Goodlifer: Gastronomy

Massa Organics: Wholesome Rice

Time and again, I’ve heard it said that all products need a good story behind them. Here is a great story. In 1916, Manuel Fonseca planted rice near Chico, CA. In 1997, Fonseca’s great-grandson, Greg Massa, returned from Costa Rica with his wife Raquel Krach. Both had been university-based tropical biologists in central America, but they wanted to be able to engage in hands-on conservation, so they returned to the family farm. cont.

Red Truck Bakery

Before Brian Noyes started baking for a living, he was the Art Director of several national magazines including Smithsonian and House & Garden. When a new job took him to Washington, D.C. Noyes and a friend bought a small farm in the Virginia village of Orlean, 50 miles west of the capital. They planted fruit trees and roamed the countryside in a red 1954 Ford farm truck that Noyes bought from fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger. cont.

Sensible Foods – Crunch Dried Snacks

Be honest, now. Do you get in enough servings of fruits and vegetables every day? I’m one of the most food-conscious people I know, and I still don’t eat as much produce as I should. And if you’re the parent of a kid or a teen, you know how tough it can be to keep the offspring on the dietary “straight and narrow.” Well, I’ve found something that makes this daily struggle just a little easier. cont.

Small Hand Foods: All-natural Cocktail Mixers

Those cocktail mixers that you find on the shelves of your average grocery store are jam-packed with food additives and all kinds of scary ingredients. You’d be lucky to find even a residual amount of actual strawberries in a typical Strawberry Daquiri mixer. As a bartender in the Bay Area, Jennifer Colliau saw the need for more natural alternatives and started Small Hand Foods. cont.

Nothin’ but Corn: Farmer Steve’s Popcorn

Wanna see something really scary? Go into your local supermarket and look at the ingredients on a box of microwave popcorn! You’ll find partially hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors, and preservatives galore. Even the popcorns flavored only with salt contain oils. Why? I don’t have an answer to that, but I do have a better alternative for you. cont.

Wild Harvest: Northwest Wildfoods Company

Washington State is justly famous for many things — among them, it’s beautiful landscape, including luxuriant woodlands and the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Within these thickly-wooded regions grows a bounty of beautiful berries, including mountain blackberries and red and blue huckleberries. It is these berries (and related products) that form the very core of Northwest Wildfoods Company. cont.

Lagier Ranches: Almond Butter, Preserves & Snacks.

It’s a nutritional powerhouse, containing nutrients such as protein, magnesium, and Vitamin E in significant quantities. It’s delicious. And it’s been unjustly maligned for years now for its high fat content. I’m talking about almond butter. It’s true; almond butter isn’t a low-fat food. But when you balance fat content against nutritional profile (never mind possible health benefits), cont.

Food for Thought

I understand that many people don’t want to consume sugar these days, even if it’s organic and/or unrefined. If you’re looking for an alternative to sugar in fruit preserves, well, there are plenty of fruit-juice-sweetened candidates out there. The shame of it is that I almost never find preserves sweetened with fruit juice that taste as good as those containing added sugar. cont.

Chocolatiers in America: Antoine Amrani

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. With due apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, I have a new deep affection; it’s reserved for something slightly less spiritual than her passion, but equally deserving. With perfectly smooth chocolate exteriors and interior ganaches, with flavor combinations that cross into the realm of brilliance, and with beauty to tempt even the most world-weary chocolate connoisseur, cont.

Shiloh Farms: Sprouted Goodness

The movement is called Essential Eating. One of its core principles is the consumption of sprouted whole grain flour. According to the Essential Eating website, when a whole grain sprouts, it becomes a plant and therefore a living food, so more of its vital nutrients are able to be absorbed by the human system. cont.

Flying Disc Ranch

Quick! What do the following have in common: Cire, Amber, Zahidi, Khadrawi, Derrie? Give up? They’re all varieties of date palms. If you’ve never heard of any before, you’ve got lots of company. Most people know Deglet Noor, and some are acquainted with Medhjool, but that’s about as far as familiarity with these trees (and their fruit) extends. cont.

Lundberg Family Farms

I know so many people in the US who regard rice as an afterthought. What a shame! Rice has come a long way from the boring, one-dimensional grain of my childhood. Nobody has done more to prove this than Lundberg Family Farms. How, you ask? cont.

G and S Groves

Sometimes, you encounter good food from an unexpected source. I never claimed to know much about Texas; I’ve never even spent any time there. But for most people, Texas is unlikely to be the first state that springs to mind when you’re discussing citrus. cont.

Apollo Olive Oil

Someone puts a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and a bottle of Chianti in front of you. Discounting the labels and any variations in bottle color or shape, the wines will look similar. Yet there’s an understanding that they’ll taste very different, are best paired with different foods, and come from different grapes. So why is it that so many people regard all olive oils as the same? I don’t understand that. cont.

Let’s Be Frank

I remember meeting Sue Moore very well. Our chance encounter took place in San Francisco, in front of the Ferry Building, during one of the smaller, weekday Farmers’ Markets. Never before had I seen a business card listing the occupation “meat forager,” but Sue’s did just that. In fact, she was the meat forager for the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley at the time. cont.

Jerzy Boyz Farm

One of the great things about autumn is biting into a crisp, delicious apple. Many times, though, supermarket apples are a serious let-down. They’re too bruised from transportation and being tossed into a bin with countless others of their kind, or they’ve suffered from a lengthy storage period, or they’re just not especially fresh. So how do you find a truly fresh, crisp apple? cont.