Eureka’s popular Friday Night Markets kicks off for the season this Friday, June 30, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Old Town (free admission). The bustling nighttime farmers market runs every Friday, from June 30 through Oct. 27, filling the streets of Old Town with rows and rows of vendors, crafters, food trucks, a bar […]
Farmers’ Market
Posted inEat + Drink
Resolutions for a Better Food Life
We talk about our work lives, our family lives, our social and sex lives, so why not a food life? The nourishment, enjoyment, creativity and connection food allows crosses into those other realms and goes well beyond the headings of eating habits and diet. I’m hardly immune to the influence diet industry’s January cash grab, […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Spread the Beans
We made it to April and to the 2021 edition of the Arcata Plaza Farmers Market’s main season, which started the first Saturday of this month. This is always a festive event for me, and this year was no different. While summer produce is not exactly around the corner, I can start dreaming of strawberries, […]
Posted inNews
Farmers and Customers Adjusting to COVID-19 Safety Guidelines
The produce season is hitting some early hurdles due to COVID-19. With the Arcata, Garberville, Shelter Cove and Miranda farmers’ markets now open for business, and several others (Henderson Center, Fortuna) due to open in June, farmers and organizers are struggling with adhering to new protocols while keeping safe and trying to make a profit. […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Add Melon
Great news: Melon season is in full swing. The list of melon varieties I encountered during recent visits to the Arcata farmers market and the North Coast Co-op is 16 names long, some lovely, like Swan Lake or Snow Leopard, others intriguing, like Toad Skin. We are fortunate a number of farmers grow melons in […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Give Me My Flowers So I Can Eat Them
Ripe tomatoes, aromatic herbs, and sweet melons. Every late summer, most of us can expect to find our favorites at the farmers’ market. But some of the season’s treasures are still lesser known: squash blossoms and amaranth greens. If you love Italian cuisine or are a fan of “trendy” foods, then no doubt you’ve heard […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Meet Kohlrabi
It is hard to pass by a basket of kohlrabi without stopping. Pale green or purple, this vegetable naturally attracts your gaze with its bulbous enlarged stem. The name kohlrabi comes, via German, from the Italian cavolo rapa and literally means turnip cabbage. It is not a turnip, though, but a cultivar of Brassica oleracea, […]
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Elegant Macerated Strawberries
My relationship with strawberries is complex. My only opportunity to buy groceries is in the dead of night, having finally left a 12-hour shift working on a TV show production set or photoshoot. Safeway or 7-Eleven are my only options, and when I have strawberry cravings, the quality from those stores is lackluster. I miss […]
Posted inEat + Drink
Things of Rare Beauty
Let’s talk about eggplants,” I suggested to Spencer Hill at his Arcata farmers market stall on the eastern side of the plaza. We were talking over baskets filled with a number of eggplant varieties he and his son Jules grow at Small Fruits, their farm in Hoopa. Spencer’s face lit up and he started detailing […]
Posted inNews
Tensions Escalate During Saturday Protest in Arcata
Arcata has been quiet today after protesters’ chants echoed through the city’s streets for two consecutive days, demanding justice for slain Humboldt State University sophomore David Josiah Lawson. More than 100 people descended on the Arcata Plaza yesterday, where they chanted and waved signs before moving on to the Union Town Shopping Center. At the […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Poem Store Goes Hollywood
Frequenters of the Arcata Farmers’ Market may have noticed something missing this year: No, the strawberries, quail eggs and mushrooms are still in abundance — but versification while you wait has gone onto that ethereal plain. Well, not quite. Jacqueline Suskin, the oft-bespectacled proprietor of the Poem Store, took her lap-sized typewriter and lyrical mind […]