Beta

Nov/Dec 2015

Now We Are 3

A Letter from the Editor. When we launched Made Local Magazine in 2013, people constantly asked how we could possibly find enough stories to fill these pages every other month. As we begin our third year of publication, we wonder how we can possibly keep up with the wealth of stories all around us, just…
Reinventing the Nugget

Hip Chick Farms and the quest for ethical frozen foods. It wasn’t until halfway through a call with the Food & Wine magazine editor that Jennifer Johnson and her wife Serafina Palandech, the owners of Hip Chick Farms, realized that they weren’t just being vetted for inclusion on the magazine’s 2015 list of Most Innovative…
Fire Arts

Wood-fired pizza ovens are for so much more than just pizza. Each day at 4pm, Jim and Michele Wimborough light up their dual wood-fired ovens at Hazel Restaurant in Occidental. Cords of hard wood are fed into the domed brick ovens that look like something straight out of a Neopolitan pizzeria. By dinner service an…
Big Bacteria

New ‘Spoiled to Perfection’ video series celebrates fermentation. Any dietician will tell you not to binge, let alone binge on briny, fermented foods—no matter how delicious. You can, however, sublimate your desire to devour a jar of pickles or a fistful of sauerkraut by binging on Spoiled to Perfection, a new locally produced video series.…
Growing Together

Late in September, on a hilly, sun-baked property at the foot of Sonoma Mountain, Vince and Jenny Trotter spent three days in the heat hand-shelling late summer beans, grown on a quarter acre patch of row crops surrounded by premium wine grapes. While workers in nearby vineyards harvested small fortunes’ worth of fruit, the Trotters…
Suds ‘n’ Spirits – Nov/Dec ’15

Thinkin’ to drinkin’, we offer a rotating round of spots we love. Descriptions by David P. Walsh and Gretchen Giles. Cooperage Brewing Company cooperagebrewing.com | 707.293.9787 981 Airway Court, Santa Rosa Open Wednesday-Monday. Wed-Fri, 3pm to midnight; Sat, noon to midnight; Sun, noon to 11pm; Mon, 3pm to 11pm. In my never-ending search for the…
Bring on the Funk

Fresh brewing methods make sour beer the new old thing. Until the recent craft beer revolution, the beer flavor profile has consisted primarily of malt, hops, yeast, and alcohol. It’s a range of elements that makes for wonderfully diverse flavor profiles. But in the last few years, a new component in the beer taster’s expected…
Fruit of the Earth

In praise of the amazing, indestructible, utterly delicious, hard-working mushroom. The largest living organism on Earth lies just under the ground in Eastern Oregon. Spanning some 2,200 acres, it is just one cell wall thick. It’s a mushroom. Further north in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, the Agarikon mushroom flourishes high up in…
Sick and Tired

New Farmworker Health Survey offers a dire prognosis for our poorest residents. A survey by the Sonoma County Department of Health Services has found that farmworkers here experience poorer health, more extreme poverty, and higher rates of diabetes and binge drinking than the rest of the general population. While the surveys were completed anonymously, it’s…
U-Cut Christmas Tree Farms

It’s a safe bet that every farm listed for U-Cut Christmas trees will be open the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve, but it’s always wise to call ahead and check. Celesta Farms U-Cut: Douglas and White firs. Bonus: Strictly just a tree farm, no rides or gimmicks, but homemade chocolate chip cookies. 3447 Celesta…