You are at the grocery store and a bottle with a brightly colored label catches your attention: You read the word “kefir” on it and wonder what it is. Sensing your curiosity, the bottle answers: “My name is kefir: I am a type of fermented milk. I have a creamy consistency, a slightly sour taste […]
Simona Carini
Posted inEat + Drink
The Strange Case of Gluten
Gluten, a protein composite present in wheat and other grains, appears to be a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a friend to bread bakers and a foe to people with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. Let’s take a closer look at this “strange case.” First gluten as Dr. Jekyll: The long molecules of […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Kayaking
Kayaking is just as much about soundscape as it is about landscape. There is the rhythmic splashing of the paddle, of course, soothing and calming your mind. Then other sounds: waves, birds landing on the water or taking off en masse, fish jumping, boats passing by. The sounds travel and diffuse differently depending on […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Kayaking Resources
Explore North Coast [http://explorenorthcoast.net/ ] is an association of paddlers that holds regular paddling events, detailed on its calendar, and promotes paddling safety and education. Humboats Kayak Adventures [ http://humboats.com/index.php ] offers kayak instruction, guided tours and kayak rentals from its waterfront location at Dock A, Woodley Island Marina, Eureka. Open daily 8 a.m. to […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Thank God, it’s the Fourth Friday!
TGIF. I’m particularly thankful this Friday since it happens to be the fourth one of the month. That’s because of Fourth Friday Flicks, the monthly movie event at the Westhaven Center for the Arts (WCA). John Webb organizes the series, which runs for most of the year. (It took a break in November and December, […]
Posted inEat + Drink
The Market Season Ends
We are fast approaching Thanksgiving, and the Saturday before, Nov. 19, is the last Farmers’ Market of 2011 on the Arcata Plaza. That’s the day when I say arrivederci many times, when the wish to be particularly attentive and thankful competes with the need to focus on the final alfresco shopping of the year. It […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Tomatoes as Comfort Food
Being Italian, I should be eager to preserve tomatoes. My mother did it every summer in her kitchen. If my memory serves me well, she would get 175 pounds of San Marzano tomatoes and turn them into countless bottles and jars. As long as I lived with my parents, I played a role in my […]
Posted inArts + Scene
The Book as Art
Look around you, wherever you are now, and chances are, you will see some books, or maybe only one book — that’s enough. What is a book? In his The Manifesto of a Book Artist, Peter Thomas answers thus: “It is everything, the physical materials, the structure and the ideas it contains.” When we say […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Eat It Green
A few Saturdays ago, as my husband and I were roaming the Arcata Farmers’ Market, we met a neighbor. She asked whether I was buying zucchini from the stall in front of us. I had in fact written in a recent Table Talk (“Zucchini Season,” July 7) that I buy zucchini by default every time […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Zucchini Season
Seeing freshly picked zucchini at the Farmers’ Market gets me into a celebratory mood. I admit that I get excited about many kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables, each one for a different reason. With zucchini, it is a desire to make amends. I did not get along with zucchini during the first part of […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Charmed by Chard
As the season progresses, a wider variety of fresh fruit and vegetables becomes available at the Arcata Farmers’ Market. But from the very first day, Swiss chard could be purchased from several farmers. If you managed to walk all around the Plaza last Saturday and go home without any chard in your basket, you’ll have […]
Posted inEat + Drink
The Journey of Chocolate
The dark brown, pleasantly bitter, chemically complex substance we know of as chocolate bears little resemblance to the pulp-surrounded seeds of the cocoa plant from which it is produced. One would never suspect that one could be derived from the other. — Sophie and Michael Coe, The True History of Chocolate In a space inside […]