Felicia Friesema

Are you ready for your Trese Klase? Roughly translated to "13 types," the annual new year's practice in the Philippines requires collecting 13 different types of round fruit -- one for each month of the new year plus one in the next -- and putting them on the family table......

The acorn-shaped Tamopan persimmon is being harvested from Mud Creek Ranch's five trees this month. More commonly available in Asia, specifically its native China, the Tamopan lives between two worlds. It grows large and oblate like fuyu type persimmons, but if you try to eat it like one you'll get......

Pipicha, the spindly Oaxacan herb with twiggy pine needle-like leaves, isn't an easy find. The handful we managed to procure from Kenter Canyon Farms was tucked behind a mountain of comparatively lush Italian flat leafed parsley. The distinctive purple pod-flowers were what caught our attention. But it's all about those......

The long slow grow (60+ days) for this season's Spanish black radishes has finally come to harvest. The sooty looking root vegetable's flavor echoes the exterior scorched look, packing enough heat to make a baby cry. It's not quite wasabi, but it'd be a piquant partner to any winter seafood......

With the establishment the Master Food Preserver program here in L.A. earlier this year, chances are there are a few budding, or even master, food preservers on your shopping list. And it might be tempting to go out and get them a Ball canning kit and call it a day......

The one and only still fully powered building in the sleepy Northeast L.A. neighborhood of Hermon (next to Highland Park) belongs to our mensch of the year, Jon Murga, President of Fresco Community Market, who this week is offering free refrigerated and frozen food storage to local residents who lost......

Cabbage is fucking sexy. So says Facebook. The Amateur Gourmet and the Rosati Family Winery in Mendocino concur. It's easy to agree, thus elevating this once lowly, leafy brassica from a dense vegetal bowling ball to a wintertime celebration. Cabbage doesn't unseat the fig from the top of the sexy......

Thanksgiving isn't so much an eating holiday as it is a shopping holiday. Ask any of the farmers market vendors you frequent. But fresh green herbs are sometimes a sad afterthought on party menus. A shame really. Some thoughtful local farmers put extra care into growing beautifully lush local herbs......

After reading Beth Barrett's piece about farmers markets this week, it might be tempting to hang up the locavore hat and head out for an angsty and cathartic mouthful at the local McDonald's. We're envisioning an army of market goers asking to see papers at this coming weekend's markets. This......

Our early season rainstorms have yielded two predictable outcomes: angsty tweets from farmers market vendors trying desperately to keep self, customers and produce dry, and a splendid sprouting of mud puppies, a.k.a. California chanterelles, at local farms. California is the one state currently blessed with its own species name for......