Looking for something to do after midterms? How about some food? Berkeley has 10 events this month that just might make your stomach happy and lighten your spirit!

1. Foods of the Americas exhibit
Oct. 2 to 18, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Location: UC Botanical Garden
A display of food crops, from chocolate to quinoa, that originated in the Americas thousands of years ago.
Free with garden admission.

2. Oktoberfest at Pyramid Alehouse and Brewery
Oct. 3, 5:30 p.m.
Location: Pyramid Alehouse and Brewery
German food and desserts, live polka band, bratwurst-eating contests, stein-holding contests and more.

3. Stefani Bittner and Leslie Bennett present “A Winter Salad Workshop and Salad Tasting”
Oct. 6, 4 p.m.
Location: Mrs. Dalloway’s
In a talk based on their book “The Beautiful Edible Garden,” the authors will discuss which seeds to plant now for harvesting later this winter, which plants to buy from nurseries and which herbs will complement your winter salad.
Ticket: $10

4. Make Goat’s Milk Cheese at The Cheeseboard Pizza Collective
Oct. 9, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Cheese Board Pizza Collective
A class with the San Francisco Milk Maid on transforming goat’s milk into either crumbly, fresh chevre or fuzzy, ripened goat cheese. The class will cover the basic steps of making cheese, essential equipment and where to find a special “rind-ripening” fungus called geotrichum.
Ticket: $40

5. Innovate Berkeley: Sustainable Economic Development — East Bay Social Innovation Dinners
Oct. 10, 6:15 p.m.
Location: The David Brower Center — The Hub Berkeley
Innovate Berkeley Dinners are informal monthly gatherings where East Bay thought leaders discuss entrepreneurial activity in Berkeley and other Bay Area cities, principles of civic engagement, sustainable city development and social and environmental innovation.
Featured guest: Peter Hirshberg, CEO at The Re:imagine Group
Featured chef: Amy Murray, executive chef at Revival Bar + Kitchen and Venus Restaurant
Ticket: $31.74 for Early Bird and Impact Hub members; $36.87 for general admission

6. 2013 BCF Annual Awards Dinner
Oct. 10, 5:30 p.m.
Location: HS Lordship’s Restaurant
The Berkeley Community Fund will hold its 2013 Annual Awards Dinner to present the Benjamin Ide Wheeler Medal to Hugh Romney, better known worldwide as Wavy Gravy, an activist, visionary, philanthropist and compassionate clown extraordinaire.
The program includes No Host Cocktails and dinner.
Ticket: $100

7. Cooking with EVOO
Oct. 21, 5:30 p.m.
Location: California Olive Oil Council
COOC taste-panel member and Bay Area chef Anthony Florian will give a class on cooking with extra virgin olive oil, including a live cooking demonstration for a few different dishes prepared with California extra virgin olive oil.
Ticket: $25

8. A Meaningful Light Benefit
Oct. 26, 8 p.m.
Location: The Starry Plough Irish Pub and Restaurant
A Meaningful Light is a charitable organization that raises awareness about the meaningful contributions that people with intellectual disabilities make in our community. The event will feature performances by the Shams Eire, the Guvernment and McCraes Battalion.
Ticket: $15

9. United Nations Day 68th Anniversary Celebration Dinner 2013
Oct. 27, 5 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.
Location: International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave.
Organized by United Nations Association USA-East Bay to commemorate UNA-USA’s 70th anniversary. The program includes a wine reception and dinner.
Keynote speaker and awardee: Rep. Barbara Lee
Tickets: $40; $20 with student discount

10. Patricia Wells presents “The French Kitchen Cookbook”
Oct. 30, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Mrs. Dalloway’s
The event includes tastings prepared by Summer Kitchen and wine from Vintage Berkeley Elmwood.
Tickets: $60 per person, $75 per couple.

Mai Truong is the editor of Eating Berkeley. Contact her at mtruong@dailycal.org.

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Josh Escobar/Senior Staff

Erin Wade, co-chef of Oakland’s beloved mac ‘n’ cheese restaurant Homeroom, gave a reading from “The Mac + Cheese Cookbook” ($16.99, Ten Speed Press) at the bookstore Mrs. Dalloway’s last Wednesday.

The book begins with a few blurbs about Homeroom and the co-chefs/owners/authors Wade and Allison Arevalo. It offers many recipes for mac and cheese — from Trailer Mac, with potato chips and hot dogs, to Patatas Bravas Mac, with potatoes and paprika. There are two sections on sides and desserts, convenient conversion charts in the back and, for those who have never made mac and cheese, the book offers a step-by-step lesson on how to make Mac Sauce, a basic cheese sauce that goes with most of the recipes.

“We’ve kept the recipes simple,” Wade explained, “since mac and cheese is a comfort food that everyone should be able to make.”

While the cookbook maintains the simplicity Wade mentions, it is also delightfully crafty. For example, to give a throwback to recess and grade school euphoria, it includes doodles of paper airplanes, goats, lemons and more. It also has a troubleshooting section to help you ace the “spoon test,” which determines whether you’ve properly made the Mac Sauce or messed it up.

After talking about the book, Wade told the unconventional story of how she became a chef.

“I started off as a food reviewer for The Princetonian when I was an undergraduate,” she said. “Afterwards, I became a pastry chef in New York, then a lawyer in San Francisco. Then the firm fired me — which ended up being a blessing.”

Homeroom began when she “randomly met Allison at Bittersweet Cafe on College.” The pair realized later that they should go into business together. Lots of friends told her she was crazy. Both Arevalo and Wade committed their life savings to a one-food specialty restaurant in a neighborhood where street traffic averages four people per hour.

“If Homeroom didn’t work out,” Wade admitted, “I would probably be living out of my car right now.”

But that wasn’t the case. Three years after stumbling across 400 40th St. while hunting for a storefront, Arevalo and Wade own it. Soon they’ll be opening a mac and cheese takeout shop across the street with picnic tables and soft-serve ice cream.

“The advice I would give young people is to not think linearly,” Wade said during Q&A. “Our parents teach us to go to school, get a job and to work hard, but fulfillment isn’t guaranteed in the end. … If you want something, you have to give it to yourself.”

“The Mac + Cheese Cookbook” represents Wade’s fresh approach to an American classic, which was reflected in her excitement and creativity during the reading.

Contact Josh Escobar at jescobar@dailycal.org.

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Feastly/Courtesy

For amateur cooks who want to test the water before opening their first restaurant, Feastly is a platform that allows them to communicate with food-enthusiast strangers and showcase their talent. Feastly also benefits diners who want to seek something other than the typical restaurant experience.

The Feastly platform — which has been operating for about a year — was first started in Washington DC and now also covers New York and the Bay Area, including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville. All of the meals are homemade, cooked and served at the same location.

“People today want to know who’s making their food and where their food comes from,” said Noah Karesh, founder of Feastly. “We want to cater to that. People who use our platform are looking for specific things in food, not just in terms of ethnicity but also in terms of ingredients.”

The cooks decide the type of food they want to share, the price it costs, the space and time to host the dinner, and the number of people that will join them. Because Feastly does not require the cooks to have professional cooking background, both amateur cooks and restaurant chefs can join. The dining options range from ice cream tastings to elaborate 10-course dinners. There are also brunches, casual movie nights and a monthly class on chocolate making.

Karesh came up with the idea after a trip to Guatemala roughly one and a half years ago. In Guatemala, Karesh and his girlfriend had trouble finding real Guatemalan food instead of the typical tourist offerings. Two hours into their search at even local markets, they were about to give up when they ran into a local who took them to his house for dinner. The meal, made by the local’s mother, was such a memorable experience to Karesh that made him question why it was so hard to find authentic, home cooked meals these days. Hence, Feastly was created as a platform for anyone interested in connecting over homemade food and homemade atmosphere.

“We at Feastly consider food not as a tool for nourishment but as a way to sustain relationship,” Karesh said.

Feastly provides a platform to work out the logistics of a meal: location, date, messaging, pricing and description of the food. Regarding regulations, everyone who signs up as a cook on Feastly is vetted. Considering how difficult it is to make a restaurant, Feastly wants to provide a tool for beginners to “monetize their [cooking] passion and build their brand, with an added benefit of community.” The diners, once registered and approved by Feastly, can browse through a list of available meals in their area and reserve seats.

Feastly is still in private beta state, but Karesh estimated that the current user base is over ten thousand across the country, with many international accounts. The goal is to expand the service worldwide to allow travellers to experience homemade meals and understand cultures around the world.

Mai Truong is the food editor. Contact her at mtruong@dailycal.org.

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Mai Truong/Staff

Berkeley is known for many things.

The protests, the hippies, the arts, homeless people, the diversity and the acceptance of that diversity (you can literally see every type of people and every type of activity in this city, and anyone who has actually lived here would stop seeing them as different types of people, just as people).

Berkeley also has the best public university in America, and actually the only public university that ranks above the Ivy league schools in many disciplines. But the city of Berkeley is more than the university it contains. It has people who want to make change, who actually do it, who are willing to teach others how to do it, and some that are all three. Perhaps even more importantly, it hosts the environments where you can meet those people.

The dinner event that HUB Bay Area organized last week is one of those environments. The official name of the event is, “Innovate Berkeley: Sustainable Economic Development – East Bay Social Innovation Dinner“, and its list of participants include CEOs and founders of companies, architects, scientists, people who have not only ideas but the experience of doing something pertaining to the economy.

The evening began with some beer drinking and mingling. The ice breaker is a casual handshake and “what brings you here?”, followed by “why not, right? there’s free drinks!” with a chuckle. Arriving on the earlier side would make it easier to get into groups, and you would get more time to talk to people, so you get to know more people before breaking up into tables for dinner. The dinner is accompanied by a talk. This time, it was an incredibly inspiring and engaging talk by Dr. Mike North about innovations, how they can be born and how they can be useful. After the talk, everyone moved around again, some grabbed desserts, most started or restarted discussions about ideas, careers, business, community developments. Serious topics. By the end of those conversations, business cards were exchanged.

Even when you think when you don’t have anything to bring to the table, it is alright to be on the receiving end. I learned from Rebecca about visual computing, from Mike North and Jaki Levy about engineers and entrepreneurs that get together on the weekends to build communication systems for communities in Gambia, or foot brace for children in Nicaragua. Their projects connect professionals of different fields and materialize their ideas together. I listened in on a conversation among a landscape architect, a software architect and an environmental study post-grad, the topics ranged from business management to insurance policies on buildings. There were artists too, not just tech people and businessmen, and there were talks of practical art projects. The age difference was hardly any barrier: the accomplished people in their 60s were generous, and the start-up owners in their 20s and 30s were confident.

Those conversations, the people and the dinner as a whole represent Berkeley as a city, where every idea is welcome, and everyone is open to new ideas. But unlike the usual social events, these people weren’t playing nice. If you’re wrong, they tell you that you’re wrong, and they explain. Isn’t that how innovations come about, and how Berkeley becomes known as a hub for innovations?

As students, we ought to find our role in constructing and changing the community, and this type of event might just be able to help us to do so more efficiently than we think.

HUB Berkeley Innovation Dinner is a monthly event organized by HUB Bay Area. The dinner is hosted at HUB Berkeley, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704. Early Bird tickets cost $31.74 each.

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Looking for something to do this weekend? How about a trip to Gilroy for some garlic rosemary chicken sandwiches or garlic lumpia, with garlic ice cream for dessert?

You got it. The Gilroy Garlic Festival is running its 35th celebration this Friday through Sunday. We all know the charming smell of garlic browning on a skillet, the vital role of minced garlic in a brine for chicken and how that creamy roasted garlic can liven up a margherita pizza. There’ll be no shortage of lip-smacking savory dishes with garlic at the festival. Besides, there are garlic desserts. Not something you can get every day.

What’s even more special about this year’s festival, to us Cal-ers at least, is the garlic-infused cream puff and garlic almond brittle from two of our very own Cal Dining executive chefs, Ida Shen and Mary Ferrer. Imagine a baked choux pastry filled with a creamy blend of ricotta, orange zest, whipped cream, sugar and grated garlic. It most definitely will not be too sweet or too strong — it’s just screaming awesomeness. They are entering a competition on Friday, and if they win, they will make their recipe public. In the mean time, cheer them on while nibbling some garlicky finger foods.

Check out the booths that will be at this year’s festival. Tickets with 20 percent discounts are available to the entire UC Berkeley community on the Garlic Festival ticket website (promo code “Bears”). And really, what’s a better way to wind down after your exams than taking a drive south in this beautiful weather and eating a load of good food?

Image source: Allan Chatto under Creative Commons

Contact Mai Truong at mtruong@dailycal.org

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Cal Alumni Association/Courtesy

Attention, soon-to-be-graduates! The semester is quickly coming to an end, and what better way to wrap up your college experience than with a handful of tacos and some tequila?

That’s right, folks, the Cal Alumni Association is hosting a pre-Cinco de Mayo gathering for young alumni and graduating seniors, and there will be margaritas. They’re calling it “The Last Grrr-rah,” but don’t let the corny name fool you — the food should be genuinely delicious. The event will feature Taqueria Sinaloa, whose signature truck will be parked at the Alumni House to serve attendees a myriad of tacos, including chicken, carne asada, carnitas and vegetarian.

Taqueria Sinaloa is normally located in Oakland, so you’ll save yourself BART fare and a long walk by taking advantage of the truck’s convenient location in our own backyard, so to speak. The cost of attending is $10 ($13 for young alums) and includes one margarita and five tasty tacos. No word yet about who’ll be tending bar, but those who wish to imbibe will need their IDs handy.

Stay hungry, Golden Bears!

The Last Grr-rah will be held at the Alumni House patio on Saturday, May 4, from 8 p.m. until 11 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online until Thursday, May 2 at 11:59 p.m.

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Michael Tao/File

Locals and Bay Area eaters are all well aware that Berkeley is a foodie mecca, but one website is taking its praise for the city one step further — best foodie city on the West Coast.

Livability, a website that determines “America’s best places to live and visit,” recently published its top 10 foodie cities, and the only West Coast city to make the list was Berkeley, which came in fourth place.

The entry on Berkeley cites its “European-style marketplaces, boutique restaurants and artisan food shops” and heralds it — and Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse, of course — as the birthplace of the “California Cuisine” movement in the 1970s.

However, instead of segueing into the secondary Gourmet Ghetto that is Fourth Street, Livability zeroes in on the offerings down Shattuck Avenue, praising Angeline’s Louisiana Kitchen, La Note and Bistro Liaison for breaking the “healthily sophisticated” mold.

Read the entire top 10 list below:

1. Decatur, Ga.
2. Hoboken, N.J.
3. Bloomington, Ind.
4. Berkeley, Calif.
5. Madison, Wis.
6. Lafayette, La.
7. Chapel Hill, N.C.
8. Santa Fe, N.M.
9. Alexandria, Va.
10. Burlington, Vt.

Christopher Yee is the editor of Eating Berkeley. Contact him at cyee@dailycal.org.

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UC Berkeley/Courtesy

Students and members of the public gathered on the UC Berkeley campus on March 13 to learn about how the world’s food supply will have to change to be able to support the 9 billion people projected to populate the planet in 2050.

Former U.S. representative Douglas Bereuter gave the campus’s annual Matsui Lecture, titled “Can the World Feed 9 Billion People,” to an overflow audience. Bereuter, who represented his district in Nebraska from 1978 to 2004 before becoming the president and CEO of the Asia Foundation, began his talk with what he believed were the most pressing issues regarding global food security, including access problems, climate change and the volatility of prices.

“To succeed (in feeding the world), this needs to be a concerted global effort,” Bereuter said. “More must be expected of (Brazil, Russia, India and China). China should be asked to do more on cooperative basis, India must begin to address its own domestic problems out of sense of national (pride) and the U.S. must focus on areas it has comparative advantage.”

His suggestions for what should be done included a national authorization bill, a focus on universities, incentivizing businesses, helping women farmers, focusing on sustainable farming methods and removing trade barriers.

“In any international effort made by the United States to develop food security, we should emphasize comparative expertise role-agricultural science,” said Bereuter of American universities. “We need to reverse public funding educational exchanges in a broad array of fields that were once more advanced. Land-grant institutions needs to rebuild relationships around world (that) they’ve been neglected.”

In the audience was an economics class from Berkeley High School. The class’s teacher, Matt Meyers, was notified of the event by the Robert T. Matsui Center for Public Service and thought it was relevant to his class’s discussion on international development.

“We’re doing a unit on international development and talking about these issues, such as subsidies and what poverty looks like, so I thought coming here would make it more relatable,” said Meyers, who did not make the event mandatory but had more than 15 students attend. “I found myself agreeing with more than I thought I would, and I appreciated that his talk was less political and more ethically focused.”

One of Meyers’ students posed a question to the Bereuter regarding his position on what role genetically modified organisms had to play in feeding the planet.

“I’ve battled the (European Union) parliament on this,” Bereuter said. “GMOs are important to raising food production in the world.”

Another member of the audience pointed out that the projection that the world’s population would be 9 billion by 2050 relied on current fertility rates falling and that world leaders should plan to feed a larger number of people. Bereuter replied that he did not think the projection was Malthusian but that it was perhaps too low and could be reasonably be expected to be higher.

David Kaufman, an undergraduate who works for the campus Institute of Governmental Studies, the event’s host organization, found the event to be better than previous years’ Matsui lectures.

“It was a terrific talk on an important topic that presents challenges for the world,” Kaufman said. “It was a great, diverse turnout that spilled out into the standing room. We’ve never done that before.”

Professor David Zilberman, chair of the campus department of agriculture and resource economics, attended the lecture and commended Bereuter for discussing the need to incentivize the private sector to establish infrastructure to help feed more people in sub-Saharan Africa. He noted that while Bereuter was right in advocating in support for small-holder and subsistence farming efforts, more would need to be done to create “economically viable” farms that would bring farmers larger incomes.

Zilberman also stated the barriers to trade and subsidies to farmers that have been prevalent in the United States and which Bereuter called “a fundamental impediment for world’s developing countries” were oftentimes responses to similar Chinese and European policies. Bereuter mentioned that for the first time in several years, he has been hearing that Congress will consider farm-subsidy reform.

The Matsui Lecture is named after UC Berkeley alumnus Robert Matsui, who represented Sacramento in Congress for 26 years. Each year, the program brings a former member of Congress to campus for a one-week residency.

Contact Levon Minassian at lminassian@dailycal.org.

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Michael Drummond/Staff

The California State Legislature is currently considering the passage of legislation that would require state institutions to purchase food grown or produced in the state before buying products from out-of-state or other countries.

If passed, Assembly Bill 199, the “Choose California” bill, would mandate that state institutions purchase foods from California farms so long as their prices are not more than 5 percent more expensive than identical items from outside the state.

Public schools would be exempt from this 5 percent threshold and would only be required to purchase from in-state producers if competing out-of-state products cost the same amount or were less expensive, according to Noelle Cremers, director of natural resources and commodities at the California Farm Bureau Federation.

The bureau, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization made up of 53 county farm bureaus whose stated purpose is to protect and promote the state’s agricultural interests, supports the legislation.

“(The bill) would help promote California-grown agricultural products,” Cremers said. “The state should play a leadership role in supporting our farmers and showing the importance of purchasing homegrown products to its citizens.”

AB 199 was introduced in late January by Assemblymember Chris Holden, D-Pasadena. The bill will soon be heard in the state Assembly’s Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review as well as the Committee on Agriculture, said Wendy Gordon, Holden’s press secretary, in an email.

“Fresh, locally-sourced produce and products are always a plus for public institutions such as state hospitals, prisons, and other state-run organizations,” Gordon said in the email. “We are optimistic the lawmakers and governor will see the value in this bill — not only to farmers but also those who will be eating fresher, locally sourced foods.”

The bill’s potential impact on the state budget is still unknown, as is whether it will benefit large farms or smaller ones and whether it will affect the amount of conventional produce grown in the state in comparison to organic crops. Cremers said she does not think the bill would change the current balance between organic and conventional products.

The UC Office of the President has yet to review the bill to take a position on it, according to spokesperson Brooke Converse. In 2008, Cal Dining worked with Buy Fresh, Buy Local, an initiative of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, to pledge that the campus food service will purchase a minimum of 10 percent of its food products from local sources. Cal Dining is currently purchasing 60 percent of its produce from within a 16-county radius of campus, according to its website.

Schools in the Berkeley Unified School District would not be affected by the bill’s passage because the district does not purchase from out-of-state, according to district spokesperson Mark Coplan. Berkeley’s geographic location allowed it to more easily adopt a local foods model compared to other districts throughout the state, he said.

Coplan noted that 30 percent of the food in the schools is organic and comes from within 50 miles.

“It’s something that the Legislature needs to help school districts achieve,” Coplan said. “It’s something everyone needs to do, and it’s something that schools need help funding.”

A similar bill was passed by the state Legislature 2001 but was vetoed by governor Gray Davis, and a 2010 effort ended shortly after the bill was introduced in the state Assembly Committee on Appropriations.

Levon Minassian covers food news. Contact him at lminassian@dailycal.org.

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Christopher Yee/Senior Staff

Did you know SPAM is short for “spiced ham”?

Shockingly, most people don’t know the origin of this American food staple. If simply reading the word SPAM has not yet triggered your gag reflex, read on for some fascinating facts.

The first canned ham was developed by George A. Hormel & Company, now known as the Hormel Foods Corporation, in 1926. However, after the hams were carefully trimmed to can size, the company was left with thousands of pounds of worthless pork shoulder. Thus “Hormel Spiced Ham” was born — a mash-up of the leftovers from canned ham. Spiced Ham wasn’t found to be a popular name, so the company held a contest at a New Year’s Eve party to create an enticing name for the product for a $100 prize. The winning name was, of course, SPAM, thought up by Kenneth Daigneau, an actor and the brother of a Hormel vice president, Ralph Daigneau.

Although SPAM was once a staple for feeding hungry troops in the U.S. Army, it is now highlighted in a multitude of culinary creations across a multitude of cultures (99.7 percent of which are Asian). You may have seen it it deliciously fried in scrambled eggs, in SPAM musubi (commonly known as SPAM sushi), SPAM fried rice, microwaved until crisp then used to garnish salads and, of course, raw and cut into hearts, stars and other cute shapes.

Celebrity chefs have highlighted the mystery meat in high-class dishes such as carbonara, escabeche and stroganoff. It has even been featured on television cooking shows such as Iron Chef and Top Chef. What started as a humble, filling meal has evolved into quite the culinary phenomenon. SPAM has even rolled out a delicious spread of savory SPAM-based products. Next time you’re at the grocery store, be sure to try all the flavors — both traditional and, shall we say, exotic — to suit every consumer’s individual needs.

• SPAM® Classic (for the traditionalists)
• SPAM® Low-Sodium (commonly used to treat high blood pressure)
• SPAM® Lite (SPAM Classic  may be delicious, but it doesn’t help your waistline)
• SPAM® Hot and Spicy (no Sriracha needed)
• SPAM® spread (to spread on SPAM sandwiches for that extra burst of SPAM)
• SPAM® singles (perfectly convenient portions for when SPAM cravings hit you in the middle of class)
• SPAM® singles lite (portion control AND low-cal … practically a diet food)
• SPAM® Hickory Smoke Flavor (for those of us too lazy to light up the grill)
• SPAM® with bacon (really utilizing all parts of the pig)
• SPAM® with cheese (hopefully meltable … wishful thinking?
• SPAM® oven-roasted turkey (evidently Hormel has engineered miniature turkeys that are the shape of a 2”x3”x4” can)
• SPAM® Meal – Sausage Jambalaya (a Southern “SPAMbalaya ™ “complete with SPAMbalasauge ™”)
• SPAM® Meal – Penne Pasta in Alfredo Sauce (rivals Gypsy’s Italian Trattoria’s Crazy Alfredo)

So, whether you’re digging into the can at 2 a.m. with a spoon or creating a culinary masterpiece to impress a hot date, you should feel confident now that you know a bit more about SPAM. Who knew this cube of pink, deconstructed pig could be so versatile?

Contact Erika Chan at echan@dailycal.org.

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