knives and brush up on your Knife Skills with Rian Rinn. On May 26, there will be an all-American family-style Sunday Supper out on the patio with live music. And on June 8, butcher Rinn will be hosting Hog It Up, a hog butchery demo & pop-up dinner with chefs Ian Mullen and Jason Smith of Mullen & Smith.

Information:
Healdsburg SHED
Address: Map
25 North St
Healdsburg, CA 95448
Phone: (707) 431-7433
Hours: Mon-Sun 7am-7pm
Facebook: Healdsburg SHED
Twitter: @healdsburgshed

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part One: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Berkeley’s beloved school gardening and cooking program, where public school children plant peas, cook kale, and chase chickens–all while discovering connections to nature, science, language, math, health, nutrition and other life lessons–is in dire straits due to pending federal funding cuts.

Come October, the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) edible education efforts will lose $1.9 million of U.S. Department of Agriculture financing (administered through the Network for a Healthy California) for 14 school cooking and garden programs, from the preschool through high school level. Unless replacement income is found, such cuts would essentially gut the district program, considered a model around the country.

“BUSD schools are deeply committed to saving their garden and cooking programs and are working closely with their principals, PTAs, the school district, and the extended community to raise funds for the coming year and beyond,” says Marian Mabel, a parent at Malcolm X Elementary and member of a group called the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance, which was launched last year when Malcolm X, along with two other schools, looked set to lose their federal funds. (The alliance successfully lobbied the school board for a year of bridge funding, which, ultimately, wasn’t needed when a one-year extension of federal monies was granted.)

Now, district officials, individual schools, and a core of parent volunteers are scrambling to try and save the program, which began as a community effort 15 years ago. And prominent local restaurateurs and chefs have stepped up to show their support too.

The cooking and gardening movement in Berkeley’s schools, documented in a series of short videos under the Lunch Love Community umbrella (featured in a 2011 BAB post), has received federal funds for 12 years. But recent changes in federal funding priorities and state administering of these monies, along with changing demographics in BUSD schools, has lead to a pending shift in the allocation of resources. Despite last year’s one-year reprieve from the feds, no such extension of support is expected for the next school year, given changes to U.S. government guidelines with the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Two: Students at Le Conte Elementary School in Berkeley. Photo: Sophie Constantinou

The school district saw the cuts coming. So last November, the superintendent convened an advisory committee on garden and cooking to identify and secure both short-term bridge funding and long-term sustainable funding, through major donor and corporate giving campaigns, public-private partnerships, and other fundraising efforts, all of which are either in the works or being explored. At a school board meeting on Wednesday, committee members will make a case for a commitment of $300,000 a year for two years to help maintain the program, according to Melanie Parker, interim supervisor for the BUSD’s Gardening and Cooking Nutrition Program. (Last year the district pledged up to $350,000 for the three schools facing cuts to their programs for this school year.)

The committee has outlined four tiers of funding options for the immediate future. These range from a fully-funded program costing $2 million a year, to a worst case scenario situation of part-time staff offering limited instruction and charged with keeping the gardens alive at about $250,000 a year. The largest cost of the program, not surprisingly, is salaries and benefits for cooking and gardening teachers and assistants. While most of these employees work part-time, they are paid the full-time equivalent of between $25,000 and $50,000. Many of these instructors, adored by students, parents, and school officials alike, have been working in the schools since the start of this program and the thought of losing their educational experience and institutional wisdom is viewed as a potentially devastating blow to the program.

The BUSD committee is recommending funding at a reduced level, what they’re calling a “tier two scenario” or a 50 percent cut in program costs for a total of $1.04 million a year, which translates into fewer students receiving instruction and reduced staffing hours. “The committee felt it was important to be realistic about how much money we could raise — and raising $4 million over the next two years to maintain our current programs felt incredibly challenging,” says Parker, who noted a recent $100,000 infusion of state funds that has been committed to the cause courtesy of the City of Berkeley’s Public Health Department. Still, she acknowledges, there is a long way to go to secure full funding for next fall.

Fourteen of Berkeley’s 19 schools have gotten federal funding in the past, money designed to benefit schools with significant low-income populations. The programs slated to lose their funding come October include Berkeley High School, Berkeley Technology Academy, Longfellow and Willard middle schools. Seven elementary schools face cuts, including Emerson, John Muir, LeConte, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Thousand Oaks and Washington. Hopkins, Franklin and King preschools will also be impacted by the loss of income.

The community is gearing up to raise funds and awareness on many levels. A Change.org petition is gathering signatures in support of the campaign. Individual schools are writing grant proposals and holding plant sales, movie nights, and fun runs to support cooking and gardening instruction. Meanwhile, a city-wide Dine Out event is slated for May 30, with prominent local food businesses and restaurants in the mix such as the Cheese Board, Comal, Gather, Ippuku, La Note, and Revival Bar + Kitchen, who are all donating a percentage of sales to the classroom campaign.

For some who have signed on in support it’s both a professional and personal cause. “My three kids have benefited from the cooking and gardening programs at BUSD; my oldest daughter says the garden program at Willard was the only thing that got her through middle school,” says Christian Geideman, owner-chef of the critically-acclaimed Ippuku, featuring izakaya-style dining in downtown Berkeley. “And my youngest still talks about Farmer Ben and the chickens at Le Conte Elementary.” Geideman sees the benefits of such programs beyond the school years. “The restaurant industry is a major employer in our area, imagine how much teenagers could learn in four years that could prepare them for culinary careers,” he says. “I know that as a troubled teen I could have benefited from such a program; it should be expanded at Berkeley High, not cut.”

Geideman’s partner in work and life, Erinn Geideman, discovered first hand the positive effects of the program when she worked as an assistant to Washington Elementary’s cooking teacher Carrie Fehr. “At the elementary school age it’s mostly about giving them access to the process: peeling, chopping and handling food,” says Erinn Giedeman. “When you teach a small child how to cut their own food it gives them a real sense of accomplishment. And when they taste what they’ve created it’s exciting and fills the kids with pride.” Many students, Erinn Geideman also noted, mentioned sharing the recipes at home with their families, an important aspect of a program that emphasizes healthy, seasonal eating geared towards fruit, vegetable, and whole grain recipes, designed with obesity and diabetes prevention in mind. The value of such edible education programs are hard to quantify in terms of test scores but one measure in a UC Berkeley study found that young students routinely exposed to fruits and vegetables through cooking and gardening instruction ate 1.5 more servings of produce a day compared with kids with fewer opportunities to dig in the dirt and work the stove at school.

The best known cooking and gardening program in Berkeley schools, King Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard, is not impacted by the cuts, as its programs are paid for by the Edible Schoolyard Project, founded by Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters. But the ESP (formerly the Chez Panisse Foundation) project staff are working with the BUSD community to come up with a financial plan for the future of its imperiled programs. “The loss of federal funding to support BUSD’s garden and cooking programs is a tragedy and ample evidence, if any were needed, that the call for this transformational change–to bring kids in the public schools into a healthy and delicious relationship with food–needs to get still louder,” says Katrina Heron, executive director of ESP.

Kyle Cornforth, director of ESY Berkeley, is on the superintendent’s advisory committee and active in the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance and the alliance’s Marian Mabel says Cornforth has been instrumental in providing assistance to help strengthen the curriculum components of the BUSD’s cooking and gardening instruction to make the strongest possible case that such programs are indispensable to students. To that end, the committee is re-envisioning the program at a district-wide level (for all schools, including four elementary schools currently ineligible for federal funds) and seek to integrate the program into Common Core State Standards and what’s known as 2020 Vision, Berkeley’s effort to end racial disparities in academic achievement.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Three: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Mindful of what is happening across the bay in Berkeley, Education Outside (formerly the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance) is working hard to tie outdoor education in San Francisco public schools to core curriculum such as science, in a program launched three years ago. It’s also trying to keep costs in check, by hiring young, service corps members for $25,000 a year to run these programs, set to be in 21 K-5 schools this fall. “What is happening in Berkeley is instructive, it shows how easily these kinds of programs can be cut or lopped off, that’s why we’re focusing on making them an integral part of every student’s day,” says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, Education Outside’s executive director. “We never use the term ‘gardening’ or ‘cooking,’ which suggest that they’re extra programs not integral to curriculum.”

Back in the East Bay, another relatively new model for providing edible education is coming to Oakland schools this fall, via a national program known as FoodCorps, which places a service member in a school for a year to help tend or build a school garden, improve school cafeteria food, and talk up healthy eating with students. It costs FoodCorps about $32,500 to put a service member in a school, including a $15,000 stipend, a $5,550 Americorps award, and health benefits. FoodCorps has partnered with the Edible Schoolyard Project for a summer academy geared towards FoodCorps fellows, service members with one year of experience, who are training to become peer-mentors at sites around the country.

For now, in Berkeley the focus remains on saving a lauded program many years in the making. “What’s in jeopardy is losing the groundwork from developing a nationally-recognized program,” says Willard Middle School parent Cindy Tsai Schultz, who is on the school’s gardening and cooking committee. “In 1995 at Willard, Matt Tsang, our gardening coordinator, started with two small planter boxes. Today we have a model program with a flourishing garden, six chickens, and gardening and cooking classes that integrate nutrition education with math and science,” she adds. “Our garden produces enough food for cooking classes for over 500 children. The garden also provides a safe and peaceful place and offers students a sense of security. We can’t lose the last 15 years of hard work and kids’ strong connection with the program. We can’t let all that nurturing turn to weeds.”

Donations to the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program can be made through the Berkeley Public Education Foundation, when making a donation through BPEF, specify that the contribution is earmarked for the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program. For information on volunteer opportunities for the Dine Out fundraiser, to offer suggestions for major funders, or to donate email: berkeleyfundraiser@gmail.com.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Four: Students at Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley.
Photo: Rivka Mason

A thriving sanctuary at school. Photo: Rivka Mason

honey bee

Do you dream of harvesting your own super-local honey to drizzle on your breakfast bread? Wonder how hard it is to keep bees and how to start? Bay Area Bites interviewed some East Bay beekeepers and collected a swarm of resources listed at the end of this post. Considering the seasonal cycle of bees, spring is the perfect time to take off on this new adventure.

Nina, Mark and Langstroth hive

Before they got their bees, Nina Carter’s and Mark Hogenson’s apple tree produced a measly five apples, the next year, after they set up a Langstroth hive in their Oakland garden, their tree showered them with hundreds of apples. (And their neighbor’s plum tree had so many plums they had to help her pick them and make jam).
(This brings up a good point in beekeeping etiquette: ask–or at least alert–your neighbors about the new brood that will be moving in.)

BAB: Did you have a learning curve?

Nina: Actually, our first hive failed because we weren’t controlling for Varroa mites. We were following a holistic approach and thought the bees would adapt. They were thriving for six months and then became sickly and after two weeks just disappeared. Bees have this altruistic behavior, when they get infected they fly away to protect the hive.

Mark: It was disappointing, but we got advice from experienced beekeepers on several options to deal with mites. One way is to cover the bees with powdered sugar. Since they are very hygienic, that makes them completely clean themselves and they get rid of the tiny mites they might not have realized were eating a hole in their sides.

“There’s a saying in the bee community,” Mark adds with a rueful smile, “If you want to know anything about beekeeping, ask a second year beekeeper.”

So where did you get your next round of bees?

Mark: We got one swarm and one “cut–out,” which means that the bees had invaded an interior wall belonging to–we were told–Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Actually, those bees weren’t too productive, perhaps due to the change in the environment between Marin and Oakland.

What is it like to keep bees?

Nina: Fascinating and therapeutic. We’re in love with them. It’s kind of like having a new baby. We work at home as computer consultants and can just watch the bees and appreciate the scents of honey and beeswax.

Langstroth frame

How much honey do you get?

Mark: Last year, we got 150 pounds of honey from one hive and now we’re thinking about selling some. (We’re talking with local storeowners about carrying this super local product. We call it Rockridge Honey. We also make a salve and lip balm from the beeswax.)

Any advice for beginning beekeepers?

Nina: When you’re just starting, you hear a lot of rumors and contradictory stories about what you should do and it’s hard to know who to believe. We did research for a year before we got our hives and read a lot.

Mark: I would start with two hives so if any problems arise, you can compare them. The Alameda County Beekeepers Association has a lot of resources and taking a hands-on class helped; in it we also learned about the lifecycle and timing of beehive management. Every few weeks, you have to check and see if the bees have enough room, if not you need to get more boxes (called supers). You use a smoker so you can calm the bees before you approach. You want to get them out of the way before you lift a frame so that you don’t crush any of them.

Nina: If we can, we are always going to have hives. They help us to be more in harmony with the environment.

Ruby Blume designed and made these stairs

Ruby Blume has kept bees since 1997. It wasn’t a conscious decision on her part; someone dropped off a Top Bar style beehive in her garden, showed her how to manage it and then just disappeared. Now Blume, whose license plate reads BEE GRRL, teaches beginning and advanced beekeeping classes at The Institute of Urban Homesteading. The classes focus on “how to keep bees naturally” without the use of chemicals or sugar-water and promote the Top Bar system (an alternative to the Langstroth hive) for the small-scale backyard beekeeper. Even Blume’s allergy to bee stings has not prevented her from keeping bees.

Ruby Blume and Top bar hive

Why do you raise bees?

I love bees. I get an incredible sense of joy hanging out with them and feeling their exuberant energy. It’s a privilege to learn from them and through them I am more connected to nature’s cycles and seasons. Bees have such an elegant way of working together and being in concert with nature. They are amazing, highly evolved and, next to humans, the most studied species on earth. It’s easy to get started in beekeeping, yet after 16 years I am still learning!

How did you decide to use the Top Bar system?

Partly because it is what I learned on and what I am comfortable with. But also because it allows the bees to build their comb naturally, instead of on pre-imprinted frames, which manipulates the way they build. I trust that bees know what they are doing—after all they have been doing it for millions of years perfectly well without us.

What are some advantages of the Top Bar System?

If you let bees build natural combs, with smaller cells, it inhibits mites and then there is no need to treat them with pharmaceuticals. I also find the system to be much easier on my body as a beekeeper [full Langstroth boxes often weigh 50 pounds] and to require much less maintenance. Plus you can build a top bar hive yourself at a fraction of the cost of pre-fabricated boxes.

top bar comb

What else do you do to keep bees naturally?

I don’t feed my bees sugar water in the winter. Instead I leave them enough of their own honey to survive. Honey is a much healthier food for the bees. It takes one bee her whole life to make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey. Bees need one pound a day of honey to maintain themselves in the summer, plus in the Bay Area they need to put away about 30 pounds to last them through the winter.

A bee colony basically acts as a single organism. The inside of the hive is like a womb with its own flora and fauna—sugar, and chemical treatments like antibiotics upset this harmony. I know this might not be a popular perspective, but I believe that animals need to die off sometimes in order to build resistance in the entire colony. So if you treat for mites with pharmaceuticals, then the mites will become more resistant to them. You need to let those bees with weaker genetics cull themselves. Last winter was especially hard and I lost several colonies but with spring, there was a big boom in population. It was an uplifting spiritual feeling to see their resistance and the upwelling of life.

There has been a lot in the news about colony collapse disorder. Do beekeepers know what is causing that?

Colony collapse has been shown to be caused by specific pesticides that interrupt the bees’ ability to navigate. Bees use the sun and landmarks to navigate and then do a “bee dance” to tell other bees where flowers are. When exposed to these pesticides, they can’t find their way home. Of course there are many other factors within industrial apiculture that are impacting the health of our honeybees.

Are there any myths about bees that you would like to clear up?

Yes, a swarm of bees is never an “angry” swarm; it’s a reproductive behavior that happens in the spring when the bees sense it will be a good year with plenty of food. The queen leaves the hive with some of the bees to find a new home. The old colony stays and raises a new queen—in this way the bees “reproduce” and make more of themselves. And the male bees neither sting nor collect pollen, only females. Male bees’ main job is to mate with a virgin queen, a task he gives his life to, as he dies in the process of mating.

Anything else you’d like to share?

For urban beekeepers, two colonies are plenty for one yard; more than that and the bees will be competing for the limited supply of pollen and nectar. If we are to increase the number of urban beekeepers, we need more forage for the bees. If you want to be a friend to bees you don’t have to be a beekeeper, just plant more flowers! They especially like purple, white and yellow flowers; like lavender, poppies and sunflowers.
Here’s a list of bee friendly flowers.

Ruby’s advice for Becoming a Beginning Beekeeper
1. Educate yourself by reading and taking classes and talking with other beekeepers.
2. Pick a system (Langstroth or Top Bar)
3. Procure bees (Pick one of the two options)
• Buy a package with a one queen and few thousand worker bees (may be hard to find right now as most packaged bees are bought up in January)
• Catch a swarm or take a split from an established beekeeper.
4. Get some protective gear so you feel comfortable and not afraid of getting stung: hat with veil, suit and gloves.
5. You’ll need a little equipment: a hive tool, a bee brush and a smoker.
   Then plunge in!

Resources:
• City Bees
• San Francisco Beekeepers Association
• San Francisco Bee-Cause
• Alameda County Beekeepers Association
• The Institute of Urban Homesteading (Oakland)
• BioFuel Oasis (Berkeley)
• Bee Kind (Sebastopol and San Francisco)
• Ruby Blume’s website with many more resources

We wish this one was televised, too: Alice Waters, Martin Yan, Joanne Weir, Virginia Willis, Nell Newman, Rick Bayless, Thomas Keller, Charles Phan, Joel Riddell and Irvin Lin were among the folks who took the stage for Tuesday night’s 2013 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) awards ceremony in San Francisco. Oakland Food Connection and food incubator La Cocina were also honored. IACP’s professional awards are widely viewed in the food world as something of a gold standard for cookbooks, food writing, digital media and culinary tours. The awards marked the closing night of the organization’s 35th annual conference, which went with a “Dirt to Digital” theme this year.

Check out the full list of award finalists and the grand list of winners. While the awards ceremony stretched out over a few hours and was oddly lacking any form of culinary nourishment (there were definite rumblings after the ceremony about that), it offered quirks, songs and even a few dick jokes courtesy of Libbie Summers, whose Salted and Styled blog won for Best Culinary Blog. On the other end of the spectrum, the evening kicked off with all guests looking up and saying “thank you” as a dedication to publisher Peter Workman, who passed away just this week. It was also emotional for Lifetime Achievement Award winner Alice Waters, who gratefully accepted her prize and joked in her speech that while she cannot farm, “I am a picker,” which got the audience laughing–wise words from the founder of Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard. Waters also professed her admiration for cooking teachers because: “I cannot teach.” She immediately went on to acknowledge IACP attendee and stalwart Darina Allen, whose Ballymaloe cooking school she visits every year (for her birthday).

When Charles Phan won in the Chefs and Restaurants cookbook category for his “Vietnamese Home Cooking” (co-authored with Tasting Table Senior Editor Jessica Battilana), he confessed that he did not have a speech but had enjoyed some bourbon to presumably get warmed up. Phan thanked Battilana, his agent and wife, Angkana. “My wife made sure I turned the book manuscript in, so I wouldn’t have to return the book advance money to Ten Speed Press.”

“Jerusalem: A Cookbook” by Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi, received the award for Cookbook of the Year, and Marion Nestle garnered a prize in the Food Matters category for her weighty tome, “Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics.” The deeply satisfying sugar-rush images in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook garnered an award for Food Photography and Styling, and the Dining Around with Joel Riddell radio show won in the Long Format Audio category. The team at Chronicle Books may still be celebrating given their author Diane Morgan won for her book, “Roots: The Definitive Compendium with more than 225 Recipes.”

Culinary Tour Operator of the Year went to Copita chef Joanne Weir, who shared that as a child, she told her father that she wanted to be a bus driver, so that she could drive a bus on every road in the world. Her confession seemed to scare him a little. Weir dedicated her prize to him because he passed away last year. Food blogger Irvin Lin won the Best in Show prize for his photography, and he asked the IACP crowd to “hire me, I’m available,” a sentiment which was echoed by the next winner.

The conference itself is that rare chance to possibly figure out how to eke out a living doing things in the culinary field–it can be exciting but also daunting in the number of possibilities it presents. There were various declarations for members to support each other and that each one “stands on the shoulders” of those who have come before and after them. That may sound hokey and like general conference speak yet three people we spoke with found these pronouncements to be inspiring.

Many attendees shared with Bay Area Bites that the chance of learning from so many different people doing interesting things is one of the main draws of shelling out $750 to $950 to register for the full conference—that’s on top of the $280 it costs to initially join IACP. Off the record, we were told that IACP is in the midst of something of a revamp and that costs and programming issues have been noted if not yet changed. These folks said that they attend as much for the learning sessions on, say, the meaning of restaurant reviews in the era of Yelp to getting a lowdown on sourdough or video content strategy. The coffee breaks are also highly valued and networking even happens in the bathrooms. Yes, really.

Kale salad and eating local may remain a big trend, but IACP attendees see much, much more at play in the food world. We asked some notable thought leaders to answer a few questions in person:

• What is this conference about for you?
• The theme of the conference is Dirt to Digital; what does it mean to you?
• How does the theme translate to the food industry?
• What did you learn about in the workshops and what are the clear trends that emerged from the conference?

Here are insights from Corby Kummer, Danielle Gould, Sandor Katz, Joanne Weir and Sarah Copeland. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Corby Kummer is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine. Known as “the dean of food writing,” Kummer’s 1990 Atlantic series about coffee is a benchmark for excellence in long-form food writing. He is the author of “The Joy of Coffee,” based on his Atlantic series, and the recently published “The Pleasures of Slow Food.” Kummer is the recipient of three James Beard Journalism Awards, including the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award.

Kummer: This conference is about seeing people who are following food issues on the level of the home cook. It’s about how the things that we in the media are interested in and write about play out in real life and the home of a consumer.

IACP has always been the most connected to the real world of any group because it’s people making their living as culinary professionals. They are in touch with sustainability, farming and local issues. I thought the conference was brilliantly named “Dirt to Digital” because online is where all of the IACP members need to be marketing themselves and their products.

With social media, no one yet knows how to master it but everyone’s trying to learn. IACP has always been at the forefront of practical and real world applications. That’s a unique role because being so smartly focused attracts the most interesting, lively and active people in the food world. And I’ll take any opportunity to connect with them.

Danielle Gould is the Founder and CEO of Food+Tech Connect, a media company and network for innovators transforming the business of food. Through news and analysis, events, and custom research, Gould helps companies of all sizes drive innovation and understand how information and technology are changing the way food is produced, distributed, and consumed. She is also a founding member of the Culinary Institute of America’s Sustainable Business Leadership Council and is a regular contributor to Forbes.

Gould: This is my first time at IACP and they invited me to talk about food and tech trends and hackathons as a model for food innovation. Our panel touched on the opportunity and the medium, as well as how to demystify technology. It is also about helping people understand the knowledge and the challenges that are out there. We’re trying to empower people to put that knowledge out there where they’re collaborating with designers and developers to solve that problem. I travel the whole country and spread the gospel and learn about how people are thinking. It’s about using technology to help solve problems, spread messages and improve business models and just accelerate innovation that’s happening on a small scale.

In the past, a book would take you two years and a product would take 18 months. For a food producer or chef, that means that it takes awhile to market things. Technology offers opportunities: now you can self-publish that cookbook in close to real time, and get feedback on your product.

“Dirt to Digital” is at the heart of what food technology is. You’re looking across the supply chain, and food is interconnected. It is a system, and that goes to the consumer. A lot of times when people think of digital, they think of consumers. Emerging trends and what role technology is for each trend is a part of that. Technology is very broad and means so much to so many different people.

I just love learning how people respond to technology and food and how they use it. The other major takeaway was a lot of the panels weren’t very popular or not as sexy but were about funding. Everyone’s having trouble making money in the food space.

Sandor Ellix Katz, “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene” according to The New York Times, is a self-taught fermentation experimentalist. His books “The Art of Fermentation” and “Wild Fermentation,” and the fermentation workshops he has taught across North America and beyond, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts.

Katz: I’ve never been to IACP before. I don’t think of myself as a culinary professional. The work that I do is demystifying and sharing skills with people who aren’t necessarily culinary professionals. The highlight for me has been to meet people whose books are influential. [Katz was sitting with Bruce Aidells when we caught up with him and Aidells shared the table with us while we caught up.]

Aidells: What’s good sauerkraut without good sausages?

Katz: A kraut — quesadilla is my fast food, and I make it with Pepper Jack. That’s one of my standard meals.

The theme of the conference is significant. What does “Dirt to Digital” mean? I was just on this panel that was high tech versus low tech yet I don’t necessarily see things that way. I’m interested in understanding these processes in their simplicity. So that doesn’t mean you can’t use technology to have more control over the processes. It’s very empowering to see how the underlying principles don’t need equipment. If you get involved in sausage making, you can use a funnel for the casing. You can also just be there with you hands, pushing the meat through to the casing.

For cheese, you can buy nice molds, perhaps. There are elegant crocks to make things but you can also do it with a jar that’s already in your pantry. I appreciate the conference and there’s much information spreading by digital means but it may be telling people how to use their hands.

Joanne Weir is a James Beard award-winning cookbook author, cooking teacher, host and executive producer for the award-winning television series Joanne Weir’s Cooking Confidence. She is the chef-owner of Copita, a tequileria and restaurant in Sausalito. The author of 17 cookbooks, including the newly released “Cooking Confidence,” Joanne is the Culinary Editor at Large at Fine Cooking! magazine. She travels and teaches extensively around the world as well as in her studio kitchen.

Weir: This conference was so interesting because I’ve approached it differently as a restaurateur this year. I usually approach it as “I write for magazines” or my cookbooks or how to fill your cooking classes. This time I’m taking in things that are really different. I want to sit in on the reviewing and Yelping session.

I still love to see all the people I know when I come to IACP. And I love that it’s in SF and I get to share Copita–they’re going over by ferry. I did a tour on Saturday and people loved it. I’ve shared in a different way and am still excited about my restaurant.

For me with “Dirt to Digital,” I don’t know if I put the two together. Yet every single thing I do is fresh. I have an organic farm — and my next series is called “Fresh” for TV. I am always interested in digital media. The market has changed and the whole landscape is changing. My hope is it that it goes back to dirt and less digital. Is that so ‘Chez Panisse’ of me? (laughs) I do digital but food is still my passion. Perhaps next year the IACP theme should be “Back to Passion.”

IACP is pretty current on things. What they’ve done this year is now bloggers have been integrated. I left feeling in past years that I had to do so much on my own blog. I’ve always done food that is following my passion and on what brings about major possibilities for me. I attended a book session that talked about book advance spending and how book tours are back and rely on the digital medium.

My trend is always Mexican, and that comes with owning Copita. I saw the trendologist Kara Nielsen here and she said, “You couldn’t be in a more trendy thing, with Mexican food and tequila.”

I do modern Mexican food.

We used to think of Italian red tablecloths and Chianti — yet now Italian food has come a long way. One of the trends here is taking cuisines and elevating and educating around the cuisine. Thomas Keller was talking about that and I have seen that in this conference.

Sarah Copeland is the Food Director at Real Simple and author of “The Newlywed Cookbook: Fresh Ideas and Modern Recipes for Cooking With and For Each Other.” Her book, “Feast” will be published in December this year and she has authored numerous articles and recipes for Real Simple, Saveur, Food & Wine, Health, Martha Stewart Living, Better Homes & Gardens and Food Network Magazine. She has appeared as a guest on The Martha Stewart Show, Good Morning America and ABC News Now.

Copeland: A lot of the conference is about relationships. I see faces from every different facet of my career and have been reconnecting and catching up on what people are doing that is new and exciting. There’s a chance to celebrate successes while hopefully helping a few people too.

On “Dirt to Digital,” one of the most challenging things of this industry from my perspective is that I started in print. That part has changed so dramatically in ten years or even five years. For most food people who are in love with food, it is very tactile how we communicate yet that is changing so much. The dirt part communicates place, smell, and touch, which are all the good things. It includes the agriculture, and the farmer. There are so many layers and it is complex with dirt. That’s how food is to me: we touch humanity and civilization, nutrition and wellness. In the digital sphere, how do you capture that? I think we are all figuring that out.

I did a panel on recipes and copyright for the conference. There were folks from Pillsbury there who were trying to figure out their contest. We also had teachers, bakery owners and bloggers. As Food Director at Real Simple, I have to be savvy and think about those aspects.

On almost every panel I ask, ‘What’s the best panel?’ This year, everyone is focusing on video. I worked at the Food Network — and yet this industry has been print for so long. With Hungry and YouTube and different avenues, it’s just so video-focused. The trailer for my first book is a minute and a half but my next one will probably be half that, to seventy-five seconds. My new book ‘Feast’ from Chronicle Books is coming out in December and I’ve learned a few things that I’ll do differently. I am coming away from the conference with the feeling that there is room for every voice and every talent. If you are generous, they will help you, too.

Chef Lars Kronmark (R) helps veteran James McQuoid prepare a chicken. McQuoid is one of 12 injured veterans taking part in a healthy cooking “boot camp” at Napa’s Culinary Institute of America. (Photo: Mina Kim/KQED)

Listen to The California Report: Veterans Find Comfort, Hope in Cooking Class
Original Broadcast:
Friday, Mar 8, 2013 — 10:00 AM

Among other issues, veterans face a challenge shared by many Americans: obesity. Federal officials say more than 70 percent of veterans receiving VA care have weight problems. The California Report visits an elite culinary school in Napa Valley (Culinary Institute of America at Greystone), which runs a healthy cooking program for wounded veterans. Its students include vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars — and it’s helping them to eat better, and to ease the difficult transition back to civilian life.
Reporter: Mina Kim

• Read the full story at KQED’s State of Health

Preeti Mistry at Juhu Beach Club with spice jars. Photo courtesy of Preeti Mistry

Chef Preeti Mistry is gearing up to open her Indian street food-inspired, previously a pop-up, Juhu Beach Club in Temescal, Oakland on March 1. Having her restaurant business set up in the old SR24 space in the East Bay instead of the originally planned Mission District is a marked change from when I interviewed her last summer, for the Bay Area Bites’ annual LGBT Pride stories. Breaking off (amicably) with a business partner and wanting to live closer to her work were the main factors behind this decision. She shared that she is now working with family to run the business but has also been buoyed by offers of general help from fellow Oakland business owners. Getting a Top Chef to set up shop in Oakland is a bonus for Temescal, a district that has arrived as a food and dining destination–complete with its own new culinary tour from Edible Excursions and a thriving Sunday farmers’ market.

I was able to experience Juhu Beach Club via a stop on the Oakland Taste Temescal media tour from Edible Excursions. It’s obvious Chef Preeti and her crew have worked hard to transform the once grey and dark hues of SR24 into something that is definitely more Mumbai-beachy and fun: pink and orange swirl together with golden notes in a wonderful monkey wall pattern, which match the adorable tiffins that will be used to serve kids meals (a smart menu move, considering the local population). Her partner Ann Nadeau was on hand to help serve sassy lassis but mainly stayed in the background while the Chef talked to our group. Guests will be able to see the kitchen action, where Preeti will cook with her sous chef and line cooks.

Juhu Beach Club interior. Photo: Naomi Fiss

There are 50 seats and 6 stools and the open space definitely grants guests an up-close-and-personal view of the making of every slider-like pav (with custom rolls from Starter Bakery), Gujarti-style samosa, mung bean “Guju chili” soup, curry, salad and sassy lassi. The menu is approachable: vegetarians, carnivores and kids should all find something here. The color blocked kiddie-friendly tiffins are designed by a nearby artist and will be for sale; I am making space in my pantry after seeing how cute and functional they are. Juhu Beach Club just received their beer and wine license and will be opening for dinner March 1. Cheers!

I interviewed Chef Mistry to find out more about how the process is going from operating her pop-up restaurant to getting an actual restaurant finalized. Her comments have been edited for clarity and length.

Pav (slider-sized sandwich) menu items: Sloppy Lil’P (left+right) Holy Cow (middle). Photo courtesy of Preeti Mistry

Bay Area Bites: Congrats on the new restaurant. When we last talked to you, you were planning to open a spot in the Mission. That situation changed for you in October 2012. Why do Indian Street Food in Temesal?

Mistry: It was a matter of circumstances. Even when I was in San Francisco, I was saying ‘I want to open in Oakland.’ The Mission space and the partner connected to that didn’t work out, which was actually a blessing. If we were having a hard time then, running a business wouldn’t have been easy. We were able to realize that and walk away from each other and there were no hard feelings ultimately. I moved to Oakland a year and a half ago. Once we walked away from a financial partner, I started looking at things financially but also looked at how it would affect my lifestyle. We’ve gotten to know the scene and it’s so happening here. Temescal is really fun, and there has been a great community in terms of chefs and restaurateurs.

India’s Bizarre Love Triangle Samosas. Photo: Mary Ladd

Bay Area Bites: Do you have a new business partner? How did you come up with the funding after the relationship with your former business partner ended?

Mistry: No. (Laughs). It’s a family business now. So. You know. That was one of the reasons why we picked the space. It was really set up. I talked to a few contractors and architects and they were urging me to find a spot that was already set up. I looked at cheaper places but it was a Pandora’s box — they had been dumped for a reason. Once you start with the building department…. With our new Temescal location, it’s been all elbow grease and a little cosmetic work. There have been a few expenses that have come up but that’s par for the course.

We did a lot of cleaning and changed the space pretty dramatically. It was really dark in here, very Gothic with big chandeliers. The baseboard and entire ceiling were dark grey and then there was deep magenta red. We just brightened it so there is a lot of bright pink and orange on the walls. It gets an advantage of the sun that comes through in the day. We got funky wallpaper with monkeys to give the space a fun and casual feel, because we want to see people wanting to hang out here.

Monkey wallpaper at Juhu Beach Club. Photo courtesy of Preeti Mistry

Bay Area Bites: Have you met any of your restaurant neighbors?

Mistry: The person that owned this restaurant owns the taqueria next door. We share bathrooms and storage space and one of the more qualitative parts of purchasing was that he wanted to make sure it would be someone who’s cooperative. Not ‘I bought your restaurant. See ya later.’ I interact with his manager Kevin and family all day and they’ve been super. I’ve also talked with Jen Louise Dunning at Pizzaiolo. Tanya Holland was super helpful with advice as was Sarah Kirnon with Miss Ollie’s. I just ran into Paul Arenstam at the restaurant supply store and he said, ‘Give me a call if you need anything.’

Bay Area Bites: What are your favorite menu items?

Mistry: The Bombay sandwich, which we just tried out. The way it’s made in India is with a sandwich maker in a campfire. We’ll use a steak press and do it on the flat top. Everyone was like ‘I don’t know what this is but it’s awesome’ when we did the taste tests. I’ll press it with Jack cheese, cilantro chutney, sliced beets, potatoes, pickled onions and our house-made chaat masala. There’s also a healthy amount of butter and it’s like a veggie grilled cheese. I’ll change it seasonally. It’s kind of funny how the chutney and masala make it distinctly Indian. It’ll probably be priced at $7.

Bay Area Bites: How about drinks and desserts? … anything unusual?

Mistry: All of our wine will be on tap. I want to focus on beer more because it just pairs better in my opinion with the Indian food and spices. We’ll have 1-3 white wines. People want to pair Indian food with really sweet Rieslings and I can’t stand that. The wines will definitely be on the crisper side. For every tasting we’ve had, the big question is, ‘What will the red be?’ We’re looking for something nice and lean, and nothing really fruity and jammy or high alcohol.

I make the sassy lassi in-house, and it’s sweet and salty. We’ll have cilantro lemonade and also the Darjeeling Limited, which is half cilantro lemonade and half tea. Gotta have a hot chai and we will be serving imported Thums Up plus Limca sodas, which are owned by Coke now. They have a distinctive Indian flavor.

Sassy Lassis. Photo: Naomi Fiss

We’re going to have Straus soft-serve for dessert, but will do it differently than other places. I may use infused oils as toppings: things like pistachio and pumpkin seed oils. There will be tropical fruit drizzles of passion fruit, guava or rosewater. I’m sure we’ll make some seasonal local macerated fruit. Then there will be add-ons like salty curried peanuts, Chai spiced pecans and those little fennel candies.

Bay Area Bites: Any advice for folks looking to open a restaurant?

Mistry: Laughs. That’s so funny. Cholita Linda was talking on the Edible Excursions tour about how they’re opening on Telegraph and that it had been in 3 months of waiting. I couldn’t wait like that!

I guess for me as a first time restaurateur I would say finding an existing business is a way to factor your time and money. Juhu Beach Club will not have that high a price point. The average check will not be $70 per person. The ability to make that money back and profit is crazy. For me, it was always start small and see if people liked it. Even with that funny liquor store in the Mission, we spent $1,500. My advice? Start small.

Vada Pav. Photo courtesy of Preeti Mistry

Bay Area Bites: Do you think there is a Top Chef celeb halo that helps or hinders your work? What is that like?

Mistry: I think for a long time I was really angry about Top Chef. But you know it’s the thing that has helped me get the word out. I suppose if I hadn’t been on the show it would take longer for people and media to show up. The fact that people already know who I am is helpful.

As for hindering, I can’t say that there is anything negative at this point four years later. People are excited. I’ve talked to people in Oakland and they’re excited to have someone from Top Chef. I was at the farmers’ market and a lady told me ‘I’m really excited you’re opening here.’

I was talking to the cashier at the planning department and she said she is a huge Top Chef fan and she recognized my name. It’s nice that people recognize me. If my food didn’t stand up or the service wasn’t helpful then people wouldn’t continue to show up. Especially in the Bay Area, where there are so many good chefs who haven’t been on TV.

Preeti Mistry at Juhu Beach Club. Photo: Naomi Fiss

Related Information:
Juhu Beach Club
Opening March 1 for Dinner
Address: Map
5179 Telegraph Avenue
Oakland CA 94609
(510) 652-7350
Hours: Tue – Sat: 5:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Twitter: @juhubeachclub
Twitter: @chefpmistry
Facebook: Juhu Beach Club

Tamales at La Cocina's Tamalada

Forty hungry people with sticky hands and tamales on their minds rotated through four tables at La Cocina’s Tamalada event last Wednesday evening, learning how to make beef, veggie, chicken, cheese and sweet mango tamales. No wonder this annual December event always sells out in November. Tamales can be intimidating for the novice, and even for a pro are time-consuming and labor intensive. That’s the reason behind tamaladas (tamale making parties): share the toil and end up with enough to eat plus a pile to take home for later.

Besides demystifying tamale making (this is the first time I dared to try my hand at filling and rolling the corn meal bundles) the event at La Cocina introduced students to three chefs from different regions of Latin America, each demonstrating their own traditional recipes and techniques that produced a variety of stuffed, steamy bundles.

Tamales, a beloved comfort food served for festivals, birthdays and everyday meals, are a staple at Christmastime. They date back thousands of years, even before the Mayans and Aztecs. The portable, filled buns have fed generations of families (and armies) from Mexico to Argentina. Corn meal wrapped in corn husks, plantain or banana leaves can be filled with almost anything, most commonly with shredded pork, beef or chicken, while sweet tamales feature fruit or raisins and coconut.

Alicia's beef and mango tamales

Alicia Villanueva of Tamales Los Mayas grew up in Mazatlan and her masa had the consistency of a light play-doh. She demonstrated how to roll it into a ball between two palms and then flatten it by pressing into a roundish shape onto the corn husk and plopping some of her fall-apart-tender cooked beef roast, studded with vegetables on top. Squeeze together the edges of the filled masa in its corn husk wrapper and simply fold the ends or tie up the tamale with a thin strip of corn husk.

Dilsa's cheese tamales

Dilsa Lugo of Los Cilantros is from Cuernavaca, Mexico. She told us her secret for achieving fluffy tamales is using fresh lard and explained that each corn husk has a smooth and a scratchy side; you should spread the masa on the smooth side for easier removal after steaming.

The consistency of Dilsa’s masa was totally different than Alicia’s. We used a spoon to smear the sticky masa very thinly on the corn husk, then added two kinds of cheese and topped with tomato, onion and jalapeno. Dilsa, who is sous chef at Copita in Sausalito also does catering. Here is an interview with her by Sarah Henry.

Maria's vegetable tamales

Maria del Carmen Flores, owner of Estrellita’s Snacks is from El Salvador. Her variation on the tamale theme employed cooked–not raw–masa with the vegetables already mixed in. We scooped a big dollop of the masa veggie mixture onto cut rectangles of banana leaves, backed with paper, instead of corn husks, and folded and rolled them up into tight little bundles. She also demonstrated another recipe with chicken and a dozen vegetables, including green beans, zucchini, peas, mushrooms, spinach and green olives.

At the fourth table, demonstrating Alicia’s recipe for sweet mango-filled tamales was Alejandra, another program participant at La Cocina. Alicia adapted her mother’s traditional pineapple and strawberry tamale recipe, which uses a sweet masa made with butter and sugar. Her fluffy mango marvel won Alicia 1st prize at the Alameda County Fair. She shares her recipe with Bay Area Bites readers at the end of this post.

Although enjoyed throughout the year, tamales are an integral part of Mexican Christmas celebrations, most notably the nine day ritual called Las Posadas (meaning “lodgings”), which runs December 16-25, in which a candlelit, costumed procession with musicians, that is said to represent Mary and Joseph’s search for an inn, knocks on the doors of several houses before being welcomed into one home. Songs, piñatas, moles, pozole, hot punch and tamales typically enliven the festivities.

A few days before the Tamalada, BAB spoke with Alicia Villanueava and Maria del Carmen Flores at La Cocina. Their comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Alicia, one of 4 children who grew up in Sinaloa, Mexico, is the only one in her family to move to the US. She came here with her 8-year old son (who is now 20 years old and studying alternative energy at SFSU). Her husband joined them later.

I see your business is centered on tamales. What is your connection to tamales?

Alicia: Tamales bring back beautiful memories from my mom and grandma. Every year, the whole family would get together and cook them. It’s really hard work and takes many hours and dedication because there are so many details. First, you have to prepare the masa and then the fillings. My Grandma would start with the corncobs and a mill to make the masa.

I started cooking and selling tamales just by myself in 2000 but it was more stressful without any permits or anything and I just depended on friends to tell me who was planning a party or else I walked the streets knocking on doors, offering tastes of my tamales.

Then I realized I needed more help so I went to The Women’s Initiative. And my teacher referred me to La Cocina in 2010 and this was the most heavenly place. I am so happy. La Cocina made my dream come true. Now I have five women working for me. They make about 400 tamales a day in La Cocina’s kitchen. The Hobart mixer and the professional steamer are my angels. I can steam 400 tamales in 30 minutes compared to 5 hours it would take on a small stove.

Tell me about the Tamalada tradition in your family. Is it just women who make the tamales?

Alicia: Not just women, men make them too. When you’re making tamales everyone wants to participate. Our Tamaladas would take a whole day. There were 10 of us family and friends, and my grandmother would dole out the tasks. When I was little, I enjoyed all the smells of cooking. It’s not just about cooking, but talking and solving problems together as a family. And everyone goes home with lots of tamales that last for days.

Where can we find your tamales now?

Alicia: I used to sell at Justin Herman Plaza but I found a new place at SOMA Streat Food — every day. And I do catering and festivals. My big goal is to have a restaurant. I’m working on my second business plan with La Cocina. Maybe in the Financial District, but I’m open; God will find the right place.

Ingredients for Maria's chicken tamales

For the interview with Maria del Carmen Flores, La Cocina’s Azalea Perez Olivares kindly acted as interpreter
Maria is from El Salvador and started making tamales with her father when she was six years old. She described some differences:

Maria: In Mexico, they use raw masa, while we use cooked. And our fillings are different, like one with chicken, potato, green olives and chickpeas. The vegetarian I made up because there are so many vegetarians here. Since tamale making is so labor intensive, it’s great for parties. We talk, teach and learn in a group from each other. I started making them here in my kitchen in 2003 and sold them on street corners in San Francisco. It was hard because I had to hide from the police. Then I found La Cocina and now I sell at Alemany Farmers Market, Civic Center Farmers Market and do catering.

I know your business name Estrellita means little stars and I see you have gold inlay stars on your teeth too. Can I ask why all the stars?

Maria: Since I was a little girl, I wanted to be a superstar on TV. Thank God I could accomplish that through my food.

(Then with a little prompting from Azalea, Maria tells me how her other dream came true too. She has a part in the new Woody Allen film that was recently shot in San Francisco. She was “discovered” on the corner of south Van Ness and 14th wearing a typical dress from El Salvador, when apparently she was noticed by film people scouting for extras. They asked her to be in Allen’s movie and she filmed a scene in which Cate Blanchett asks her for a key to an apartment.)

Don’t miss another Tamalada at La Cocina. They have already scheduled next year’s class. Put it on your calendar: December 11, 2013.

Recipe: ALICIA’S MANGO TAMALES

Makes 30-40 tamales, depending on the size you make

INGREDIENTS:

• 40 – 60 dried corn husks* (this includes extra, in case some tear)
• 10 pounds maseca* (corn flour)
• 10 sticks unsalted butter, let soften at room temperature 2-3 hours
• 6 cups white sugar
• 6 pounds frozen mango (Whole Foods brand is best) let thaw at room temperature about 2hrs
• 4 14-oz.cans condensed milk

*Can find in Mexican markets or Mexican food aisle of most large markets

PREPARATION:

For Masa:

1. In a large pan, cover corn husks with water and boil for 30 min.
2. Combine 3 pounds of thawed mango and 2 cans of condensed milk in blender. Blend until smooth.
3. In a large bowl, put the 10 pounds of maseca, 8 sticks softened butter, 4 cups sugar and the blended mango/milk cream from Step 2.
4. For traditional “grandmother method,” mix well with your hands 40-60 minutes until it becomes a smooth paste. OR you can mix it using an electric mixer with a big enough bowl for 15-20 minutes.

For Filling:

1. On the stove in a medium pot, put in remaining 2 sticks of softened butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 pounds of thawed mango and 2 cans condensed milk. Heat on high for 5 minutes, uncovered, then cook slowly at medium-low for another 30 minutes, stirring constantly so filling does not stick to pan.

To Assemble the Tamales:

1. To assemble tamales, take about a 1/4 cup of masa and roll it in a smooth ball between your palms. Then press it onto the softened corn husk leaving about 1/2 inch border along the sides and 2-inch border on top and bottom for folding.
2. Top center of masa with about 2 Tablespoons of mango filling.
3.  Gently fold one long side of the corn husk to the other, making make a tight bundle, then fold up the pointed end of the corn husk,leaving other end open. If you wish, use a thin strip of corn husk to tie it up and look pretty. Lay each tamale folded-side down while you  finish the rest.
4. Once the tamales are folded, fill a large steamer with water just below the fill line and place the steam tray on the rack.
5.  Carefully place each tamale standing up on the steamer, open ends up and cook covered for 90 min. (If you don’t have a steamer, you can use a large pot with a steamer basket, just make sure water is below tamales, so that they don’t get wet and check every 15 minutes so that water does not boil away). Turn the gas to high until water boils then turn it down to medium-low. (After 90 minutes, masa should be firm and pull away easily from corn husk, if it is sticky, carefully re-wrap and steam some more.)
6. Remove each tamale with tongs and let rest for a few minutes before serving as a delicious dessert for lunch or dinner or even breakfast.

Aren’t skeletons, with their cavernous eye sockets and leering gap-toothed grins, supposed to inspire screams of terror?

Growing up in the central Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende, Adrian Orozco Blair, a 26-year student now living in San Francisco, didn’t find the skeletons that are an integral part of Day of the Dead celebrations to be spooky, “because the skulls were sweet sugar candy and you could eat them. We had an altar in our house with pictures of our cherished ancestors. Lighting the candles was a serious moment of acknowledgement, but the altars were so colorful and full of food that it took away the scariness.” In fact, he still treasures Day of the Dead as “a way the natural cycles of life are celebrated and a time when the existence of death is befriended.”

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) traces its roots to an Aztec festival that merged with the Catholic All Saints and All Souls days. Celebrated in central and southern Mexico on November 1 and 2, families spend weeks before preparing home altars. At midnight on October 31, the gates of heaven are believed to open so that the spirits of deceased children may reunite with their families for one day. Altars are decorated with toys, candy, chocolate, little glasses of milk and small sugar skulls. On November 2, the adult spirits descend to enjoy the festivities and the altars may be set with tequila or the corn-based drink atole and favored personal objects of the deceased. In the afternoon, families move the celebration to the cemeteries, to clean graves and reminisce about their departed loved ones while enjoying a feast.

Regional traditions influence the exact make-up of the altars, but common elements include candles, marigolds, incense, photos of the deceased, cut-out paper banners, fruit, candied pumpkin, mole sauce, stacks of tortillas, pan de muerto (sweet egg bread, fashioned with a bone-shaped top) and decorated sugar skulls. These last two edible items caught my fancy and after a little looking, I’ve complied a list of places to buy or learn to make sugar skulls and pan de muerto in the coming week.

Eleanor Hopewell, owner Ethnic Arts

At Berkeley’s Ethnic Arts — a shop much more like a museum — amid Indonesian shadow puppets, African masks and Indian painted silks, stands a traditional Mexican altar set with candles, sodas, fruit and figurines of skeletons in a myriad of guises from bride and groom, to “lady of the night” and even dog and cat skeletons. The altar is decorated with cut-out tissue paper panels, surrounded by marigolds and day-glo colored skulls. Nearby is a large table set with pre-made sugar skulls and everything to decorate your own: bags of bright colored icing, foil, feathers, glitter and sequins. Owner Eleanor Hopewell has been offering this table of materials to children and adults in the community for 25 years.

DIY sugar skull decorating for kids and adults $5/skull at Ethnic Arts

Hopewell, who has traveled extensively in Mexico, was struck by the fun, festive spirit of Oaxaca’s candle-lit processions to the cemetery, the bright colors and sharing of good memories that accompany inviting the spirits of loved ones to come back and visit. A picture of Hopewell’s own mother is placed on the altar because, “Mom always loved a good party.” Hopewell tells me the mood of the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations she experienced was not gloomy but upbeat and inviting. “It’s common to write the dead person’s name on one sugar skull and your name on the other. It’s not morbid, it serves as an invitation to show you want their spirit to come and be with you.”

Where to Buy or Make your Own Sugar Skulls and Pan de Muerto or Join the Festivities 

East Bay

Ethnic Arts — decorate your own sugar skull — $5 during store hours 11-6  (good to call ahead as local school groups may be there)
1314 Tenth Street, Berkeley (moving to 2236 San Pablo in mid-Nov.)
(510) 527-5270

Pan de Muerto topped with “bones” from Berkeley’s Casa Latina Bakery

Casa Latina Bakery — Pan de Muerto, decorative sugar skulls and small edible chocolate skulls.
1805 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley
(510) 558-7177

The Oakland Museum of California is hosting their 18th annual Community Celebration for Days of the Dead Sunday October 21. 12-4:30 with dance and musical performances and vendors selling pan de muerto, sugar skulls and other craft items to decorate your home altar.

NEW ADDITIONS:

Oakland’s Unity Council sponsors its 17th annual Dia de los Muertos Festival on Sunday October 28, 10-5, Fruitvale Village, features live music, Aztec dancers, altars and more.

North Berkeley’s Dia de los Muertos Celebration on Friday November 2, from 5-9pm promises a candlelight procession led by Aztec dancers. Revelers are encouraged to wear costumes or giant paper mâché heads.

Pan de Muerto

San Francisco

A print shop on Mission Street called Autumn Express is offering a skull decorating workshop Tuesday October 23 from 5-6pm

La Victoria Panaderia on 24th Street will bake Pan de Muerto throughout the month.

La Cocina is hosting an evening exploring the Day of the Dead food and culture connection at their Folsom street center in the Mission on Wednesday October 24, 6:30-9pm with one of the graduates of their incubator program, Chef Luis Valdez, a fifth-generation Yucatecan bread maker and co-owner with his wife of Chaac Mool food cart and catering. Chef Valdez will teach participants how to make traditional breads and other dishes for Day of the Dead. The event includes dinner and drinks.

On November 2, 6-11pm — San Francisco’s Annual Procession and Festival of Altars at Garfield Park sponsored by The Marigold Project

Starting in January, the school will be offering two programs for would-be professional chefs: a six-month full-time program and an 11-month part-time program with classes on nights and weekends. There’ll also be a variety of cookbook signings, chef demos, and day-long workshops on a wide range of topics, from macaroons three ways with Tartine pastry chef Laurie Ellen Pelicano and regional Italian cooking to a California Thanksgiving menu with Pop-Up General Store founder Samin Nosrat.

Jodi Liano. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Founder Jodi Liano first trained, then taught, at Tante Marie’s Cooking School. In starting her own school, she hopes to break out of the typical French-influenced, recipe-driven mold, inspire her students to cook professionally, and get them tasting, creating, and learning the chemistry behind what works in the kitchen (and how to fix what doesn’t). With an advisory board of top Bay Area chefs, and deans including chefs Craig Stoll and Daniel Patterson and pastry chef Bill Corbett she’s gotten an earful about the lack of real-world skills in new hires fresh out of culinary school. Sure, these kids might know Escoffier’s master sauces, but could they fix a curdled Bearnaise or know how to correct for salt, acid, fat, and sweetness on the fly, without losing their rhythm or dropping into the weeds? What chefs were asking for were employees with culinary intuition, made up of equal parts technical and chemical know-how, a well-developed palate, sensory enthusiasm, and muscle memory–something that could, in fact, be taught, using ratio-based, method-driven systems, not bulky textbooks of recipes to memorize.

Catherine Pantsios. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

So, this would be a school that would start with hands-on hows and whys, with the freedom to mess up and be creative. Liano still talks about an a-ha! moment over a skillet full of onions that wouldn’t caramelize. Her pan got a quick glance from teacher and longtime restaurant chef/owner Catherine Pantsios, who then asked if she’d salted the onions before starting. She had, and there was the problem, since the salt was drawing out liquid, making the onions steam rather than brown. She remembers this moment of basic cooking chemistry even now, in a way that a written instruction might never have stuck. And Pantsios is now the lead instructor for the professional school.”You have to make mistakes,” emphasizes Pantsios. “It’s so important!” (As well as learning what to do with less-than-perfect efforts: hello, soup stock!)

San Francisco Cooking School main area under construction. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Finding a space big enough to equip two full teaching-kitchen spaces (one for the professional school, the other for chef demos, public classes, and events) was a challenge that dragged on for almost a year, until Liano discovered the corner site on Van Ness and Turk. Once part of the original Auto Row on Van Ness, the 100-year-old building had loft-high ceilings and huge windows, with plenty of room for both a demo kitchen up front and a more compact, restaurant-sized kitchen in the back, along with a dishwashing room, storage areas, changing rooms, offices, even a mezzanine that could evolve into a student lounge, meeting rooms and classrooms. Once an auto showroom, it had been a carburator shop, then Speedo 690, a short-lived Jeremiah Tower restaurant. Most recently, it had been a outpost of the Naan and Curry chain, until a fire closed it down.

Stoves in main area workspace. Photo: Wendy Goodfriend

Liano sees her student demographic as career-changers, people who’ve been successful in other fields but always felt the lure of the kitchen, and who’ve made a thoughtful decision to develop the skills and speed required to make it in a professional setting. (And, it goes without saying, have given a long, hard consideration to paying $24,500 for training in a field that pays not much more than minimum wage to start.)

Professional kitchen workspace. Photos: Wendy Goodfriend

Thus, the professional kitchen is set up like a real (albeit big) restaurant kitchen: a row of ranges, shared prep tables, an adjacent dish room. Expecting an individual “work station” of stovetop, oven, and prep area? Not here! Instead, Liano and Pantsios see students learn how to work together, moving gracefully (and fast) around their co-workers, yanking trays of biscuits out of a blasting-hot oven when the range top above is in full filet-searing swing. “We want to get students used to the pace, rigors, and values of a restaurant kitchen,” said Pantsios, “to learn to pay attention to detail, to have that sense of urgency.”

Another crucial part of the school’s education program will be San Francisco itself. “We’re small and flexible, and very hooked in to the food world here. Shouldn’t all this community be part of your education?” Thus, Liano envisions hands-on harvesting at local farms, foraging excursions, and talks about sustainable fisheries with the buyers at Monterey Fish. The last two months of each professional program will be an externship at a local restaurant, where students will learn how to put their skills to use in the real pressure-cooker of daily service. Each student will be supervised by a chef/mentor, offering more feedback than the typical stage, or unpaid apprenticeship, undertaken by many beginning cooks. “You can’t learn to be a chef in culinary school. We’re training people to be entry-level cooks,” said Liano, but cooks with smarts, creativity, and a lively knowledge of how things work in the kitchen and beyond.

Coi chef Daniel Patterson isn’t usually a five-bucks-a-plate kind of guy. Il Cane Rosso in the Ferry Building, his most casual spot, will make you a $9 egg-salad sandwich; at Jack London Square’s Haven, $6 will buy you a side of Chantenay carrots with hay and vadouvan. Toying with the tasting menu at Coi, from abalone with nettle-dandelion salsa verde to frozen lime marshmallow, will set you back a cool 165 clams.

Daniel Patterson (center) and crew at Eat Real Festival’s Sunday Milk-Fed Brunch

But here was Patterson on a sunny Sunday morning in Oakland, surrounded by a crew of at least a dozen. Bent double over their folding-table workstations, they draped slices of grilled lamb over mounds of herby three-grain salad (farro, buckwheat, and wheat berries), doused cubes of poached veal in bone broth, and scooped slivers of string beans and fresh shelling beans over slices of fat-ringed pork confit.

Milk Poached Veal from Eat Real Sunday Milk-Fed Brunch

The price for each appetizer-sized plate? Five bucks, and did we mention that all the meat came from young, milk-fed animals (hence the name) raised on the pastures of Belcampo Meats?

Grilled Lamb and Pig Confit at Eat Real Sunday Milk-fed Brunch

This was the Milk-Fed Brunch touted by Eat Real, and if grilled lamb and veal meatballs weren’t exactly typical brunch fare, those who managed to find Patterson’s stand, which was tucked away at the far end of the Eat Real Festival’s sprawl, next to the manically shouting hucksters of the Toyota sponsors’ display, enjoyed some restaurant-quality eats, made with a degree of care and flavor-layering not usually seen in such a setting.

Mike [the bejkr] Zakowski at Eat Real Festival in Oakland

Besides downing some excellent lamb and very tender veal and carrots, tracking down Patterson’s booth helped us stumble upon the surprisingly un-swamped stand of Sonoma’s Mike the Bejkr, whose artisan, wood-oven loaves are easily the match of Tartine Bakery’s line-out-the-door breads.

Mike had four different loaves (including a hefty pain de campagne stenciled with “real eat” in flour on the crust) but the real delight was his fresh-from-the-oven Tuscan schiacciata, oval pizza-like flatbreads loaded with local farm veggies, including zucchini, onion, and red peppers. On Friday mornings at the Sonoma Valley Farmers’ Market, he says, his stall is mobbed from opening to closing; here, the lines were longer for lumpia. Still, this meant no wait for us in snagging a fresh loaf and a hot, melty-cheesed schiacciata, definitely one of the very best things we ate all weekend.

Wood-Fired Schiacciata from Mike the Bejkr at Eat Real Festival

Then, with baking on our minds, it was over the Ecology Center SF‘s table, where a fire was burning in the cob-built community oven and Laurie Ellen Pelicano of Tartine Bakery was demonstrating the fine art of dough-rolling, sharing the skills she’s developed making some of the dozens and dozens of galettes that Tartine Bakery sells each day. No bowl needed here; instead, Pelicano dusted her chilled butter cubes with flour, made a casual little well in a mound of flour, dropped in the butter and started rolling.

Laurie Ellen Pelicano of Tartine Bakery. Photo: Stephanie Rosenbaum

A few passes, and she had a steam-rollered heap of long, flat butter shards coated in flour. Shaped into another well, she added water (much less than you think), and started, casually again, to fold the flour-and-butter shards over themselves, gently distributing the water while scraping the mixture into a mound. As she mixed, she passed along tips on avoiding the basic mistakes most home bakers make, including:

Don’t cut your butter in too finely, especially if you’re using a food processor. Stop once the butter’s the size of M&Ms; taking the mixture all the way to sand or cornmeal will make a dough that’s crumbly, not flaky. Use just enough water to make it hold together; if you tap your squeezed-together handful of dough, it should fall apart. And finally, most importantly, don’t overwork the finished dough. That nice, gummy, workable Play-Doh texture? Not what you want.

As soon as a handful would hold together, it was wrapped and put in a cooler to chill. Well-prepared, Pelicano pulled out another already-chilled cube of dough and starting rolling, quickly filling her round of dough with apple slices, a squirt of lemon and a sprinkle of organic sugar, then flipping up the edges of the dough to lap over the apples.

That charming wood oven didn’t do a very good job of baking Pelicano’s demo galettes, which came out burned on the bottom and slightly underbaked within, but none of the watchers minded. Who would turn down a slice of Tartine-style galette, fresh out of the oven, with no line to wait in? Even better, Pelicano sent interested bakers home with chunks of her leftover dough for their own kitchen experiments.

And then it was time for beer in a jar: chocolatey-dark Squid Ink, even darker Death and Taxes, autumn-y, crisp Bahl Hornin Mow Keef from the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. And then over to the main stage, where Dave the Butcher and (relative) newbie Daren King were duking it out in the Flying Knives pork-butchering competition, narrated by Belcampo Meats CEO Anya Fernald, with frequent check-ins by the team of judges.

Dave the Butcher battles Daren King at 3rd Annual Flying Knives Pork Butchery Contest.

Dave the Butcher hi-fives Daren King at the conclusion of the 3rd Annual Flying Knives Pork Butchery Contest.

A whole pig, 45 minutes, and by the end, King won the trophy, and it was time to go home and see what we could make for dinner.

Daren King was victorious over Dave the Butcher in the Eat Real Festival’s 3rd Annual Flying Knives Pork Butchery Contest.