On the Table

Sure, the season’s past its peak. You’ve already satisfied that exquisite anticipation that begins to grow after Thanksgiving of savoring the first tasty morsel of succulent crab meat, but there’s more to come according to local fisherman Jeff Angelo. And lucky for us, living in Humboldt County we are in the mother lode, the middle […]

In the late fall of 1967, the brilliant science writer John McPhee challenged Euell Gibbons (author of Stalking The Wild Asparagus) to a foraging trek along the Appalachian Trail. They would eat only wild food at first. After a week, they planned to gradually add elements of civilization: salt, sugar, coffee, cooking oil. Gibbons was […]

God, this is a good dish. I know I should lead in with a catchy hook about its antioxidant flavinoids, or its localvore superiority, or its ability to increase your prowess in between the sheets. Yeah, I’m getting to that. But really, this dish is just awesomely delicious. It originates back in my poverty-stricken days […]

I grew up not eating winter squashes, not because I did not like them, but because nobody ever put a dish with zucca (winter squash or pumpkin) of any kind on my plate. When, as an adult, I realized what I had been missing, I resolved to devote the rest of my life to making […]

When I started working on the Journal‘s calendar about 10 years ago, I was given a rule: We don’t list pancake breakfasts — and no spaghetti feeds. The thought was that there were just too many of them. I eventually changed the policy. It turned out that there weren’t all that many pancakes being flipped, […]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The greed of the American pork industry has messed with the modern day pig to the point that almost all available pork is now so lean it has lost the ability to be tender. It isn’t hard to trace the switch to lean pork in the […]

Waaayyyy back in the day, when God was a boy, I made whole wheat bread from the venerable Tassajara Bread Book. This was a welcome change from the San Francisco sourdough French that was most people’s idea of good bread in olden days. Making bread appealed to an idler like me, with its long stretches […]

Nebbiolo. Oh, I’m beginning to get it — how humankind, for centuries, has been moved to wax poetic about certain wines. Why Jesus turned water into wine. Why, for thousands of years, Jews have ushered in the Sabbath each week by praising the Creator for the fruit of the vine. Nebbiolo. Moonstone Crossing Nebbiolo. Nectar […]

It happens every year about this time, in magazines and newspapers, online: an outpouring of effervescent enthusiasm for holiday sparkling wine bargains. "The best of West Coast bubbly has rarely been better," trumpets San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. The online wine merchant www.novusvinum.com features the "Top 20 American Sparkling Wines," from a modest $19 for Francis […]

’Tis the season of hearty eating, and people keep coming over for dinner in ravenous droves. These are the kind of nights you want to sit around a table and schmooze and be warm. Meals have been complicated at Rancho Brotman this season by the variety of dietary needs of our neurotic friends; it can […]

I love this time of year. I love to cook and to eat. I love to hang out with friends and family and play and cook and eat. I love that everyone makes time for each other. I love to heat up the oil and sizzle those latkes and eat them. I love pouring the […]

Eating is our most fundamental link to the natural world, and by looking to local sources we become attuned to the abundance and the limits of the soil under our feet and the climate we dwell in. – Eddie Tanner (quoted in Locally Delicious) I grew up in a city in Italy, living in an […]