Leilani Clark
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Feature Grow Local — “Nothing Basic About It”
Sonoma County Launches a Guaranteed Income Program to Help Local Families Gain a Sense of Security and Financial Well-Being by Leilani Clark In late summer, a consortium of cities and community organizations in Sonoma County made a big announcement. Following in the footsteps of Stockton and Los Angeles, Sonoma County would be launching Pathway to…
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Eat Local Short — “A Flash of Heat”
A Flash of Heat: Big Spoon Sauce Co. introduces a regional chili crisp that’ll put fire in your belly By Leilani Clark When Lani Chan and Nathan Bender left New York City for California in 2020, they had already perfected the art of building a delicious sauce. It all started after they met at Columbia…
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Home Cooking Magic
With their new cookbook, The Kosmic Kitchen aims to inspire you to bring joy, herbs, and ritual into the kitchen. Magic isn’t the first word that comes to mind these days when I think of my kitchen. Dishes? Yes. Six months into the coronavirus pandemic, it’s a place to churn out three meals a day. This means a…
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Ice Cream Saves The Day
Salvador Cruz opened Fru-ta after losing everything. Resilience, entrepreneurship, and family bonds have transformed one store into a chain of successes. On the first day of June, when I speak with Salvador Cruz, the owner of four Fru-ta ice cream shops in Sonoma County, he has a lot going on. An 8pm curfew was announced…
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Grain by Grain: The Sticky Rice Supper Club Celebrates Asian Diaspora
On a warm afternoon in August last year, a dozen people gathered around a table on the western edge of Spring Lake in Santa Rosa. They chatted and dug into a spread of culinary delights: smashed cucumber salad, egg rolls, jars of homemade kimchi, Hong Kong-style egg tarts, dumplings, crispy rice, watermelon salad, and more.…
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Always the Sun – The Sunrise Movement in Sonoma County
The Sunrise Movement has risen in Sonoma County & they won’t stop until they get a Green New Deal. Growing up in Koreatown, a neighborhood west of downtown Los Angeles, Janina Turner didn’t go camping. She didn’t go to the park—there weren’t any near her home. Driving past oil wells and derricks was normal. Smog…
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Place Matters – The Fibershed Movement
A new book on the Fibershed movement acts as a toolkit for building a soil-to-skin approach to clothing in a fast fashion world. When Rebecca Burgess started Fibershed a decade ago, the majority of Americans weren’t thinking too hard about the environmental and social costs of their clothing—especially “fast fashion.” Most still don’t. “It’s become…
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Letter from the Editor
For me, the winter holidays are synonymous with tamales. My family has only attempted to make them from scratch a couple of times. The time-intensive process was a chance to bond and laugh over corn husks, but with everyone strapped for time these days, we didn’t carry it on. Generally, my mom orders them from…
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In the Aromas, the Ancestors are Present
In the face of sudden loss, the family behind The Tamale Factory continues a tradition of handmade tamales handed down through generations. When her grandmother Mary died suddenly last March after suffering a bad fall, Elva Nùñez and her family were faced with a difficult decision. Should they keep going with their recently relaunched tamale…
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The End Bit
The Sonoma County Food Action Plan aggregates opportunities for growth in our local food system into four action areas, or pillars, with multiple goals and subgoals under each. We’re highlighting the pillars here in no particular order. Pillar 3: Healthy Eating • Increase equitable access to healthy, affordable, safe and culturally appropriate food and…