Felicia Friesema

Carrots are an easy crop for farmers with the land for them. They don't have the stigma of Brussels sprouts or the on-again-off-again iron taste that beets sometimes have to fight. And they've been lucky enough to dance in the culinary trio of mirepoix for hundreds of years, an unintended......

The springtime race to keep up with everything that's coming in season has only just begun, and we've already come out of the gate missing one of the most interesting avocados (not an oxymoron) of the season. You probably will not find this one at local markets until next season,......

On the southern side of the Caribbean, about 20 miles inland from the Venezuelan coastline, is a small farming town called Carabobo. There sits Hacienda de Cara Cara, a small farm and orchard where, 36 years ago, a chance mutation occurred between a couple of navel orange trees. If you......

Writing about the closure of a farm within city limits has echoes of microfiche readings from the 1920s when L.A. invented the suburbia that swallowed up our giant orange groves. One farm -- the Tom T. Ishibashi Farm in Torrance -- had managed to survive the evolution from rural to......

Dr. Seuss spent a lifetime weaving cunningly benign rhymes for children about the environment, the dangers of isolationism and materialism, racial equality and the arms race. But ask a kid (or most adults for that matter) what they remember most about Seuss and they're likely to zero in on the......

The King cake's been cut. And if there were beads involved, tuck them away. Remember, Fat Tuesday exists only because it is in balanced juxtaposition with the 40 days of Lent -- a time set aside for guilt, contemplation, fasting, sacrifice and service, depending on your flavor of spiritual commitment......

Umami hounds looking to plump up a meatless Monday often turn to mushrooms to bring the glutamates to the plate. The wild Black Trumpet mushroom -- trumpets des morts for the French (this becomes relevant in a minute) -- is the umami-est of them all, bringing smoke, earth and fruit......

The hustle and crowds of your local markets -- not to mention the hurly-burly nature of weigh-and-pay customer service -- can sometimes prohibit friendly catch-up and Q&A with your favorite local farmers. Touching base with them at the California Small Farms Conference (CSFC) Tasting Reception on March 4 at the......

The Meiwa and Nagami kumquats that fill the buckets and baskets at different tables at our markets this season (Walker Farms, Jeanne Davis and Mud Creek Ranch, to name a few) fill us with both happiness and dread, mirroring the contrasting sweet and sour flavor that brings us back every......