Food history is an interesting beat. Not just the big boys, like salt, coffee or chocolate, or the evolution of cooking technology, but even something as humble as what’s been and gone in our little city of El Cerrito — which I sink my teeth into regularly. Departed grocery stores, perished restaurants, expired social clubs — they’re all on my radar, and I’ve attached images of artifacts related to them here. Most are courtesy of the El Cerrito Historical Society, whose board members graciously allowed me to be underfoot in the Shadi Historical Room as they worked. The text below provides a …

I wanted to find out about bees and chickens — he wanted to eat. “Mom," my son pleaded as we neared Jack London Square for the third annual Eat Real Festival, "the lines are gonna get insane, so let’s at least hit up a few food trucks right away. Plus, that urban homesteading stuff isn’t really my thing.”  This significant celebration of good eating took place the weekend of September 23-25. A kind of antidote to industrial food, the Oakland event and, for the first time this year, its sister festival in Los Angeles are a product of social venture business Eat Real. “Eat Real’s mission,” …

I wait all year for heirloom tomato season. When they’re plentiful and the markets are abundant with multiple varieties at good prices, I’m cranking out tomato sandwiches. If allergies have me buying calamine lotion by mid-September, so be it; I can’t resist the charm of a really good tomato. As a kid in the ‘60s and ‘70s, my parents and I used to stop at roadside stands in New Jersey and buy baskets of big “Jersey” beefsteak-types. When the summers were good and hot, they’d be deep red and bursting with flavor. My father would make tomato sandwiches on toast with a little Hellmann’s mayo and…

I’ve been sleeping on the job. Here it is the height of summer, the El Cerrito Plaza Farmer’s Market has been bursting at the seams with peaches for weeks, and I haven’t turned out a single jar of jam. No more. A batch of peaches now sits in the perfect fruit ripening corner of my kitchen ready to be transformed into a good dozen jars of golden deliciousness that’ll be as welcome as a summer sun come the rainy season. Jam making is one of those rare activities in life where you get way more out than you put in. While even heat-processed jam is not difficult or time-consuming to crank out, …

When my German cousins came to visit us in El Cerrito earlier this month they said they wanted to experience “real America,” including the food, which I was in charge of. “Real America” is multicultural, so I laid down the plan accordingly, curating a small but mighty collection of recipes and constructing a restaurant itinerary. We’d have Caribbean at Primo Patio Cafe in The City, fiery Indian snacks at Vik’s Chaat Corner in Berkeley, and home-style Thai at Krung Thep in El Cerrito. I penciled in visits to Las Grullensas Taco Truck in Richmond and Banh Mi Ba Le for take-out Vietnamese …

A final loop around the El Cerrito Plaza Farmer’s Market on a recent Tuesday morning had me running into a small mountain of perfectly ripe, dark green pickling cucumbers — which I snapped up. Pickling cucumbers are squat with thin skin and lots of bumps, or “burps.” I’ve made all kinds of pickles over the years, but particularly enjoy crafting two varieties: the naturally fermented, sour, salty, zesty and often garlicky Kosher-style dills of my New York City childhood, and tart, sweet, savory, onion-laced refrigerator bread & butter pickles. The former is a bit maverick and taps into food …

Father’s Day is coming, so I’m in mind of one of my father’s favorite foods: spiedies. Spiedies are like kabobs, though that comparison sometimes irks residents in their native habitat — Binghamton and environs, in New York state’s Southern Tier. My father landed there after the rest of us, including the dog, moved back to New York City en masse after my parents separated in 1981. Over the years we’d visit Dad, who’d take us to Sharkey’s, Lupo’s Char Pit or Lupo’s S&S Char Pit — three popular spiedie haunts in an area where spiedies are like a religion. Cubes of boneless meat are marinated in…

There’s a familiar game culinary students play that involves naming a last meal before execution. Guidelines are often augmented to draw the game out — along the lines of house rules in Monopoly — allowing players to name multiple courses, a soft beverage and a wine flight rather than just a single dish. Meals are always described in painstaking detail. It was in that spirit that several food blogger friends and I recently got on the subject of snacks. A larger convo about packed schedules and the need to grab food on the run — often eating in a parked car — was the catalyst. Each of us …

Once we’re at the threshold of warm and sunny days, my family starts clamoring for the crisp and cool do-it-yourself sushi-type wraps I first rolled out to them in 2003—the year I started cooking school and left behind a career that supported numerous sushi binges at Kirala and Ebisu. If we were to continue to experience the luxury of sashimi-grade fish, I’d need to find ways to work it into recipes—hence the wraps. A pan-Asian wrap buffet allows diners to construct not only temaki—hand rolls—but lettuce wraps and rice paper rolls using typical sushi meal components, like rice, sliced fish, …

The coming week will greet the arrival of Passover, which starts at sunset on April 18 and lasts through the evening of April 26, and Easter, on April 24. Since my husband, Steven, is Jewish and I’m Christian, we celebrate both—with varying degrees of religious ritual and plenty of food. I’m somewhere between Lutheranism and spirituality, and Steven's all about connection to and kinship with Jewish culture and community, but we share our holidays—and not half-heartedly. Passover always involves food, and in our house it’s particularly important because it’s a way I can help bridge, in some …

During the most recent bout of heavy rain in the Bay Area, my son and I were contemplating congee while warming up and drying out over a bowl of it at Mac’s Wok. “Some of my friends haven’t had it yet, which I totally don’t get,” said Matthew, “since it’s kind of all over the place now and really good.” Congee is porridge made by cooking a small volume of rice in a large volume of water or broth until it softens and breaks down. Eaten all over Asia—with each country or region giving it a unique twist depending upon the type of rice used, water-to-rice ratio, cooking time and seasonings—congee…

Dropping by the Open House Senior Center in El Cerrito recently, I saw a sign for their monthly potluck and movie night. Although I won’t be a senior by the center’s definition—50—until later in the year, Ellen Paasch, adult programs supervisor, said I was welcome to take part. I’m a sucker for potlucks, which I attribute to the five years I lived in Northeastern Pennsylvania farm country, where community eating was, and still is, a way of life. After printing my name next to “entrée” on the sign-up sheet, I saw there were some movie recommendations jotted down, namely Meet the Fockers, Bread…

Given a near-obsession with industrial archaeology, there’s almost no end to my interest in TEPCO, or Technical Porcelain and China Ware Company, a major West Coast producer of decorative, durable hotel and restaurant ware that called El Cerrito home from about 1930 until its closure in 1968. TEPCO supplied not only the hospitality industry, but had contracts with the U.S. government to produce ware for the Navy, Army and Veterans Administration, and was, for years, El Cerrito’s largest employer. Potter John Pagliero, who immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1905, founded TEPCO in …

I love to have breakfast out, and if I can perch myself on a stool at a counter in a workaday place with a newspaper and engage in a little repartee, so much the better. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Queens, New York, where going to a diner or luncheonette for the weekday breakfast special as a “regular” was part of my culture. Maybe it’s because I spent so much time at u-shaped counters in the Flushing Horn & Hardart restaurant as a child in the '60s, being offered egg sandwiches and cup custards by the servers, as my mother and grandmother worked elsewhere in the restaurant. Even as a …

When you have extended family living in the same house you try to mind your own business, but it’s hard not to notice what others bring in the door—especially when it’s food. Shortly after we moved to El Cerrito in 2007, my mother, a senior, started coming home from her Monday morning activities with a loaf of artisan bread under her arm. I asked, “What’s the deal with the bread?” and was told the Open House Senior Center in El Cerrito distributes bread donated by local bakeries and shops to seniors free of charge every Monday. Over the next few years I watched as sour batards, olive and …

One question I’m asked even more often than “How do restaurants get their pan sauces to taste so good?” is “Where do you buy your kitchenware?” The pan sauces are easy — reduced stock, often veal — but the shopping involves numerous venues from Gilroy to cyberspace, though I’m happily able to carry out quite a bit of bargain kitchen paraphernalia shopping close to my El Cerrito home. I rely heavily on close-out stores that deal in first-quality overstocks and overruns. Cram-packed with brand name pots, pans, bakeware, servingware, gadgets, utensils and, depending upon the chain, small …

I made my way through a chilly Saturday morning fog to meet Caroline and Renee Thomas Jacobs, owners of Renee Gourmet, an El Cerrito company that produces and delivers frozen, family-friendly comfort food. Since I was heading to their production kitchen in Richmond near the harbor, I figured I’d soon be warmed up by a rack of hot lasagna. When I arrived, Renee, the force behind the food, was busy at the stove. “I hope you didn’t have trouble finding us,” she said, extending a friendly greeting and quickly adding that there would be a pizza tasting. As we chatted, Caroline, a former tech …

Having recently been turned on to the El Cerrito Garden Club’s new cookbook, I spent some time last week with Marion Kent and Barbara Post, two long-time members who are also part of the club’s Herb Study Group — the force behind the book — to find out more about it. First, I needed to understand the connection between the Herb Study Group and the cookbook. “Food” Kent and Post said in unison, with Post adding, “It’s the food group.” Formed in 1983 and currently chaired by Post, the Herb Study Group engages in quite a bit of culinary activity. For example, a preserved lemon demo will take …

Don’t ask me why El Cerrito has such good bánh mì — it’s serendipity, I guess. There’s veteran Bánh Mì Ba Le, a take-out joint specializing in Vietnamese sandwiches, and newcomer Heng Heng Pho, a Cambodian/Chinese/Vietnamese spot with a handful of tables and long menu that includes them. Bánh mì, AKA Vietnamese sandwiches, have been getting quite a bit of press recently and are becoming more broadly popular — and available. They’re inexpensive and lighter than traditional American sandwiches. Like many other hybrids, its ingredient breakdown reveals an unhappy origin, namely French …

It’s a bummer when a restaurant you really like closes, and even worse when it’s unique. So it was for us when Jac’s Asian Bistro shut its doors a couple months back. This inexpensive, authentic little Hong Kong-style restaurant lived in the Peppermint Plaza strip mall and, although there were plans to reopen in another location, one never knows.  “Where on earth am I going to find oyster egg foo young at short notice?” I lamented to my husband and son. “What about those curried chicken wings with the potato cubes?” Given their insane menu, and I’m referring to both length and fare, Jac’s was…