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Dinner by Candlelight: Making Your Own Beeswax Candles is Fun & Easy
By Heidi Lewis We were in the mood for mellow. There is nothing like a home-cooked meal on a table set with care and illuminated by candles. So at the latest little social gathering, I broke out the...
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Moroccan Hospitality: Couscous is Comfort Food
By Rebecca Taggart I first visited Morocco on a shoestring budget in the fall of 1984. The country was stunning, as was the national dish Couscous. I quickly fell in love with the city of Fez for its...
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Roll Your Own: How to Make Vegetarian Sushi
By Karla Milosevich Whether it’s a birthday, a Japanese-themed New Year’s Day party, or just for a lunch or dinner party, I like to celebrate with sushi. It’s fun to make hand rolls with friends and to...
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Summer Salad: Fresh Berries and Thyme Make a Roman Favorite
By Pia Hinckle Once upon a time, B.C. (Before Children), I lived in Rome, in the early nineties. Besides fresh pizza bianca from the Fornaio at Campo de’ Fiori, one of my favorite food memories is a...
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Simple Steamed Broccoli
So good even kids like it! By Pia Hinckle Mother always said to eat your broccoli, one of the most nutrient-packed veggies in the list of Food That is Good For You. But I have heard many sad stories...
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Cooking is Child’s Play
By Roxanne Crittenden, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop About twice a year my 8-year old cousin Arlo comes for a “stay-over” at my house. In lots of ways, Arlo is typical young boy—he has been...
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Pickling Summer
By Heidi Lewis Capturing fireflies in a jar, recalling the smell of sweet peas or the sensation of jumping off a rope swing into a cold river. When it comes to summer, we seem to want to bottle the...
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Pino’s Pasta
By Pia Hinckle My Calabrian friend Pino made this dish during a visit to California in 1999. This is a traditional southern Italian pasta made with fresh tomatoes, olives, capers, and basil. Now I make...
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Now and Latah Tomatahs
Fresh or frozen, tomatoes make great sauce! By Gretchen Bay During last year’s tomato season, we had a surplus of organic Early Girl tomatoes in The FruitGuys office from a local farmer, and I was...
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Coco Ranch Apple Storage Tips
Coco Ranch in Davis, CA grows beautiful organic apples. More about Coco Ranch here. Here are their tips on apple storage: High-tech home storage: Empty crisper bin in your refrigerator. Fill with...
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Sonoma County Grape Harvest is Family Tradition
The Crush By Pia Hinckle COTATI, CA — My mother’s family has been making wine since before she was born. My great-grandfather Giocondo Benedetti, who we called “nonno,” brought winemaking from...
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Egyptian Hospitality Made Soup Special
Lentil Love By Rebecca Taggart Egypt’s revolution and the ouster of President Mubarak has kept it in the news this year while Egypt the tourist attraction, the home of Tutankhamun and the pyramids, has...
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Apple Turkeys
Thanksgiving Crafts you Can Eat By Pia Hinckle Thanksgiving when I was a kid was always a massive affair. My mother would roast a monstrous turkey that barely fit in the oven; friends and family would...
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Orange Soup Warms Heart
Butternut Squash is Comfort Food By Pia Hinckle When the weather turns damp and chilly, a heart-warming butternut squash soup is one of my favorites. This is one of those soups that will turn people...
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Taking Canning to the Next Level
Using Pectin is Key to Jams and Jellies By Erin Mittelstaedt Canning helps us make new family traditions and memories. This year it was a kitchen covered in splashes of red pomegranate juice; mashing...
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When Good Food Goes Bad
By Roxanne Crittenden, courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Even in the care of the most conscientious cooks, produce occasionally goes bad. That said, there are a few things that will help limit the...
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My Garden 2.0: Time is Right for Spring Cleaning and Planting
By Rebecca North It finally rained in the Bay Area and I’m ready to attack the garden with full force. This little plot of backyard was a dustbowl when I moved into the house last June. Over a month...
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Lunch is the Gateway
9 Lunch Ideas to Improve your Diet By Rebecca Taggart Breakfast is touted as being the most important meal of the day, but lunch—be it a homemade sandwich or a restaurant meal—gives us the energy for...
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The Crunchy Craft
Making your own granola is fast and easy By Pia Hinckle I’ve been on a breakfast granola kick for the last year or so. Every morning I have a handful of granola mixed with nonfat Greek yogurt and a...
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Our Top 5 Kitchen Gadgets
Kitchen tools we can’t do without By Gretchen Bay When it comes to cooking, whether you’re a daily devotee, a weekend warrior, or a part-time putterer, good kitchen tools can and will make your life...
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Summer Drinks
Fresh herbs and fruit dress up summer beverages By Nicole Claro-Quinn What do you imagine when you think of summer drinks? For a certain generation it might be Hi-C and the “bug juice” you drank at...
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Tomatopalooza
A Canning Primer By Pia Hinckle Harvest time always brings an embarrassment of riches to your table. What to do with 25 pounds of zucchini? Tomatoes finally came in last week? Can’t eat another pear...
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Stay Sharp
Left to right: paring knife, serrated knife, chef’s knife. Which Knives do you Really Need? By Tanya Milosevich I love shopping for kitchen stuff but the truth is you don’t need much to have a...
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How to Can Perfect Pears
Nonagenarian Marie Seppa Cans it Like it is By Pia Hinckle SANTA ROSA, CA– Marie Seppa knows her way around a canner. A spry 92-year-old with bright blue eyes, Marie has been canning since she was a...
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The Big Soup: Minestrone
Hearty Minestrone Soup Has Many Forms By Pia Hinckle In Italy there are as many ways to make minestrone (literally “big soup”) as there are ways to make pasta. Each region has a variation, and each...
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Winter Solstice Feast
Roast Goose is European Holiday Classic By Rebecca Taggart December brings many celebrations including Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the Dongzhi Festival (Asian). But my favorite is the...
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Using Cilantro In The Kitchen
Courtesy of Capay Valley Farm Shop Although cilantro is often eaten with summer crops like tomatoes, it is a cool season crop available from the Capay Valley in the fall, winter and spring. It goes...
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Nonni’s Biscotti
Classic Italian Cookies for the New Year By Pia Hinckle Biscotti are twice-baked biscuits, cookies but not too sweet, that originated in Tuscany, in the town of Prato, to be exact. My Italian...
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Soup for Cold Season
Mom’s Chicken Soup Still Best Remedy By Eileen Ecklund This year’s flu season has been worse than usual, and even if you got your shot and have been taking care of yourself, a bug can still knock you...
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Five Workweek Lunch Ideas
The Mediterranean Diet By Pia Hinckle and Rebecca Taggart With a new study showing that eating a Mediterranean-style diet reduces the incidence of heart disease by 30 percent, it is a good time to...
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Elizabeth’s Festive, Flexible Lasagna
Pesto Adds Zip to Family Favorite By Elizabeth Weinstein Everyone needs a go-to dish, one you can throw together for last-minute guests or take to new neighbors, or to bleary-eyed parents during their...
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Heavy Metal
When the heat is on, cast iron cookware performs By Miriam Wolf My frying pan is as much at home on a campfire grate as on a burner of my glass-top electric stove: I can slide it into the oven to put...
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Tools of the Fruit Trade
Kitchen Gadgets to Wrangle Summer Fruit By Miriam Wolf Summer’s bounty of fruit brings out the intrepid pioneer wife in all of us. When cherries go down to a buck a pound and ripe wild berries perfume...
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Grilled Pizza Secrets
The Easy and Less Easy Way to Your Own Pizzeria By Miriam Wolf For a long time, I dreamed about building an outdoor wood-burning pizza oven. What could be more conducive to outdoor seasonal...
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Cutting Corn from the Cob
If corn on the cob doesn’t suit the menu, or you’d simply like to add corn (fresh, sautéed, or steamed) to salads and other dishes, here’s how to get it off the cob: Remove husks and silk from fresh...
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50 Ways to Use Tomatoes
When the Tomato Harvest is Too Much, Get Creative By Miriam Wolf When every garden in town is exploding with tomatoes and even the Topsy Turvy tomato grower on your patio is producing Sweet 100s...
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Going Lactic
Fermentation Can Help Preserve Your Harvest and Your Health By Corinna Andrews Long before canning, before vacuum-sealed packets of tuna, before pasteurization, refrigeration, and other industrial food...
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Warm up with Chili
Beans have the Lead in Winter Chili Choices By Heather Boerner When the days get short and the cold and damp make me feel sniffly, I crave something hearty, something to warm me through the long nights...
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FruitGuys Favorites: Seeing Orange
Thanksgiving Side Dishes from The FruitGuys Staff We asked The FruitGuys staffers to pony up with their favorite Thanksgiving side dishes. And maybe we’re all watching a little too much Netflix, but...
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Citrus Christmas
Orange You Glad I Made You A Present? By Miriam Wolf Theoretically, I like to make big batches of yummy homemade treats to have on hand during the holiday seasons. That way, when I get a last minute...
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Cooking for Health
Stop Obsessing About What Not to Eat and Learn to Cook Instead By Mary Risley Image courtesy of Mary Risley Now is the time for Americans to STOP denying themselves certain foods and instead...
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Seeing Red
Valentine’s Day Treats That Use Fruit to Say “I Love You” By Miriam Wolf Valentine’s Day may have been co-opted by greeting card companies, chocolate makers, and the romantic love-crowd, but there are...
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Naked Lunch
Layered lunches in a See-Through Jar By Miriam Wolf The Mason jar—that humble, old-fashioned glass canning jar—has taken the place of the Bento Box as the latest lunchtime accessory. And why not?...
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Cook Once, Eat all Week
Slow Cookers Solve the Lunch Problem By The Lunch Lady The Lunch Lady sees so many of you heedlessly going out to buy lunch every day, overspending on both money and calories. This is concerning to The...
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Clock In and Eat
There’s always time for breakfast – if you eat it at the office By The Lunch Lady The Lunch Lady is not dogmatic about breakfast. The Lunch Lady believes that if you eat breakfast and it works for you...
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Think Outside the Fruit Bowl
Fruit Can Nourish a Face, Scour a Sink, Even Shine Your Shoes By Rebecca Taggart There is more to fruit than meets the taste buds. The vitamins, phytochemicals, and fruit acids that make fruit so...
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Fabulous Figs
Delicious figs bring summer’s sweetness to fall By Stephanie Klassen On the West Coast, summer tends to linger. Back-to-school sales may cede shelf space to Halloween candy, but even as the days grow...
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The Two-Faced Pear!
Fruit can surprise even The FruitGuys By Miriam Wolf We all know that the fruit that comes through the doors of The FruitGuys for delivery to our clients is very special—hand chosen for flavor,...
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No More Nuggets
Adventures of a self-taught home cook By Katherine Weber My children’s first memory of me using an oven is the time I “almost burned down the house” attempting to toast tortilla chips under the...
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Swap Sweets for Nature’s Candy
Fruit is a colorful and sweet addition to your holiday table By Stephanie Rosenbaum Klassen Snowman-shaped cheese balls. Peppermint bark. Your Aunt Debbie’s bourbon balls. Cookies, cookies, and more...
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