It's that time of the year again. Shorter days, colder nights and the realization that yet another year is slipping away.

For those of us who clutch to whatever hope we can find, it's also the time to begin thinking about all the promises ahead for 2008. To help mark the months, calendars that inspire and move me are a basic necessity. How else to make the wall over my desk a place for change rather then an endless list of tasks?

For the third year in a row, I'm ordering a copy of Celia Roberts' wonderful calendar celebrating farm workers across the country. Fully bilingual with Spanish and English text, this year's calendar, Gracias por los Campesinos, describes the daily labor of immigrants with honesty, respect and quiet gratitude.

Next year's calendar is especially close to my heart, for Celia came to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market while I was still teaching in the kitchen there. She helped me welcome the women from Las Salsitas the day they demonstrated recipes from their cookbook, and while she was there, she snapped a photo of Carl Rosato from Woodleaf Farm. If you flip to December in the 2008 calendar, you'll see him helping some customers as they pick out peaches at his booth.

Every year's calendar has a different visual theme, but the feeling is always the same: thanking community members for their valuable contributions. One of my favorites was last year's collection of photographs, Gracias por los Abuelos, when Celia honored grandparents.

I highly recommend this year's calendar for offices or kitchens where eating and cooking has become the mere stuff of work. It's a warm reminder of the faces and lives and stories that bring us our food.

Every year, on the first Sunday of November, tens of thousands of Sikh from across the U.S. and Canada travel to Yuba City for the largest gathering of their extended community in North America. It's the only public festival I've seen in this country where not a single piece of food is sold, yet I still managed to eat and drink for six hours straight.

Food is offered free to all who come: Every single one of the 60,000 Sikh (give or take 20,000 in any given year) who take part in the festival, and the few hundred curious folk like me who show up for the food.

Cauliflower pakoras fresh from the oil.

All along the side of the parade's path are stations of Sikh men and women rolling roti, frying pakoras, stirring curries, and cutting sweets. Everything served is vegetarian, to be as inclusive as possible. Friendly, young men offer fresh fruit, water, juice, and hot chai to all who walk by -- even the Christian evangelists with their placards and flyers.
A line of women roll fill bread with potatoes masala while a two-man team shares dipping and frying duty.

Men from the Punjab region of Northern India were among the earliest immigrants to the Pacific Northwest and then the Central and Imperial Valleys of California. Many of them were Sikh, and their hard work -- felling trees, laying rails, and laboring in fields and orchards -- helped build the West.

The November festival in Yuba City honors the Sikh scriptures, the Guru Granth Sahib, and the recitation of its words is central to the procession. Large, decorated semi-trucks help pull the priests and musicians through the crowded streets.

This Thursday, I'll be giving a presentation about the importance of the communal kitchen in the Sikh religion. There'll be lots more photos, including many archival ones, and we'll discuss how Asian Americans such as the Sikh navigated strict immigration and alien land laws to establish thriving farms in the Central Valley.

"Sikh Temples and Communal Meals: Religion, Politics and Potluck in California's Central Valley"
Presented by Thy Tran
Thursday, October 11, 2007
5:15-6:45 pm

Magnes Museum
2911 Russell Street, Berkeley, CA
Contact: Erica J. Peters, Culinary Historians of Northern California
Phone: (650) 938-4936
Email: e-peters-9@alumni.uchicago.edu

The Indian karahi has the same lovely, generous shape as a Chinese wok.