Carlo Petrini, Slow Food founder/president and Corby Kummer, food writer/interpreter

Twenty years ago Carlo Petrini, founded Slow Food in an effort to resist McDonalds efforts to erect the Golden Arches in one of the most historical areas of Rome. Since then Petrini's work has spawned an international movement aimed at overhauling global food systems that he says are unhealthy and way out of balance. Petrini gave an impassioned lecture at U.C. Berkeley Tuesday night. While he spoke in vivid Italian, food writer Corby Kummer interpreted. Petrini seemed the perfect choice to inagurate the first class of Edible Education 101: The Rise and the Future of the Food Movement. The course is being co-taught by J-school professor, and author, Michael Pollan and Executive Director of People's Grocery in West Oakland, Nikki Henderson. The premise of the class is that food is political. Students and members of the public are given a chance to explore pressing issues such as food access, distribution and nutrition.

UC Berkeley students checking in for Edible Education

Student enrollment for the 13-week course filled up within minutes. The popular classes are also being offered to the public, free of charge and Bon Appétit Management Co. (BAMCO) is sponsoring the webcast on YouTube. In the audience Tuesday night were freshman Bridget Smith and Sarah Branoff. They said they are taking the course because, as undergrads, they don't usually get a chance to take a journalism class at Berkeley. They both like food and baking and have never even heard of Alice Waters. Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation is helping fund the class. David Park is a Venture Capitalist from Foster City. Park, who puts together health and wellness portfolios, says he is always on the lookout for who to hire and who to fund in the food and nutrition arena. Claudia Weisburd, another member of the public, is interested in how the course promises to integrate environmentalists, social justice activists and foodies.

I'm used to seeing these rock stars of the food movement on TV talk shows and not a scuffed up college stage in front of a white screen with no graphics but somehow Petrini kept everyone's attention. The International Slow Food founder talked about how there are two worlds, one where people get too much to eat and another that doesn't get enough to eat. He talked about gastronomy and how recipes are only one small part. Agriculture, anthropology and political economics are all part of gastronomy. What Petrini wants to do is fix the bad parts of the engine of gastronomy. He said right now, around the world, one billion people are suffering from hunger and in the U.S. we are throwing away twenty-two tons of food a day. For many of us with access to food, we have become locked into diets that are making us sick. Petrini says if you understand food politics you can help create change.

Here are some new paradigms he mentioned:

• Strengthen reciprocity -- Community supported agriculture is an example of this. You give money to a farmer and when he, or she, has it, they give you produce they have grown in return. Petrini's Slow Food movement is working to connect local food communities around the world.
• Share community tools. Why should every house have a shovel or a lawnmower?
• Give more value to the people who produce food. Petrini calls farmers the intellectuals of the earth.
• Give more value to food. Don't waste it.

The goal, says Petrini, is a world in which we stop consuming so much but also help those struggling so that they can have more. Petrini told the audience consuming less doesn't mean you will be less happy. "You will be more happy," he said.

Next week's class, which is already filled up, features film and theater director Peter Sellars. He will be discussing Food as Culture: the role of culture and the arts in deepening and strengthening the social and political roots of the food movement.

Alice Waters clutches garlic and talks up edible education while Levi's President and Chez Panisse fan Robert Hanson looks on.

All photos: Wendy Goodfriend

Unless you've been living in a cave the last week or two you likely know that a certain iconic restaurant in Berkeley is celebrating its 40th birthday this weekend.

Iconic owner of iconic eatery has been here, there, and everywhere in the past week or two. SEO-friendly translation: Alice Waters of Chez Panisse has chatted with former Chez chefs on KQED's Forum, dished on supping solo on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, and got dirty with Hollywood heartthrob and Edible Schoolyard supporter Jake Gyllenhaal on the Today Show, where she was interviewed by Jenna Bush Hager — yes, that Jenna Bush — at The Edible Schoolyard at the San Francisco Boys and Girls Club in Hunters Point, one of several affiliates to the original Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley.

She's also been the subject of not one but two lengthy retrospectives in the San Francisco Chronicle and graced the pages of many glossies this month, with more major print media to come this weekend when the Chez Panisse 40th birthday celebrations kick off.

Today, however, Waters took to the streets of San Francisco -- in Maiden Lane off Union Square no less -- to serve lunch, sell T-shirts, and sign books.

On the menu: School lunch, of course, or Waters' vision of what school lunch should be. The boxed lunches were a fundraiser for the newly named nonprofit Edible Schoolyard Project, a national organization designed to integrate garden and kitchen education into grade-school curriculum. Suggested donation: $5 a pop for a box and 400 lunches sold out within an hour or so. In the mix: Smoked pulled chicken baguette (featuring Soul Food Farm chicken, Dirty Girl Farm shallot and Early Girl tomato, and Little City Gardens herbs and baby, frilly mustard greens) with harissa and aioli. The sandwich was accompanied by La Tercera cucumber pickles and radish, along with Knoll Farms figs, Lagier Ranches Bronx grapes, and Happy Quail Farms peppers. For veggies: Pounded lemon thyme pistou with iacopi butter bean mash, Dirty Girl tomatoes, pickled vegetables, and aforementioned frilly mustard greens. And to wash all those organic veggies down, a refreshing drink of Full Belly Farm yellow doll watermelon with anise hyssop and lime juice.

Got all that? There will be a quiz after lunch. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Chez chefs were all too busy prepping for the weekend galas to whip up lunch today, which was outsourced to Nicole Lobue's Lobue Events, a high-end catering company, in close consultation with Waters, of course.

Waters also teamed up with another local-gone-global icon, Levi's, to launch a limited-edition t-shirt collection (100 % organic cotton, natch) designed by Alice Waters (who 'fessed up to help from chef Sylvan Brackett on her tee) and four well-known creative types: musician David Byrne, filmmaker Sofia Coppola, author Dave Eggers and illustrator Maira Kalman. Alas, none of the luminaries were on hand this afternoon to model the $30 shirts, proceeds from the sale also support the Edible Schoolyard Project. Beginning today, the shirts are available in select Levi’s stores and online at levi.com. At lunch some 40 or so Ts were snapped up, Kalman's pie print proving as popular as Waters' apple images.

Waters addressed the crowd and the media asking: "What could be more universal than blue jeans and edible education?" To which there were no snappy rejoinders, since this is Waters' moment in the sun. Levi's honcho Robert Hanson told a story about his then-very-pregnant girlfriend insisting the couple keep a date at Chez Panisse, some years ago. That night, she gave birth to a baby girl, who's been an organic vegetarian eater ever since. Cue awww now.

It was all very lovely: Wheelbarrows full of freshly harvested produce, including ground cherries, squash, and aromatic herbs from the ESY garden, along with cute little booths. The communal tables sported linen table cloths and posies of fresh flowers. Waters sang the praises of freshly picked garlic the way she has famously waxed about a perfect peach and stressed the importance of educating all the nation's children about good food and the pleasures of the table.

The crowd was a mixed bag of die-hard Chez Panisse fans, supporters of Waters' school lunch and slow food agenda, self-described foodies -- and nearby workers who stumbled onto a good thing. Some in line said that the boxed lunch was the closest they'd ever get to Chez Panisse food, since the high-end restaurant is out of reach for many. Some had never heard of the Edible Schoolyard, offering proof that Waters' mission is far from over.

The local food legend, who signed copies of her new book 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, shook hands with lunch-goers waiting in line to eat and promised the mellow crowd of 500 or so that anyone who missed out on a meal was invited to come eat at Chez Panisse. No word on who would foot the bill.

When asked if her offer was good, press rep David Prior, who was fairly confident that everyone who wanted a box lunch was accommodated, said: "I wouldn't be surprised. There's nothing Alice likes less than running out of food. She's all about feeding people."

Related Posts:
Chez Panisse's birthday kicks off with party to remember (Berkeleyside)

Nikki Henderson. Photo: People's Grocery

A new class at UC Berkeley is getting a lot of buzz. Edible Education: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement is all about food politics. In an unusual step, Cal is opening up the 13-week course to the general public. Well, the class was open to all. Three hundred free tickets for the first night were snatched up in less than fifteen minutes. Student enrollment filled up just as fast. Edible Education is being organized, and funded, by Alice Water’s Chez Pannise Foundation. Nikki Henderson, the executive director of People’s Grocery in Oakland, along with author and U.C. Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan, will co-teach the semester course.

Michael Pollan. Photo: Alia Malley

Think of the sustainable food movement as a dinner party. Edible Education will take a look at the guest list and topics of conversation. How do the slow food movement and food justice fit together? What does corporate food look like? The class will feature immigrant farm workers telling their own stories. Each week will include a guest lecturer.

Here’s the line-up:
• 8/30: The Global Food Movement, Founder Carlo Petrini with Corby Kummer
• 9/6: Building a Successful Movement, Peter Sellars
• 9/13: The Politics of Food, Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H.
• 9/20: Perspectives on Race, Place & Food, Alegria De La Cruz, Rebecca Flournoy, Yvonne Yen Liu
• 9/27: Nutrition, Health and Diet Related Disease, Patricia Crawford & Robert Lustig
• 10/4: Corporations & the Food Movement, Jack Sinclair, Jib Ellison, Michael Pollan
• 10/11: School Lunch and Edible Schoolyards, Ann Cooper
• 10/18: Global Economies of Food: GMOs, and Feeding the World, Raj Patel
• 10/25: Agriculture and Social Justice, Eric Schlosser, Greg Asbed & Lucas Benitez
• 11/1: What is an Edible Education? Alice Waters
• 11/8: Food and the Environment, Frances Moore Lappé & Gidon Eshel
• 11/22: Van Jones
• 11/29: Place Based Models of Change, Brahm Ahmadi, Hank Herrera

The class is every Tuesday from August 30th through November 29th, 6-7:30pm (doors open at 5:30pm) at the Wheeler Auditorium at UC Berkeley.

Tickets will be available, free of charge, six days before each class.

Bay Area Bites will provide coverage of the course.

Related Articles:
Nikki Henderson: On the frontlines of edible education by Sarah Henry (Berkeleyside)

Alice Waters at KQED with her new book 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering. Photo by Wendy Goodfriend

Original Broadcast on Forum: Thu, Aug 18, 2011 -- 10:00 AM

In 1971, Alice Waters and some friends opened a neighborhood bistro in Berkeley with the aim of serving meals with the food and atmosphere of a dinner party at home. Forty years later, the way the nation eats has been dramatically changed by Chez Panisse. As the restaurant marks its anniversary, Forum talks with local chefs and food writers about the impact Chez Panisse has had on the local and national food scene.

Host: Scott Shafer

Guests:
• Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse
• Charlie Hallowell, chef and owner of Pizzaiolo and Boot and Shoe Service in Oakland
• Michael Bauer, executive food and wine editor and restaurant critic for The San Francisco Chronicle and member of the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Awards Committee
• Russell Moore, chef and owner of Camino Restaurant in Oakland

Related Stories, Books, Audio:
• Alice Waters Serves Lunch, Launches Levi's T-Shirts for Edible Education -- BAB
• Edible Education 101: Rock Stars of Food Movement Teach UC Berkeley Class -- BAB
• Chez Panisse’s birthday kicks off with party to remember -- Sarah Henry at Berkeleyside
• Book: 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering by Alice Waters
• Chez Panisse Foundation
• Chez Panisse 40th Anniversary Events -- Chez Panisse Foundation
• Chez Panisse at Forty -- David Lebovitz
• The Real Triumph of Alice Waters -- John Birdsall at Gilt Taste
• Edible Education 101: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement -- Chez Panisse Foundation
• Jenna Bush, Alice Waters, Jake Gyllenhaal, and the Edible Schoolyard --Today Show
• Chez Panisse staff and fans celebrate 40 years of Alice’s restaurant -- The Washington Post
• The Edible Schoolyard (ESY) @edibleschoolyrd
• Alice Waters: Edible Education -- short film by Lisa Eisner + interview @NOWNESS

Collage by Wendy Goodfriend

Do you remember your mother's favorite cookbook? My own mother, raised in the 1950s, married with children in the 1960s and 1970s, a working mom with a vegetarian husband and teenagers in the 1980s, had dozens of cookbooks on her kitchen shelves, each a talisman of a particular moment. To me, each of them is as much a part of her as her scarves and shoes, her Estee Lauder perfumes, the coral lipsticks and gold foil of half-unrolled tubes of Certs always in her pocketbook.

Now, I imagine, there are moms who love their books from Rachael Ray and Paula Deen, who gravy-stain their Emerils and their Inas. But I made my very first cookies "all by myself" from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking, the late-50s version that still had hand-drawn illustrations explaining how to skin a squirrel and decorate an Easter bunny cake. The recipe? Rolled Caramel Cookies, fussy, waferlike things that had to be swiftly removed from the baking sheet and wrapped into a curl around the handle of a wooden spoon while still warm. Even then, I wasn't happy in the kitchen unless I was trying out something just a little beyond me.

I watched, then helped, my mother make the perfect Banana Tea Bread from Craig Claibourne's New York Times Cookbook, whose austere layout was complemented by black-and-white photographs of an equally severe hauteur, presenting every veal roast like an affair of state, complete with bone-china consomme cups and silver candelabra. For dinner parties, we tried out the poached, stuffed sole with tricky beurre blanc from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the chocolate mousse from The French Chef Cookbook.

Pretty soon, though, Mom loosened up, making homemade granola, whipping up Tiger's Milk shakes, and growing her own basil and tomatoes in the backyard. Now into the kitchen came The Seasonal Kitchen by Perla Meyers, circa 1973, which I loved for its earthy, oily-garlicky insistence on cooking what was fresh from the garden, and for its chunky, resolutely modern sans-serif typeface and brown-paper pages the color of a Bloomingdale's shopping bag. But I especially loved the photo of Meyers on the cover. The photographer had snapped her striding along, a confident brunette in orange turtleneck and black trousers, looking like Mary Tyler Moore if Mary had clutched a shopping bag bursting with organic vegetables instead of a plaid tam o'shanter.

It followed the New York Times' Natural Foods Cookbook (1971), in which the paper of record tried to get down with what those crazy kids were doing, with their whole wheat breads and their bean sprouts and their blackstrap molasses. Mom made her own mayonnaise, went to the vitamin-smelling health food store for cartons of brewer's yeast and wheat germ. She still keeps a plastic bag of soy flour in the fridge, the essential ingredient for the excellent Soya Coffeecake. And I still remember, vividly, the terrifying ("3 fruit bats, well washed but neither skinned nor eviscerated") yet fascinating recipe for Fruit Bat Soup, not to mention the groovy, Rousseau-inspired dust jacket.

Given that my parents were a lot more interested in health food than most of our suburban neighbors at the time, these books were shortly followed by Mollie Katzen's whimsically hand-written, cheese-heavy Moosewood Cookbook, then the equally whimsical Vegetarian Epicure (1972) by Anna Thomas, and Katzen's follow-up, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

Julia gathered dust while these went into heavy rotation when first my sisters, then myself, then my father all became vegetarians. Easy broiled lamb chops and chicken breasts were replaced by tofu nut balls and endless veggie chopping, much to my now-working mother's irritation. Having since tackled the multi-part, multi-page recipes in the The Greens Cookbook to impress my still-vegetarian sisters, I can understand her frustration.

Thank god, then, for quiche, salvation of the 1980s busy mother. Already a dab hand at piecrust, she could whip up a quiche à la anything the night before, pop it into the fridge, and instruct my dad to put in the oven an hour before dinnertime, which he could just about manage, having learned from the infamous Roast Chicken Incident that our oven only worked when both knobs were turned on, one for temperature and the other for settings like bake and broil.

The Silver Palate's luscious chocolate fudge sauce was a much-loved indulgence in our house (over Haagen-Dazs vanilla Swiss almond ice cream, of course) and so the fabulous Silver Palate Cookbook (1982) quickly earned a place on the shelf. I pored over it, imagining a glamorous life of high-style dinner parties punctuated with goat-cheese phyllo triangles and seafood lasagna. As Paul Prudhomme became a celebrity chef on the strength of his blackened redfish and shrimp remoulade, my parents took jaunts to New Orleans, coming back with spiral-bound cookbooks full of recipes for gooey bananas Foster and gloriously messy barbecued shrimp, served swimming in bowls of tinglingly spicy sauce with yards of crisp-crusted French bread.

Although my father hadn't been to the Bay Area since shipping out for the Pacific during WWII, he nonetheless bought my mom a copy of the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, written by Alice Waters with then-chef Paul Bertolli. My mother never cooked from it (too much grilled squab and nasturtium-flower salads to make it useful for suburban New Jersey, circa 1982) but I read and re-read it endlessly. Alice Waters had escaped the suburbs of New Jersey to eat deliciously in France and re-invent herself in California; how I longed to do that, too!

Stir-frying, fueled by the wok craze and our own forays into the newly popular Hunan and Szechuan restaurants in New York City, came into my mother's kitchen through The Thousand-Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Gloria Bley Miller (1984). Tucked inside the front cover was a soy sauce-spattered sheaf of printed recipes from Uncle Tai's, my parents' favorite Hunan restaurant, a fancy place in midtown with ice-blue wallpaper, tuxedo'd captains, and fantastic hacked chicken, sesame noodles, and lamb with scallions, worlds away from the greasy fried noodles dunked in sticky duck sauce at our local strip-mall Cantonese joints.

I still find the sight of any of these books--on the shelf of a used bookstore, or in the welcoming, pleasantly decorated kitchens of ladies in their 50s and 60s--incredibly comforting. A glimpse of the Silver Palate Cookbook or Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen (1984), buttressed by the twin volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking,and I feel like I've come home.

My mother watches Ina Garten's cooking shows now, and collects her bright, enticingly easy Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. I tuck jars of homemade jam into my suitcase when I go to visit her in New York; she stocks up on goat cheese, bagels, salmon, and lamb chops. She's discovered panko crumbs and Prosecco, rainbow chard and pomegranate juice. I sneak downstairs in the morning, to get the coffee going before she gets up. We cook together, and she reminds me again of how, at 15, I threw her out of the kitchen so I could finish whatever I was making my own way. We laugh about this, and she points out my own three cookbooks, now on display in the wicker kitchen bookshelf. I tell her I learned everything from her.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Photo: Sophie Constantinou

Fancy a film documenting the evolution of school lunch reform in Berkeley and there's not an interview with Alice Waters in sight.

We'll get to that. First, some background: The Berkeley Unified School District's (BUSD) school food makeover and its much-lauded School Lunch Initiative has garnered lots of media coverage and is considered a stellar example for other public school district's struggling to bring fresh, healthy food into their cafeterias and classrooms. Students at Berkeley public schools get to learn first hand about cooking and gardening too.

Given that, it's surprising it's taken so long for a documentary filmmaker or two to cover the school food revolution in this university town.

Now comes Lunch Love Community, a series of mini-movies or webisodes, inspired by a New Yorker story on the "Renegade Lunch Lady" Ann Cooper. Cooper came in and overhauled Berkeley's central kitchen and school lunch menu, with a little help from Waters and her Chez Panisse Foundation.

What documentarians Helen De Michiel and Sophie Constantinou quickly discovered, though, after spending time in Berkeley's public schools and steeping themselves in the history of the school food reform movement here, is that it takes a village -– not just a couple of school food rock stars -– to fix school food.

"Alice Waters is a visionary, Ann Cooper is the general who mobilized the troops, Bonnie Christensen, the BUSD's executive chef, and Marni Posey, the district's Director of Nutrition Services, are in the trenches every day," explains De Michiel. "And they have taken this experiment to the next level, fined tuned it, and made it something sustainable that really works. That's the story we were interested in telling -- along with all the community members who came together before them to bring about change."

Unhappy about the ubiquitous frozen tater tots, chicken nuggets, and canned fruit in heavy syrup trucked in from afar, a group of concerned parents worked for eight years on a Child Nutrition Advisory Committee to bring salad bars and fresh, local, made-from-scratch food into Berkeley schools. In 1999 the BUSD was the first district in the country to have a food policy -- recommending soda machine bans and wholesome over heavily processed foods.

In light of recent developments on the school food front, the San Francisco-based filmmakers wanted to get their footage out as quickly as possible to a wide audience, particularly with the passage of the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. They also thought, frankly, that a digital distribution approach might help free up hard-to-come-by funding for a pending one-hour documentary project on the same subject. "We wanted to seize the moment, share what we found, and give people a way to respond to it and take away what was useful for them in their own communities," says Constantinou. "It's a key time in school lunch reform across the country."

So they came up with the webisode concept, three-to-five minute pieces profiling different aspects of Berkeley's school food scene. The Parent Factor highlights the adults who banded together in the 1990s to change school food, including Eric Weaver, Beebo Turman, and Joy Moore.

"Everything we put into our mouth’s isn’t food," explains Moore, who has worked on this issue for several decades and currently teaches cooking and gardening at Berkeley Technology Academy. "I want kids to know that and make smart choices for themselves. So I’m trying to raise the consciousness of all our children about food and health. My mission is really simple: it’s to get kids to value good food."

The Labor of Lunch captures the time-consuming task of making from-scratch meals for 5,000 students every day.

Flamin' Hot dishes up a funny take on teenagers' obsession for a certain kind of Cheetos.

But Is It Replicable? addresses the question on many school administrators' and parents' minds.

If They Cook It, They Will Eat It features Le Conte Elementary School cooking instructors Kathy Russell and Brenna Rich and their students illustrating what Waters has been quoted saying for years: Kids will consume vegetables -- even dark, leafy green ones -- if given the opportunity to grow, harvest, and cook themselves. And this: Food made with love tastes good. That's something that many of the district's devoted school and garden teachers have been sharing, organically, for years.

The Whole World in a Small Seed focuses on Malcolm X Elementary's beloved school-under-the-sky run by Rivka Mason. "I'm a garden teacher and a body worker and I know just how important it is for students to get out of their heads and away from their desks so they can see, touch, taste, hear, and smell to learn; an edible garden is a perfect environment to do all those things," says Mason. "My mantra is: No child left inside. We've got so many kids sitting in front of screens for so long there's an epidemic of Nature Deficit Disorder. When kids get out and play in a school garden and pick produce and eat what they grow it's a wonderful, healthy thing. Here in Berkeley we have an entire generation of food-savvy kids who have grown up this way."

Berkeley's school lunch program isn't perfect, as comments on this recent Berkeleyside story suggest. But Lunch Love Community is a timely reminder of the trailblazing role this community has played in laying the groundwork for the national school lunch reform movement now being espoused by the likes of First Lady Michelle Obama, Jamie Oliver, and the incognito middle American school teacher who writes the blog (and soon-to-be book) Fed Up With Lunch.

Six shareable short films launched publicly right after Thanksgiving last year at www.lunchlovecommunity.org, six more are due to come online.

The webisodes will also be featured at a public screening premiere on Sunday, February 13 at 2:30 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley.

The filmmakers will be on hand for a post screening discussion, along with school lunch reformers featured in the films, including Bonnie Christensen and Joy Moore.

Event Details:
Lunch Love Community
Sunday, February 13, 2:30 p.m.
Pacific Film Archive
2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley
Tickets: $5.50-$9.50

Related Article
Berkeley’s school lunch program is flawed, say insiders (Berkeleyside)

[Update: A list of all last night's winners and their profiles can be found at Good Food Awards. Bay Area businesses in the winners' circle include: Bison Brewing, Drake's Brewing, Marin Brewing Company, Cafe Rouge, The Girl and the Fig, Ceres Community Project, Cultured, Happy Girl Kitchen, Middleton Farm, Cowgirl Creamery, Nicasio Valley Cheese Company, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Charles Chocolates.]

Isn't it always Good Food Month in the Bay Area?

Do we need another award night honoring food artisans?

The answer to both those questions appears to be yes.

Here's why: The Good Food Awards recognizes food purveyors who demonstrate high standards in taste and sustainability and the ceremony tonight kicks off a month-long series of events showcasing artisan food producers in the sustainable food movement, many of whom struggle to make their businesses viable while they endeavor to work in environmentally-responsible and ethical ways.

The honors will be given out at a gala at San Francisco's Ferry Building hosted by the reigning queen of the sustainable food movement, Alice Waters.

The ceremony is not open to the public but passionate food folk can find out what all the fuss is about on Saturday when winning producers will be offering samples, talking up their wares, and selling them too, under the arcade at the front of the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Almost 800 entries from 41 states were submitted from food makers hoping to earn the best-of-class honors in seven categories: coffee, chocolate, preserves, cheese, pickles, and beer. A panel of 80 judges -- including industry bigwigs like chocolate superstars Michael Recchiuti, Alice Medrich, and John Scharffenberger -- were recruited for blind tastings. A list of the 130 finalists can be found on the Good Food site.

The Bay Area is well represented. Finalists include several local brewers, among them Bison Brewing from Berkeley for Organic Gingerbread Ale, San Francisco's Thirsty Bear for Polar Bear Pils, and Marin Brewing Company for ESChi.

Finalists in the charcuterie category include Berkeley's Cafe Rouge for Smoked Beef Tongue and Sonoma's The Girl and The Fig for both Coppa and Pimenton Salami. A slew of Marin cheese-makers made the cut, notably Cowgirl Creamery for Red Hawk, Point Reyes Farmstead for its signature blue, and Nicasio Valley Cheese Company for Nicasio Square.

Chocolatiers vying for first-place nods include San Francisco's Charles, Jade, and Poco Dolce, and Oakland's Vice. Coffee makers up for top honors: Oakland's Blue Bottle, San Francisco's Ritual Coffee Roasters, and Santa Rosa's Ecco Caffe.

In the canning and jamming categories, Berkeley's Cultured represents the home team with Spicy Oregano Purple Carrots, while Monterey's Happy Girl Kitchen is on the preserves list for Apricot Chili Jam.

Good Food director Sarah Weiner of The Seedling Projects says the event grew out of a casual conversation at the Slow Food Nation wrap-up meeting. One of the preserves' organizers, Casey Havre of LouLou's Garden, mentioned how important it was to meet with fellow food artisans from different fields who share similar philosophies to generate ideas, learn about each other's products, and find ways to work together.

That idea stayed with Weiner, who spent time living in London, where she fell in love with an independent grocery store/deli that sold products with a little gold seal on them. Further investigation revealed that the seal was a taste award, bestowed by a British newspaper. Items that carried the seal, the proprietor confided, flew off the shelves.

Those two moments sowed the seeds for the Good Food Awards. The awards selection criteria sparked some bickering; a bitter brouhaha brewed over whether there even is such a thing as sustainable coffee. For some insights into that debate, visit the coffee news site Sprudge.com and a response to the criticism over at Fresh Cup Magazine.

Most food artisans, though, are grateful for the opportunity to show off their hard work. And with its national scope, the event can offer encouragement to sustainable food producers -- like the raspberry jam maker (a finalist) and her farmer husband in Ohio who hand-picked bugs off their crops and almost gave up on organic -- in parts of the country where there may not be much support or solutions for the challenges of sustainable production, Weiner explains.

Finalist Alex Hozven of Cultured adds that while she runs a food business, she isn't always the best at marketing her own work. The awards, she says, are a way of exposing more people to her unique products and garnering media attention that is likely to have ripple effects over time. Plus, like other fermented food fans, she's curious to see what picklers from other parts of the country are doing.

This Saturday marks the beginning of 30 days of sustainable food events, including cooking demonstrations, canning and pickling classes, and culinary and farm tours. Each week has a theme: Jan. 17-23 is devoted to events around coffee and chocolate; Jan. 24-30 features preserves and cheeses; Jan. 31-Feb. 6 charcuterie and pickles; Feb. 7-13 focuses on ethnic food and brewing events will be held in conjunction with the annual San Francisco Beer Week, Feb. 11-20.

Most events require advance tickets though many are free. For a complete schedule visit goodfoodmonth.org.

Back to the beginning. "It's good food month every second of every day in the Bay Area," agrees Lisa Rogovin, an epicurean concierge whose culinary tours In the Kitchen with Lisa are featured on the Good Food Month schedule. (Full disclosure: I lead some of these tours.)

"But locals may not frequent some of the stops on, say, our Mission Tour, such as Mr. Pollo, La Victoria Bakery, and Mission Pie, or have no idea about these businesses' back stories," she explains. "Personally, what I like about the Good Food program is that it introduces me to noted national brands that live and breath the same local, seasonal, sustainable mantra as do many of the artisans in our backyard."

Update: A list of all last night's winners and their profiles can be found at Good Food Awards.

Food, glorious, food. It's that time of year people: Bay Area Bites brings you the best in food news for 2010.

In this two-part package, we look at the national trends and topics that sizzled over the past 12 months and serve up some local flavor on the side.

Feel free to weigh in with your own edible highlights from the year that was. In no particular order:

1. Food Safety

From previous years we've learned that what we eat can make us sick (tainted peanut butter, beef gone bad, and salmonella-laced spinach ring any bells?).

This year's food alerts: A massive egg recall and lingering questions about health risks associated with Gulf seafood.

Thankfully, late in the year Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act to protect consumers from food products hiding harmful poisons or pathogens like E. coli and salmonella, a food policy coup that greatly strengthens the Food and Drug Administration's ability to keep unsafe food off supermarket shelves and restaurant plates by expanding the agency's recall abilities and access to records.

Local angle: Bay Area-based media consultant Naomi Starkman kept the spotlight on potentially dangerous foods for sale in reports on Civil Eats and Huffington Post, including a story about a Consumers' Report study that found packaged salad laden with fecal bacteria.

2. D.I.Y. Food

Age-old practices such as canning, jamming, foraging, fermenting, growing and gleaning are suddenly new (and cool) again. Chickens are the au courant backyard animal of choice. And classes in the Domestic Arts all the rage.

The New York Times Magazine traveled west to take pretty pictures of urban homesteaders from the Bay Area, The Washington Post chronicled the canning trend long strong here, and Vogue got down and dirty with city farmer Novella Carpenter, who donned a pink cardigan in a concession to fashion for a photo shoot with the stylish mag's scribe Hamish Bowles. (Carpenter seemed to pop up everywhere last year, including on KQED.)

Local angle: In addition to Novella Carpenter's Ghost Town Farm in Oakland, the Bay Area D.I.Y. brigade created a kind of cottage industry, hawking their homemade wares at venues like SF Underground Market (Underground Market on BAB) and East Bay Underground Market, as well as the Pop-Up General Store.

And they wrote about it too; notable D.I.Y. books this year included Rachel Saunders' tome The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, Napa forager Connie Green's The Wild Table (featured on The California Report), and D.I.Y. Delicious by Vanessa Barrington. Online, San Francisco's Sean Timberlake launched Punk Domestics, a curated space for D.I.Y.-driven cyber self-publishers.

Classes in baking, brewing, beekeeping, bottling, animal husbandry and more were in high demand at venues like 18 Reasons, Urban Kitchen SF, the Institute of Urban Homesteading, and BioFuel Oasis, a worker-owned cooperative begun by Carpenter and friends.

3. Food Politics

In an era of identity politics and culture wars, food fights join the fray. What you eat (and what you choose not to consume) speaks volumes about your political persuasions. First Lady Michelle Obama, dubbed America's foodie-in-chief by The Atlantic, talked about ending obesity and increasing activity with her Let's Move initiative. She also championed growing food and farmers' markets -- and brought to her kitchen top chefs like Sam Kass. On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh mounted a modern-day Twinkie defense (this time citing the fact that a man lost weight on a diet consisting mostly of the infamous junk food as evidence that all nutrition science is bogus). Sarah Palin showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing cookies and dished up s'mores at a diner in a calculated countermove to a Michelle Obama dessert comment. Professional rager Glenn Beck even weighed in. Sigh...

The task of putting the food wars in context fell to ex-Washington Post writer Jane Black, who has moved to Huntington, West Virginia with new husband editor Brent Cunningham to see what happens to the community's eating habits now that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has skipped town.

Local angle: Taking the happy out of Happy Meals: Outgoing SF Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed a Board of Supervisors ban on plastic toys in fast-food meals. But the supes struck back, ensuring that no child in the city will be tempted to eat junk food simply to get their hands on a cheap trinket that will likely break before you can say Big Mac.

4. School Food

For the majority of schoolchildren around the country school lunch sucks. Big time.

But change is coming. This year, Jamie Oliver brought his Food Revolution to the States, an anonymous teacher chronicled what she ate every day in her school cafeteria in her blog Fed Up With Lunch, and President Obama signed into law the much-anticipated Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The legislation bans some junk food, and gives a small, though historically significant, six-cent increase per child per lunch (the first such boost in the reimbursement rate in 30 years), and there may be more lunch money tucked inside the bill to boot.

Local angle: Veteran school food reformer Alice Waters claimed victory for her Edible Schoolyard model following the results of a study on Berkeley's School Lunch Initiative from University of California at Berkeley researchers.

5. Street Food

Fueled by Twitter feeds, gourmet grub on the go continued to attract a growing following around the country as food trucks hit the streets in increasingly more legitimate ways, boasting inspired names and bright colors, to wit The Best Wurst in Austin, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck in New York City, and Chairman Bao in San Francisco.

Food trucks went a step further in size, too, with the introduction of bustaurants, stripped former public transit buses reconfigured as a mobile kitchen, and, in some cases, even offering eat-in seating. In L.A. the double decker Worldfare dished up ethnic eats, while closer to home Le Truc in San Francisco served up gastro-pub fare, and Diamond Lil debuted to a small crowd and a camera crew.

Los Angeles officials announced it may regulate mobile carts, a move that could see other cities follow suit.

Local angle: With mild-mannered accountant Matt Cohen at the helm, the mobile food fest Off the Grid launched in Fort Mason and sprouted several neighborhood locations, including Golden Gate Park, McCoppin Hub, Civic Center, and UN Plaza. Officials in San Francisco passed reforms making it easier and cheaper for mobile vendors to serve street eats, while in the East Bay the city of Emeryville saw pushback from local brick-and-mortar businesses and Berkeley residents bemoaned missing out on most of the mobile food fun (for now).

Check BAB tomorrow for the rest of the best of 2010 food news.

Chef Gordon Drysdale is back in the kitchen, at the newly opened Café Des Amis, a Union Street restaurant project that he has been working on via his role as Chef & Partner for the locally owned Bacchus Management Group. Drysdale is also in charge of the kitchens at Pizza Antica locations, which recently opened a Santa Monica outpost. Drysdale still fields requests for his trademark dish of Brussels sprouts salad, which he calls an unlikely best seller, "It's like having rutabaga on the menu, with 100s of thousands of people asking 'when will it be on the menu?'" adding he's happy to have a popular dish that resonates. The dish first caught notice in the late 1990s, at his much celebrated Gordon's House of Fine Eats.

The Favorites
Drysdale has lived in the Homestead Valley area of Mill Valley for years, with his wife Susie, and two pre-teen sons, Miles, and Monroe. The Rochester, New York native describes the area as "old timey and cool, very Kerouac-ish." He admits that he likes to dine out with the family when he has a day off, but given the chance, "I'd probably go to Benu tonight if I could, like everyone else." The chef has visited Royal Thai Restaurant in San Rafael at least 900 times in the past twenty years, and he orders the same three dishes each visit. "Tofu with spicy green beans and basil; wheat gluten with potato and yellow curry; and ground pork with lime and chili. My older son, Miles gets his own order of the ground pork dish, and Monroe digs into the chicken satay." This restaurant gets the highest praise from Drysdale, who said, "it's the most consistent restaurant I've eaten anywhere. In my life.'

Cactus Café in Mill Valley is where Drysdale likes to eat a house salad with "what tastes like a marjoram laced dressing, very interesting. It comes with a quesadilla, and is very simple. For a son of authentic British stock, this is very easy to take."

Drysdale deadpans, "We're always looking for some variation on the theme of white for Monroe: pasta, pizza, and French fries." Mamacita in the Marina keeps his sons happy, where carnitas tacos with guacamole grace the table.

Special Occasions, Sweets
For his wedding anniversary in October, Drysdale and Susie go to Manresa. Chef David Kinch’s food is "lighter, with more 'unexpected' going on. And the sommelier does the most amazing wine pairings with the food. It's a raw deal that Manresa only has one Michelin star." The two also trek to Powell's Sweet Shoppe in Los Gatos, to buy sweet treats for their sons in a store that "has almost an Eisenhower feel to it.' Miette in the Ferry Building is another go-to for the sweet fixes.

"If I every have another New Year's Eve free, I'd spend it at Bix" where he was the opening chef for the Doug Biederbeck-Real Restaurant Gold Coast spot. He and Susie spent many a memorable night there, and "it's flat out magical, and hard to beat expectations here. Doug Biederbeck really draws it out on New Year's."

Produce and The Big Mac
The Marin Farmers Market is "for my money, the one to beat," said Drysdale. "There's some charm to the Ferry Plaza... a lot of great things go on there." Drysdale packs a bag lunch in his car daily, with "annoyingly healthy" carrots, celery, and apples. "But in that bag, there's always chocolate," he said. "I am a recent devotee and passionate fan of TCHO." Chocolate is a guilty pleasure, and once a year, he and Susie have a ritual Big Mac with extra pickles from McDonald's. Adding pickles "makes sure they are making it right then and there, right." Still, "I may never do it again," and am loathe to admit it is an item he consumes, even once a year.

Chefs & Cookbooks That Inspire
"I am a lifelong, ardent and passionate believer in Alice Waters. Of course I am," said Drysdale, adding, "Who isn't?" He loves the Chez Panisse Café, and the simple pleasure one gets there, that "you can't get anywhere else. A perfect peach, lightly chilled. Some may deter, but I love a perfect peach sometimes. The Chez Panisse Café cookbook is wonderful, and I can't wait for the December-January run of steelhead to do steelhead roe."

Drysdale has been using Jasper White's Cooking from New England cookbook for twenty-five years, and also loves the books and restaurants of Mario Batali. Paula Wolfert is another favorite resource, for her "cool, weird recipes that make me go 'Huh, wow, okay."'

Alice Waters photo by David Liittschwager

Alice Waters caught up with Bay Area Bites on the last stop of her In the Green Kitchen book tour recently. She greeted and hugged most of the guests at the designer (chi-chi) Carrots Boutique, where four hundred dollars buys a smashing chapeau. Cocktails were made up by handsome male barkeeps from the neighboring Bix Restaurant, and owner Doug Biederbeck seemed obsessed with the event flow--he was mulling over when and whether Waters would speak and wanted to be sure folks knew they had to pay for Waters' latest cookbook. Eats were radishes and fava bean crostinis.

Daniel Lurie was one of the hosts of the Carrots event, and said that "everyone loves Alice… clearly," as he watched her surrounded by loyalists. Lurie told BAB that he showed Ms. Waters how to ride the subway in New York City over a decade ago, when he was living there. No surprise that Waters demurred on answering SFist Editor Brock Keeling’s query, “What is your favorite junk food?” However she did eventually agree to share her favorite Bay Area food-related faves with BAB. Waters has lived in North Berkeley, "a short walk away from Chez Panisse, for over 40 years."

Boulette's Larder
1 Ferry Building #48 Map
(415) 399-1155
Hours: No table service on Saturday
Breakfast Monday-Friday 8AM to 10:30AM
Lunch Monday-Friday 11:30AM to 2:30PM
Brunch Sunday 10AM to 2:30PM

Waters: My Saturday morning trip to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market is one of my most beloved rituals--I stop by Boulette's to get my English muffins and eggs for breakfast. For a weekday lunch I order a simple, perfect salad or pulled pork sandwich.

Primavera at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market
1 Ferry Plaza Map
NO PHONE
Hours: Saturday 8AM to 2PM

Waters: I love their authentic, organic handmade tortillas--they also have incredible special dishes from all the regions of Mexico.

Flatland Flower Farm at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market
1 Ferry Plaza Map
NO PHONE
Hours: Saturday, starting at 8AM

Waters: I buy wonderful plants here for my garden--vegetables, fruits, herbs, flowers--as well as deliciously crisp, dry-farmed apples in season.

Swan Oyster Depot

1517 Polk Street (between California Street and Sacramento Street) Map

(415) 673-1101

Hours: Monday-Saturday 8AM to 5:30PM

Waters: I come here when I’m craving freshly caught crab or oysters on the half shell--the place is small, but grab a spot at the cool marble countertop bar if you can.

Sebo
517 Hayes Street at Octavia Street Map
(415) 864-2181 –-no reservations taken
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 6PM to 10PM
Sunday 6PM to 11PM

Waters: This Japanese restaurant is incredibly tiny--and so, so good! It serves the best sushi I’ve tasted in San Francisco.

Zuni Café
1658 Market Street (between Franklin and Gough)
 Map
(415) 553-2522

Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 11:30AM to 11PM
Friday-Saturday 11:30AM to midnight

Sunday 11:00AM to 11:00PM
Closed Monday


Waters: My home away from home for 25 years. The roasted chicken with bread salad is one of the truly great dishes of the Bay Area.

Blue Bottle Café
66 Mint Street (between Jessie Street and Mission Street) Map
(415) 493-3394

Hours: Monday-Friday 7AM to 7PM
Saturday 8AM to 6PM
Sunday 8AM to 4PM

Waters: This is the coffee we serve at Chez Panisse--it’s organic, and has incredible flavor. Their café on Mint Plaza has several unique ways of brewing your coffee--all of them delicious.

Omnivore Books
Omnivore Books Map
3885 Cesar Chavez Street (at Church Street) Map
(415) 282-4712

Hours: Monday-Saturday 11AM to 6PM
Sunday 12PM to 5PM

Waters: A tiny store that sells new cookbooks and vintage, hard-to-find editions. It also hosts special tasting events and book signings.

Acme Bread
1601 San Pablo Avenue (at Cedar Street) Map
Berkeley CA 94702-1317
(510) 524-1327

Hours: Monday-Saturday 8AM to 6PM
Sunday 8:30AM to 3PM

Waters: This is the finest bread in the Bay Area, period. And it’s all made with organic flour and using only solar energy!

Pizzaiolo
5008 Telegraph Avenue (at 50th Street) Map
Oakland CA 94609
(510) 652-4888

Hours: Monday-Thursday 5:30PM to 10PM
Friday-Saturday 5PM to 10:30PM
Closed Sunday

Waters: Wood-fired pizzas, a superb bar, and a great big patio out back.

Ajanta Restaurant
1888 Solano Avenue (at The Alameda) Map
Berkeley CA 94707
(510) 526-4374
Hours: Monday-Sunday 11:30AM to 2:30PM, 5:30PM to 9:30PM

Waters: This lovely neighborhood Indian restaurant uses organic produce and has an ever-changing, seasonal menu.

The Cheese Board
1504 Shattuck Avenue (at Vine Street) Map
Berkeley CA 94707
(510) 549-3183
Hours: Monday 7AM to 1PM
Tuesday-Friday 7AM to 6PM
Saturday 8:30AM to 5PM
Closed Sunday

Waters: For over four decades, this workers’ collective across the street from our restaurant has been serving seasonal pizzas, fresh sourdough baguettes, and divine cheeses to all of Berkeley.