Felicia Friesema

Alex Weiser of Weiser Family Farms has become the go-to guy for tubers. Sure he has Bloomsdale spinach, Padron peppers, and beautiful baby Romanesco broccoli heads, but the man's claim to fame rests deep in loamy California soil. We're talking potatoes, and his devotion to them has enabled him to......

The California Institute of Technology, an institution not generally known for its harvests, celebrated two major ones last week. The first was the more celestial collection of images from Deep Impact's EPOXI mission, bringing us up close and personal with the business end of the Hartley 2 comet. The second......

Little Flower Candy Company owners Christine and Robert Moore have been dreaming a little bigger these days. Inspired by Robert's parents' 1947 San Francisco sandwich spot of the same name, they opened Moore's Delicatessen on October 4th in the civic center of Burbank (across the street from the police headquarters),......

It's not often that a pile of apples in a cardboard box turns heads. But if you're talking about the Arkansas Black, an 1800s heirloom from its namesake state, you'll be forgiven. Its mahogany to inky deep plum coloring makes it a striking standout at the markets this time of......

Local olive growers, or even farmers with just a few remnant olive trees here and there (they've been growing here since the 1800s), are banking on the do-it-yourself vibe in the local food movement (Artisanal LA, anyone?) and are increasingly providing raw-uncured olives for sale at the local markets. Multi-purpose......

Here in L.A., the dark red squares of dulce de membrillo (Mexican quince candy) are pretty commonplace, their intensely sweet and floral fragrance adding a seasonal exclamation point to autumn festivities and apple pies. But in its raw state, the quince is a little harder to find here in Southern......

On a trip to Los Angeles earlier this year, before all the Red O brouhaha and even before Red O itself, Rick Bayless tweeted his amazement at seeing so many different avocado varieties available at the farmers markets. Locals may have just politely nodded and moved on, but it really......

Oyster breakfasts at the Sunday Hollywood Farmers Market are now as normal as hot æbleskivers and menudo, thanks to the Carlsbad Aquafarms booth just north of the Selma and Ivar intersection. And up until recently, those expertly shucked bivalves were only out of the water for mere hours before you......

It's been a challenging season, with a long cool summer that decided to make up for lost time at the end, when record heat in L.A. and elsewhere managed to wreak havoc on not a few crops, depriving Silver Lakes Farms CSA members of their delicious micro-greens ("They got fried!!!"......

The demand for fresh, raw peanuts in the shell used to come largely from displaced southerners from both the U.S. and Vietnam, where boiled peanuts (or dau phon) are a treasured snack. East of the Mississippi, the annual peanut harvests prompt celebrations similar to Ventura's strawberries and Gilroy's garlic. They......