Happy spring! The vernal equinox, daylight savings time, and the Jewish holiday of Purim may all be upon us, but brrrr! With umbrella-destroying winds, tornado watches along the coast, and socks-drenching rain, it's feeling much more like winter than balmy spring. Oh well--remember all those sunbathing days we got back in January?

Like most of us, bees prefer to stay inside where it's warm and dry on days like this, snuggling together in a big bee-ball to keep themselves, and especially their queen, nice and toasty. But for humans, the show must go on, and so CUESA's honey celebration at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market on Saturday, March 19th went on even in the teeth of blowing rain. Once a month from February through November, CUESA will be hosting a celebration for a different fruit, vegetable, or product, featuring tastings, ask the farmer (or producer) sessions, and a variety of cooking demonstrations by local chefs and cookbook authors. Last month was citrus; this month, for the first time, was honey.

First up behind the counter was Margo True, food editor of Sunset magazine and the author (along with her staff) of Sunset's latest book, The One-Block Feast. The book, which comes out next week, came out of a series of homesteading projects undertaken by Sunset over the last couple of years. "We wanted to get back to the Lane brothers' original vision for Sunset, which was as a laboratory for Western living," said True. With a spacious garden, room for bees and chickens, the ability to get a "milk share" from a cow living at a nearby farm, and lots of kitchen room for testing, True and her team set out to see if they could make or source everything--even flour and sea salt--from as close to the magazine's Menlo Park campus as possible. The results were sometimes spectacular, sometimes frustrating, but all of it got incorporated into the book. True tried to be as honest as possible, promising that they "definitely wrote about what bombed," too.

However, on this gray morning, True was here to show off two recipes that promise big payback for not too much effort. A custard-based honey ice cream, made with honey from the magazine's own hives, had a suave, salted-caramel edge, thanks to a drizzle of honey on top and a sprinkle of sea salt. It's more lusciously creamy than sweet, but the honey flavor still comes through. Even though it was hardly ice cream weather, the crowd snapped up every sample and scraped the cups clean.

Next came strawberry jam, made of nothing more than ripe early-season berries, honey, and a dash of lemon juice. Rather than cook it on the stovetop, where the direct heat could scorch the mixture, True spread out her chunky berry puree in a thin layer on a baking sheet, then revealed her secret: a long, gentle bake in a slow oven, which would gently condense it down while preserving the berries' ripe flavor. Spread on slices of Acme bread, the finished jam did taste remarkably fresh, with a soft consistency somewhere between jam and compote, perfect for a yogurt parfait topped with granola and a handful of fresh berries.

When I was researching my own book about honey a decade ago, Helene Marshall and her husband, beekeeper Spencer Marshall of Marshall's Farm Honey, took me around their bee house, let me scoop a fingerful of eucalyptus honey straight out of the comb, and even let their bees model for photographs. Now, ten years later, Helene is still talking up the beauty of bees and the importance of local honey (and local pollinators), and finally, people are ready to hear what she has to say. Speaking about the recent resurgence of interest in backyard beekeeping, she said, "The biggest, best, and most important thing to come out of this is that people have respect for bees and beekeepers now, and a real appreciation of honey. People realize that we need those bees!"

Helene Marshall of Marshall's Farm Honey, offering samples of Fairmont Hotel

In front of the audience with J.W. Foster, executive chef of San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, Helene talked about their latest project, putting hives on the Fairmont's roof. "I'm San Francisco born and raised, went to my junior and senior proms at the Fairmont, so it feels like our bees are going home. They can hitch a ride on a cable car...it's so San Francisco, I love it!" On warm days, the bees like to nip up to the penthouse level to sip from the fountains, getting a free look at that $15,000-a-night view.

So far, the Fairmont is hosting four hives, all very healthy. Last week's harvest yielded 60 pounds of honey, with a light, floral-herbal taste and an early-spring hint of eucalyptus. "This honey was harvested last week, extracted a couple of days ago and bottled this morning," said Helene.

Marshall's Farm Fairmont Hotel honey

With a lot of fresh honey at his disposal, Foster and his kitchen staff are experimenting to see what they can use it for. Their latest creation is an unctuous duck-egg aioli with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and a touch of honey, used to dress chopped raw beef tartare with stovetop-smoked onions and cress salad on walnut crostini.

Ice cream, beef tartare...finally, the last chef, Brandon Jew of Bar Agricole, promised something hot, a hot toddy made with brandy, chartreuse, honey from Alan Hawkins' apiaries, bitters, and lemon peel. He made some mostarda, too, his spin on Bologna's favorite tart-sweet relish, a late-winter version made from brandied, spiced raisins mixed with a honey-based Seville orange marmalade, and served over a slice of pork pate. A few sips, and hey, was that a ray of sunshine coming down?

I can still remember the moment I truly arrived in California. It was August of 1990, and I was fresh out of college and ready to start a life here. I'd never been further west than Minneapolis, never seen fresh lemons dangling over the sidewalk or palm trees flanking a city block. I sat down a stool at It's Tops Coffee Shop and looked up at the board of daily specials. Avocado omelet! Avocado & Jack cheese burger! BLT with avocado!

Avocados, at a diner! I marveled. Where I came from, diners counted parsley as a vegetable. Fruit was cherry Jell-O, piled in cubes and topped with a squirt of cream from a can. The golden West, I thought. I'm really here!

As you might expect, there are plenty of avocado recipes (22, in fact, including Coconut-Avocado Ice Cream and Sake-Soy Guacomole) in The Sunset Cookbook, a five-pound, 800-page compilation of the best of Sunset. Margo True, the magazine's food editor since 2006, stopped by Omnivore Books last week to talk about the history of Sunset and the creation of the book.

Turns out my 21-year-old self was hardly the first to be stunned by the glories of California living. Lured by the promise of everything from gold and orange groves to movie stardom and high-tech promise, newcomers have been flooding westward for decades on end--and since 1898, Sunset magazine has been there to tell them how to live. According to True, it began as a promotional pamphlet for Southern Pacific's luxurious Sunset Limited rail line, which curved like a smile from New Orleans through Texas and Arizona and up to Los Angeles and San Francisco. (Under the same name, the route remains as part of Amtrak's Western service.)

As one of the largest landowners in the West, Southern Pacific wanted to promote not just Western travel but Western living, hoping to entice restless Midwesterners and Easterners into buying property and putting down new roots. That first issue, a 16-page pamphlet touting the glories of Yosemite and the charms of Los Angeles, is still on file in Sunset's archives.

The magazine later developed into a more serious, stand-alone publication, focusing on economics, politics, and fiction and featuring the writing of Sinclair Lewis, Dashiell Hammett, Jack London, even Herbert Hoover. Bought by an Iowan insurance salesman just before the Depression, it dropped the highbrow essays in favor of gardening, food, travel, and home tips, a format that continues today.

The magazine really found its niche during WWII's victory-gardening movement. The federal government had plenty of gardening advice to share with homeowners, but little of it applied to the unique climates and landscapes west of the Continental Divide. So brothers Bill and Mel Lane, sons of the magazine's original owner, started their own Western test garden on a one-acre plot near U.C. Berkeley, sharing their findings with the magazine's growing readership. (Their experiences would lead to the development of Sunset's Western Garden Book, now the must-have reference for anyone with a garden from Seattle to Tuscon.)

By the early fifties, the brothers had a mission to turn the Sunset offices into a laboratory for Western living, a place where everything from party recipes to garden design could be tested and experienced. To that end, they moved the business from downtown San Francisco to a seven-acre spread in Menlo Park, where it remains today. Architect Clifford May, dubbed "the father of the ranch house," built a sprawling, single-level structure that looked more like an inn than an office.

True, who had been working as an editor at Saveur magazine in New York City, still remembers how stunned she was upon arrival for her first interview. Where the Saveur offices were located on a particularly gritty urban block, Sunset's building had floor-to-ceiling windows and glass doors that slid open onto courtyards filled with benches and tables and shaded with pergolas twined with flowering vines. Cool terra-cotta tiles flowed seamlessly from indoors to out. A series of test gardens were arranged to mimic the distinct natural landscapes of the West; the desert cacti of the Southwest, the redwoods of the Central California coast, the cloud forests of the Pacific Northwest. (When she related all this to a colleague back in New York, her friend replied dryly, "Sure makes you miss the methadone clinic on the first floor, doesn't it?")

By the late 60s and early 70s, when the glamor of the sun-and-surf California lifestyle was at its peak, Sunset "was like Vogue," said True. "Each issue was 300, 350 pages. It was huge!"

And food, of course, was a big part of both Western living and the magazine itself. Cooking and entertaining meant different flavors, done with a different sort of flair than elsewhere in the country. There was the emphasis on year-round, casual outdoor dining, the everyday influence of Mexican and Asian cuisines. Artichokes, abalone, avocados, dates and citrus fresh from the tree, chile peppers, Alaskan salmon, Dungeness crab--all kinds of things counted as exotic elsewhere in the country were common here.

And Sunset garnered a lot of firsts, promoting woks and Chinese cooking in the early 50s, guacamole in the 60s, farmers' markets in the 70s, even publishing the first American recipe for pesto in 1946. The magazine built an outdoor adobe oven (and published a wildly popular how-to), set up beehives and chicken coops, even pit-roasted an entire pig on the company volleyball court (much to the distress of the local fire department).

In planning the cookbook, True and her staff knew they had to create a big, general-interest book that would nonetheless be uniquely Western. The introduction features "24 Iconic Western Dishes" that are "inextricably embedded in Western cooking and eating," from date shakes and mai tais to cioppino, pho, crab Louis, barbecued oysters, plank-roasted salmon, tamales, fish tacos, Caesar salad, and California-style pizza. There are instructions for shucking oysters and making dim sum, sushi, and Vietnamese spring rolls at home; guides to craft beers and Asian greens; and short histories of the places and people behind the kitchen staples we take for granted, from the artichoke growers of Castroville and the oyster farmers of Tomales Bay to the pepper growers of New Mexico and the discoverers of the navel orange, Meyer lemon, Hass avocado, and more.

Naturally, there's an extensive section on the wines of California, Oregon, and Washington (with brief mentions of the wine-growing regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and British Columbia), along with detailed recipe-pairing suggestions.

For Bay Area readers, it's particularly fun to see our local heroes called out. Delfina's Carbonara Pizza and Pizzetta 211's Margherita Pizza both make an appearance, as do Elizabeth Falkner's Chocolate Chiffon Cupcakes, Bay Wolf's Pinot-braised Duck with Spicy Greens, Bradley Ogden's Soft Overnight Herb Rolls, and the Steamed Halibut on Soft Tofu with Black Bean Sauce from Heaven's Dog.

Just like the original Sunset Limited pamphlet, The Sunset Cookbook is an irresistible come-on for the joys of living out here in the land of salads, grilling, and avocado fries (really--see page 275). Want to move all your favorite people out West? Put this book on their holiday list. They'll be here.

Farmer John's Favorite Pumpkin Bread
A lovely nibble for Thanksgiving breakfast, courtesy of Farmer John's Pumpkin Farm in Half Moon Bay. Adapted from The Sunset Cookbook.

Makes: 2 loaves

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans
1/2 cup raisins
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp nutmeg
3/4 tsp ground cloves
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground ginger
3 eggs
1 3/4 cups canned pumpkin or mashed roasted pumpkin or winter squash
3/4 cup vegetable oil

Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease 2 8 1/2-inch by 4 1/2-inch loaf pans. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugars, nuts, raisins, baking soda, spices, and salt.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, pumpkin, and oil until well blended.

3. Add wet ingredients to dry and stir just until well blended. Divide between 2 pans.

4. Bake until bread pulls away from pan sides and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 50 to 60 minutes. Let bread cool in pans on a rack fro about 15 minutes. Loosen bread from the pans with a knife and invert onto rack. Cool thoroughly before slicing.

Sunset magazine has long been the go-to source for "how to live in the West" especially when it comes to travel, gardening, home improvement and of course, food and wine. Since the centennial of the magazine in 1998, Sunset has been hosting an annual open house called the Sunset Celebration Weekend. The weekend takes place in June, and there is a schedule of chef demonstrations, garden and outdoor living events and live entertainment. The entrance fee is $15 and that gets you admission to all of the presentations although you'll need to sign up for the wine tasting events separately and they fill up quickly.

Many vendors offer tastes and nibbles, but for a meal, you'll have to pay. I was a bit disappointed that the food available was the typical street fair variety such as corn dogs, gyros and overpriced tostada salads. Not very inspiring! The exhibitors and vendors range from Hawaiian Airlines and speciality nurseries to the ShamWow! and everything in between.

Highlights of the experience include meandering through the gardens, including the team garden for the Our One-Block Diet, a tour of the test kitchen and the outdoor kitchen.

Test kitchen has a long counter where finished dishes are evaluated. Once the editorial and test kitchen team is finished with the dish, a green flag indicates the staff can eat it. A red flag means the dish is not yet finished, and a pirate flag means, the dish did not pass muster, eat at your own risk! In the tote bag you receive at the entrance are some coupons, a schedule and a great booklet with recipes from all the chefs so even if you only come one day, you'll have recipes from the whole weekend.

My favorite presentations were by chefs Burak Epir of the Pilita Mediterranean Turkish Grill in San Carlos and Cindy Pawlcyn of Mustard's Grill. Epir showed off his kebab technique with a huge knife, and shared tips such as using a small sieve to filter stems and seeds from dried herbs. He used my favorite pepper, maras, in his recipe for Kilis kebab which also included lots of fresh parsley, the most commonly used fresh herb in Turkey.

Cindy Pawlcyn emphasized the importance of using the ripest produce, explaining it is better to substitute an ingredient than to use something that is not deliciously ripe. She also showed a technique of smashing hazelnuts with the side of a chef knife rather than chopping them to create a better and more uniform texture. Great tips, no matter what recipe you try.

Kilis kebab
10 tomatoes
2 poblano peppers
1 medium white onion, preferably sweet
1 bunch Italian parsley, chopped
1 Tablespoon salt
1/2 Tablespoon fresh ground pepper
1 Tablespoon Maras red pepper, also called Marash pepper
1/2 medium white onion, grated
2 pounds ground lamb, shoulder cut

On a charcoal grill cook the tomatoes and pepper until well charred, remove the skins and finely dice.

Also finely dice the onion and mix it with the chopped parsley. Add to the charred tomato and peppers and set aside. Cover and keep warm.

Prepare the kebab by adding salt, pepper, Maras red pepper and the grated onions to the ground lamb. Mix well. Make the meatballs and place on a skewer. Grill indirectly over the heat, until nice and juicy. Place the charred tomato and peppers on a plate and set the meat kebabs over it.

Recipe reprinted courtesy of Sunset and chef Burak Epir