The venerable restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley turns 40 years old in August. Their founder, Alice Waters, started the famous Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley which became a nationwide model for educating children the importance of food. According to their site:

This fall, the Chez Panisse Foundation will become
The Edible Schoolyard organization.
Together we will build a national curriculum for
Edible Education in the school system.

Pretty cool! They’ve got a lot of great events: speakers, fairs, and of course, food! The free event on  on 8/27 at the UC Berkeley Art museum looks like fun for all ages. Check out their website for more information.

After living in the East Bay for several months, I started to discover some nice places to shop for organic produce. Here are some spots I visited:

Berkeley Bowl/Berkeley Bowl West

• Pros: This place is like a produce mecca for anyone obsessed with fresh fruits and vegetables. Tons of varieties. Organic produce prices on many core items (e.g. apples, broccoli, onions) are very good. Berkeley Bowl West has its own separate organic section which is nice, but the original Berkeley Bowl seems to have more varieties than the Berkeley Bowl West. Parking is easier in Berkeley Bowl West.
• Cons: Mad shoppers hitting their carts throughout aisles, grabbing the best produce possible. Be prepared to have a heart attack while parking your car or pushing your shopping cart.

Monterey Market

• Pros: This place has really amazing produce. I think the quality is even better than Berkeley Bowl. It doesn’t offer as much variety as Berkeley Bowl does, but it still is pretty amazing given its size. The prices are really good, and produce is SUPER fresh.
• Cons: Again, like Berkeley Bowl, prepare for a mad stampede of food – obsessed shoppers with their carts everywhere. It is not a fancy store; don’t expect it to look like Whole Foods (this is not necessarily a con, but I know people who are turned off by Rainbow Grocery for this reason).

Berkeley Farmer’s Market

• Pros: (I’ve been to both the Thu and Sat markets) This place has superb quality, all organic and lots of turnover. Downtown on Saturdays, there’s some hot food which is convenient for a quick bite or lunch. On Thursdays on Shattuck and Rose, there is less variety of hot food but I love the organic hot food vendor, Today’s Special! It is really an excellent find.
• Cons: It does get a little crowded, and sometimes by the end of the day, the food quality gets low due to heat or just staying out so long. Otherwise it’s a good market.

Temescal Farmer’s Market

• Pros: This is an amazing find in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood which is becoming really up and coming. The quality of these vendors are A+ with people like Cowgirl Creamery and Prather Ranch (which are truly hard to find as market vendors).
• Cons: Wow, this place is expensive. After being used to Monterey Market and Berkeley Bowl prices, it’s hard to recalibrate what I expect to see in food prices. $8 for 3 sausages that aren’t even organic or nitrate free? No thanks. But to be fair, every produce item we bought that day (kale, carrots, broccoli, bell pepper and spinach) was really probably some of the most amazing produce we have tasted in a long time.

There is probably a lot more fabulous organic produce out there – but these are some great places to check out if you are in the area!

Last week, I stopped by in Berkeley to check out a restaurant called Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food. Started by a passion entrepreneur, Amanda West,  her restaurant is a bright, energetic fast food joint serving healthy  food at great prices. Her food includes natural meats, local and organic food where possible, with all items compostable. My favorite items were the homemade sodas (try the ginger ale!), yam fries and the organic Napa salad. Since I am vegetarian, (I had the homemade veggie burger) I didn’t try the meat burgers, but my friend Barak loved the special California burger (a chicken burger with avocado). Most items were $7 or under.  Check out this restaurant! It’s located right next to the  downtown Berkeley BART station near the corner of Center and Shattuck (2122 Shattuck Avenue,Berkeley).

In this economy, who wants to spend full price? I had a reader comment on my blog asking for green discounts. Here’s one – for the green shopper, there’s a great service called blissmo. It’s like Groupon meets green with a social mission. These guys are the real deal, looking for certified products and services, starting in San Francisco with already thousands of subscribers – not bad, considering they just launched a month ago.

This week check out a deal from Looptworks – a cool clothing company that actually REUSES existing materials into hip and trendy hoodies, shirts and more. Get 40% off on Looptworks clothes. Hurry – it expires end of this week!

What is hexane? It is a neurotoxin,  listed as a “hazardous air pollutant” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This report is full of disturbing information, including the lack of oversight by the FDA and EPA in these foods products.The long term effects of hexane have not yet been documented. According to the Cornucopia report, in conventional food processing, soybeans are immersed in what the industry calls a “hexane bath” before they are further processed into ingredients such as oil, soy protein isolate, or texturized soy protein (TVP). The soy protein ingredients in most nonorganic foods such as vegetarian burgers and nutrition bars are processed with the use of hexane. It is not used in organic food processing.

How do you know which products are hexane free? In general, organic tofu products do not have hexane. However, there are a few exceptions of organic soy products that do have hexane. Here is a comprehensive scorecard, and a short summary of conventional veggie burgers and soy meat like products:

Avoid these hexane-laced veggie burgers and soy products:

• Amy’s Kitchen
• Boca Burger, conventional
• Franklin Farms
• Garden Burger
• It’s All Good Lightlife
• Morningstar Farms
• President’s Choice
• Taste Above
• Trader Joe’s
• Yves Veggie Cuisine

Products that are hexane-free:

• Boca Burgers “Made with organic soy”
• Helen’s Kitchen
• Morningstar “Made with organic”
• Superburgers by Turtle Island
• Tofurky
• Wildwood

In a future blog post, we’ll evaluate energy bars and infant formula (unfortunately, infant food has hexane too). Ironically, the way I found out about this hexane problem was researching the best organic infant formula for my baby. Stay tuned.

 Update: Winner has been announced. Thank you for participating.

1. Shop at your local farmer’s market. If you wait towards the end of the market, many farmers are willing to sell at lower rates to get rid of inventory.
2. Join a local CSA in your area for a weekly produce box, fresh from a local farm. Some of these items are much cheaper than at Whole Foods. Some examples of CSAs are FarmFreshToYou and others found on Om Organics’ website in the San Francisco Bay Area.
3. Find private label organic food items. At Safeway, they now sell their own organic food line O Organics. At Whole Foods, they have their 365 everyday value items. These items tend to have reasonable food prices.
4. Shop at your local co-op. My personal favorite is Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco. It is like the Costco of Whole Foods. Not necessarily the prettiest place to shop, but full of choices, bulk and great prices.
5. Buy bulk items. Don’t bother buying core items like rice and oatmeal from small boxes. At places like Whole Foods, and co-ops like Rainbow Grocery, it is easy to find wide varieties of healthy grains, nuts, dried fruits and other goodies in the bulk aisle. One of my favorite items is the almond butter, fresh and bulk.
6. My personal favorite store for value-Trader Joe’s. Sure their produce quality is not the best, but many of their packaged items are great prices.
7. Use food delivery services like Planet Organics in the San Francisco Bay Area. They deliver straight to your home once a week, and you can choose any items you want, unlike a CSA. I’ve been using them for a month, and really enjoy the quality of their produce.
8. Grow your own vegetables and fruits in your patio or yard. Tomatoes are especially a good thing to grow as they tend to be more expensive than other produce.
9. Find coupons for organic and local food. Whole Foods has a coupon flyer in their stores that has many discounts on natural food items. There are local guides such as Green Zebra and EcoMetro Guide that have dozens of discounts for organic and local items.
10. Avoid chains and try shopping at local markets. My favorite local market is Sigona’s in Redwood City for produce. Their produce prices are some of the best in the area given the quality of their organic and local sourcing. Another example is the Milk Pail in Mountain View.

What an excellent idea! A festival benefiting local food co-ops and farmers in the Bay Area serving great, local food. I see some of the best restaurants, beer and ice cream vendors all on carts.

This event has even been highlighted in the New York Times!

Highlighting some great gastronomic pleasures:

• The Creme Brulee Cart
• Roli Roti
• Tim Luym From Poleng Lounge
• Straus Family Creamery
• Amanda’s Feel Good Fresh Food
• Kara’s Cupcakes
• Ici Ice Cream
• Fentons Creamery
• Bi-Rite Creamery

Located at Jack London Square in Oakland this weekend 8/28-8/30. See their comprehensive schedule.

Can you imagine the Bay Area without Mount Tam, Half Moon Bay Beach, and Henry Coe? Well that’s what the Governor announced – a new proposal to eliminate state funding for our state park system – which will close more than 80% of the 279-unit state park system.  His proposal to cut $143 million from our state parks is 10 times worse than last year’s proposal.

What can you do?

1. Sign the petition from the California State Parks Foundation

2. Donate to the California State Parks Foundation, the only non profit dedicated to advocating for the California State park system.

3. Learn more about the issues and the California state budget.

4. Spread the word!