Before we get into the (locally sourced, humanely raised) meat and (organic) potatoes of this week’s newsletter, I want to point out that further down on this page you will find a gift: Taste Spring! Sacramento Digs Gardening presents delicious seasonal recipes from your garden.
That’s right: a free online cookbook. Wherever you live, you are sure to find recipes that will make you and your family and friends happy. More on that later.
In this episode of The Newsletter, we celebrate food. The star of this week’s show is none other than Alice Waters, the Queen of California Cuisine.
Below, you will find an in-depth interview in which our own Graham Womack talks to Ms. Waters about her twin passions: feeding and educating all of us, especially children.
Alice and Graham also talk about the Alice Waters Institute for Edible Education, part of the $1.2 billion Aggie Square development—a collaboration between UC Davis and the City of Sacramento. And we offer further reading on that exciting project.
Speaking of California cuisine: My friend and colleague Sharan Street, who was a foodie before that word existed, decided it would be fun to surround Queen Alice with her Court—the men and women whose gastronomical innovations helped make the local fare of our fair state famous. There are 30 people on Sharan’s list. (!) Graham decided to briefly profile the top-ten old-school gourmets, including Pasadena’s own Julia Child.
As a proud resident of the farmtown that is the capital of California, I like to remind people that agriculture is still the biggest industry in the state that is home to Hollywood and Silicon Valley.
As a person who studied organic agriculture at Cabrillo Community College in Santa Cruz in the 1970s, when that idea (cultivated by Alice Waters and a small army of Bay Area farmers and cooks) was still fresh, I am so psyched that the ag industry has shifted radically toward sustainability in my lifetime.
Maybe an even more significant export than our agricultural products is California culture, which includes the movement that has brought fresh, local, organic ingredients to restaurants nationwide. I invite you to dig in to some chapters of that ongoing story.
