Category archives for: Mendo Nosh

Take that, Vermont!

by Freda Moon

Take that, Vermont!

Vermont is the state with the most breweries per capita, with one per every 32,698 residents. Mendocino County has one per 21,555 Mendonesians. How bout them apples?

Anderson Valley Brewing Company Gets Eaten Alive (aka SOLD)

by Freda Moon

Anderson Valley Brewing Company Gets Eaten Alive (aka SOLD)

The inevitable has happened. Ken Allen, who founded Anderson Valley Brewing Company in 1987 and grew it into one of Northern California’s most beloved craft breweries, found a buyer for his little company that could. The new owner, HMB Holdings LLC, is a new company founded by Trey White, a former VP at the Stamford, [...]

From the World Food File: Brain Vegetable

by Freda Moon

From the World Food File: Brain Vegetable

My pops and his lovely lady are in Jamaica right now, where they’re eating something called Brain Vegetable. This just in, from the AVA’s intriguing foreign foods desk: “Akee when boiled, drained and simmered in oil with salted dried cod with your choice of vegetables and hot peppers, becomes Jamaica’s national dish Akee and Saltfish.” [...]

The new, old Fort Bragg Bakery

by Freda Moon

The new, old Fort Bragg Bakery

I wrote a sweet little piece of fluff on Fort Bragg’s new artisanal bakery and its hulking wood-burning brick oven. Normally, I’m not one for quaintness. And I especially bridle at the idea that the way to resurrect America’s abandoned downtowns is to rebuild them in the image of the past — as if cutesy [...]

I ♥ our wood stove, or Wood stoves: good for the soul, bad for the environment?

by Freda Moon

I ♥ our wood stove, or Wood stoves: good for the soul, bad for the environment?

I spent most mornings of my childhood standing, with legs splayed like a saw horse, above an old gas floor grate furnace in my dad’s house on the Mendocino Coast. I love that heater. There was a time when nearly every pair of my shoes had grid lines melted into their souls from moments I [...]

It’s 30˚ on the Mendocino Coast! Time for Mexican Chicken Soup.

by Freda Moon

It’s 30˚ on the Mendocino Coast! Time for Mexican Chicken Soup.

  It’s been unusually cold on the Mendocino Coast. It’s the kind of weather that shows on ashen lips and huddled bodies, a conversation starter that always ends with an exclamation point. Needless to say, this is soup weather—a time for something warming and easy. Here’s one I especially love. It’s a soup I learned in [...]

Food news from another land: The Chinese garlic bubble

by Freda Moon

Food news from another land: The Chinese garlic bubble

This story, from NPR’s All Things Considered, about a Chinese “garlic bubble”  reads like a children’s tale: Peasants in China’s countryside fill their garages to overflowing with garlic. With swine flu fears running high—and a firm belief in the healing powers of an ancient, medicinal plant—people began hoarding. They bought large amounts when the price [...]

The Spicy Hot Oil of the Gods

by Freda Moon

The Spicy Hot Oil of the Gods

  Sometimes I discover a new cooking technique—a little trick, long-established but new to me—and it feels like I’ve landed on a new continent, where colors are twice as brilliant and my tongue possesses double the taste buds. Earlier this fall, I had such a moment of discovery when I picked up a bottle of [...]

Knee-Deep in Duck

by Freda Moon

Knee-Deep in Duck

Some impulse purchases are more gratifying than others. This Thanksgiving was to be a small get-together; for our expansive family, an unusually restrained event. As such, we decided to keep our celebratory dinner to the essentials of a Northern California feast: We’d gorge on Dungeness crab, instead of a turkey. We’d throw down a few [...]

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