School-lunch reform has become one of the rallying cries of the good food movement. It is also a subject of great interest to me personally. Food Forward plans to devote an entire episode to the subject. It is a pretty easy cause to get behind, right? I mean, who can argue against feeding kids healthy, fresh food?
Articles by Stett Holbrook
In his previous career, commercial pilot Costas Eleftheriadis taught students how to fly at the Hayward airport. But earning a living in the cockpit can often be difficult so he recently became a student himself—of pizza. The results can be sampled at Napoletana Pizzeria in Mountain View where Eleftheriadis is now a certified Pizzaiolo or pizza chef.
After two months visiting farms, ranches, restaurants and schools across California the Food Forward road trip is shifting gears. I’m parking the Airstream and letting my family out while my partner Greg Roden and I and the rest of the Food Forward team refocus our efforts on getting the pilot show aired. We still plan to visit several cities later this year to screen our pilot episode on urban agriculture.
Raw milk is often seen as hippie food, but when it comes to food, hippies were right about a lot of things (organics, granola, compost). And as more people discover the facts about where their milk really comes from, raw milk will look better and better. After meeting Mark McAfee at his Organic Pastures dairy in Fresno, I’m a bigger believer than ever in the value of raw milk.
After an extensive remodel, Los Gatos’ Palacio restaurant is set to open June 24. The modern Mexican/Latin restaurant, located in downtown’s historic Coggeshall mansion at 115 N. Santa Cruz Ave., replaces the late Trevese. Dean Devincenzi, who owns Double D’s and Forbes Mill with his brother Darin Devincenzi, is opening the business with Ron Garald who is also an owner of Forbes Mill.
Our trip to California Cloverleaf Farms, just outside of Turlock, felt like our first journey into the heart of big ag country. Make no mistake, Cloverleaf is a big farm, and in the Bay Area, there’s a notion that only small farms can do right by the land and animals. But the Burroughs’ diversified farm will disabuse you of that idea right away.
The good-food movement isn’t just about good food. It’s about good people, and I’ve been privileged to meet some of them. People like David Hill, owner of Chef’s Table restaurant in Rocklin, an oasis of creative and delicious farm-to-table food in a sea of chain-restaurant homogeneity. David went out of his way to help us during our short stay there.
Watching Decater glide the plow over the field, it would be easy to write off his animal-and-solar-powered farm as archaic, silly even. But is it? Decater does use a few tractors to bale hay and perform a few other tasks, but most work is performed by animals, i.e., live power. Long ago, Decater decided to opt out of the market economy and run Live Power as a community-supported farm.
Sous vide cooking, once the plaything of avant-garde chefs, is now available for the home cook, but will the technology become as indispensable as the microwave or will the newfangled device go the way of the Salad Shooter? Only time will tell. One thing’s for sure, the sous vide turns out an incredible 11-hour egg.
I have been on the road for more than two weeks and am less than three hours from home, but there is so much happening in the greater Bay Area’s food scene it makes it hard to leave. You’ve heard of a food desert? Well, the Bay Area is a food oasis. I will be heading out of California next month, but for now there’s plenty to see here.
