PODCAST · history
California Foodways
by Lisa Morehouse
For California Foodways, reporter Lisa Morehouse spends a lot of time in her car. She’s on a kind of mission: to travel to every county in the state, finding stories about food, agriculture, and -- most importantly -- the people that make both possible.
Episodes
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Chef Chu's: The family-owned restaurant that grew up with Silicon Valley
For more than ten years, I’ve been traveling all over California, reporting stories about food and farming from every county. Now, for the 58th and very last story in the series, I went back to where I grew up — Santa Clara County, to a special-occasion restaurant from my childhood: Chef Chu’s....
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Richmond's 'Minister of Food' Serves the Bay Area Southern BBQ, California Style
On a corner in Richmond, California, there’s a business that has celebrated the city’s Black history and Southern roots for 30 years: CJ's BBQ & Fish. Born and raised in Richmond, with a family that came from Arkansas to work in the shipyards, Charles Evans is at the center of it all.
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Whiskey distillery moves to site of West Coast's first naval base
Californians have made whiskey since the Gold Rush. Craft bourbon has been taking off in the last couple decades -- with as many as 150 distilleries in the state. I stumbled upon a distillery’s new home in the North Bay that’s producing whiskey at a location where people used to make something...
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While the Bay Area sleeps, the Oakland Produce Market bustles with life
When most of California is asleep, a few square blocks on the edge of Oakland’s Jack London Square come alive with people, produce and machinery. It’s the Oakland Produce Market, and it’s been supplying grocers and restaurants for more than 100 years, despite fears that it might not survive.
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Home on the Grange: In the Anderson Valley, a story of how hippies, old-timers connected
Grange halls have been around for more than 150 years — the Grange began as a fraternal organization for farmers. Even though farming — and Grange membership — are down to a fraction of what they were decades ago, many rural towns still rely on Grange halls as community centers. In the Anderson...
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Market a destination for food, faith, and Ramadan staples
During the holy month of Ramadan, while fasting is important, so is food. And during Ramadan, all across the state, markets are central. Not only do they supply the ingredients for the holiday, they also connect people from all ethnicities who follow Islam. One such place is Besan’s International...
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The railroad's surprising impact on food and civil rights in California
A lot of California kids learn about the transcontinental railroad in 4th grade, about the "Big Four" tycoons, and the mostly Chinese laborers who laid track through the rugged Sierra Nevada. But some of this history can get overlooked, like how the railroad – and its connection to food – shaped...
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Eastern Sierra town home to destination restaurant
There's a town in the Owens Valley, in the Eastern Sierra, called Independence. Population: 600. It's home to a destination restaurant, the Still Life Cafe. It's been a local favorite for nearly 30 years, and hikers heading down Mt. Whitney or skiers on their way to Mammoth tell their friends…
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A temple for cheese in the North Bay, inspired by classical music
Cheese wasn’t part of Soyoung Scanlan's early life, growing up in South Korea. Now, she's one of California's most celebrated cheese makers. Part of her inspiration? Classical music. Every cheese Soyoung has made for 25 years has a musical name and connection.
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Divers keep ag water flowing
Hundreds of miles from the ocean, divers don wetsuits, helmets, communication lines, and four air supply systems, and submerge into the Sacramento River. They're here to do annual maintenance at an irrigation pump. Picture contractors and construction workers, just under water. Anywhere there are...
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The rich food traditions at Stockton's Angel Cruz Park
Along the southern end of Stockton's Angel Cruz Park the air is filled with wafts of smoke, the smell of grilled meats and karaoke tracks booming out of speakers. For more than 30 years, this has been a destination for made-to-order dishes created by local food vendors, many of whom are Hmong and...
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The Often-Invisible Work of a Hollywood Food Stylist
Hollywood writers and actors are on strike, asking for transparency, fair pay, and protection from AI. They're not the only ones impacted by labor disputes. In this story, I share the reporting I did before the strikes began, to learn more about the often-invisible work of a Hollywood food stylist.
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Farming With Ghosts: Mas Masumoto and an uncovered family secret
On his family’s organic peach, nectarine and grape farm south of Fresno, California, David "Mas" Masumoto points out pruning scars from long-time workers, and walks down rows of trees he planted with his father. He says the labor and lessons of his ancestors are in the soil and the grapevines and...
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Cafeteria Cook Makes Gourmet Dishes Inspired by Palauan Childhood
For California Foodways, I've been traveling the state, interviewing farmers, restaurant owners, people who deliver food to the hungry, make frozen burritos, and grow coffee. But I realized that, even though there are so many cafeterias in our state -- at tech companies and prisons and hospitals…
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Hot temperatures, and a hot real estate market, threaten the Ojai Pixie tangerine
Ojai’s main street is charming, boasting tile roofs and Spanish-revival architecture. On weekends, crowds of the bohemian chic spill out of restaurants, boutiques and art galleries in the picturesque Ventura County town surrounded by orchards. The valley’s climate has been ideal for citrus, but...
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How a Hmong Market in Yuba County Became 'Everybody's Store'
On the edge of the town of Marysville in Yuba County, there’s market with an inventory that would rival Asian grocery stories in big cities. In the back corner, you’ll find a small, bustling kitchen in the back corner. That’s where I became a fan of the dishes made here, and the woman behind them.
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'We Just Have Faith': Gold Country Jewish Community Strives to Connect Through COVID
In February 2020, I went to Sonora to join the Mother Lode Jewish Community in their Tu BiShvat celebration, honoring trees and the harvest. Just weeks later, the Covid pandemic would stop in-person gatherings like these, and create tensions so many communities are still navigating. So I…
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Sierra Cattlewomen
There are plenty of people who -- in order to pursue their passions -- have jobs on the side to support themselves. It’s pretty common to hear about a novelist who does PR, an actor waiting tables. But a rancher? For this story we meet a mother and daughter in Sierra County whose supplemental…
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The Abbey of New Clairvaux: Wine in the Wilderness
The soil in Tehama County is unfit, and the temperatures are all wrong, but the monks at the Abbey of New Clairvaux are still trying to make wine here. It’s part of their ancestry. Cistercian monks have made wine in Europe since the 12th century. In California, they’re turning to those traditions...
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Gold Rush Status Meal: The Hangtown Fry
If you want to recreate the Gold Rush experience — without all the terrible conditions — you can pan for gold, even descend into mines. In a few places, you can even eat the most prized meal of the Gold Rush, with a kind of bizarre combination of ingredients. That’s what I went off to El Dorado...
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Legalizing Cannabis Impacts Food and Farming
When cannabis was 100% illegal, the price per pound was high. Since 2016, when Californians passed Prop 64 legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, the economy in the northern part of the state has been in limbo, impacting far more than the cannabis industry.
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Coffee Farms? In California?
The most commonly traded commodity in the world is oil. What comes in second? Coffee! It’s been grown and loved since at least the 13th century in places like Indonesia, Ethiopia and Central and South America. As a serious fungus threatens the crop world-wide, scientists are mapping the coffee...
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Fish Blood in Their Veins -- But Few Salmon In Their River
Up in far northern California, where the Klamath River meets the Pacific Ocean, this year’s drought is making a bad situation there even worse. Since early May, baby salmon have been dying from a warm-water disease. A mass death of juveniles, like this, means they won’t make it to the ocean and…
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Nuts for Modesto: Baseball, Religion, and a Land-Use Fight
So what do baseball, a little-known religious group and a land-use fight have in common? If you’re in Stanislaus County, the answer is: nuts. Almonds are the county’s top crop, bringing in a record-breaking $1.125 billion in gross income in 2013. Walnuts came in third (after the county’s other...
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Farmers' Secret Allies: Birds
Maybe you’re one of the people who started noticing birds more during the pandemic. A lot of us spent time in our yards, or looking out windows, seeing these creatures in a new way. Even though we’re noticing them more, there are fewer birds now than there were 50 years ago. So when I found out...
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An Oasis for Date Palms, Not For Their Workers
It’s said that date palm trees want their feet in water, and their heads in fire. It makes sense, then that more than 90% of the dates harvested in the U.S. grow in California’s Eastern Coachella Valley. Irrigation water’s pumped here from the Colorado River, and summer temperatures can top 120...
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From Mistake to Legendary Dish: Napa's Malfatti
Tourists to the Napa Valley may visit their favorite exclusive wineries and fine dining restaurants. But locals love a more humble dish called malfatti. It’s a little spinach and cheese dumpling, shaped like a pinky finger and smothered in sauce. The most famous malfatti in the region is found in...
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A Sit-Down Dinner for Military Families
Members of the military are often deployed or stationed far away from their extended families. When military families make friends, they often move. Those are facts of life for many military families in many military towns. There’s a place in San Diego, though, where active duty service members,...
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In Isolated Trinity County, This Man is a Food Lifeline
Trinity County is one of those places that doesn’t get in the news much, unless it’s for marijuana or wildfires. It’s a beautiful, remote, rural part of northern California. It’s also one of the state’s most food insecure places, where many people don’t know where their next meal is coming from.…
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A Frozen Burrito Legacy in the Central Valley
For this story, I visited a factory, a kind of factory I'd never seen before. I got suited up in safety gear -- smock, rubber gloves, a hair net -- not to protect me, but to protect the product made here. It's in almost every convenience store, college dorm, school cafeteria, and in thousands of...
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Dry Farming During Drought
Are you worried about water cutbacks during this dry year? Try farming…without irrigation, relying only on rainwater. But lots of crops like wheat and grapes are “dry farmed” across the state. There are tomatoes on the Central Coast, squash in Humboldt, and walnuts in San Luis Obispo County…
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Spreckles: Farmworker Housing and a Changing Company Town
If you’ve read your John Steinbeck and listened to your Merle Haggard, or if you grew up in a farmworker family, you know that farm laborers in California have struggled to find decent housing for decades. Except in a few cases, growers have no legal obligation to house employees, and there’s not…
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Amigo Bob: Tree Hunter
Who doesn’t like a treasure hunt? The search for something mysterious and valuable, with just a few clues to guide you…it’s pretty irresistible. For this episode, I take you back a few years to introduce you to a Nevada County man who spent the last years of his life on a hunt for remnants of the...
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Remembering A Few Pioneers in California Agriculture
I've met some amazing people reporting for California Foodways. At the end of 2020, I learned that some of those people passed away. KQED's California Report Magazine invited me to talk with host Sasha Khokha about three food pioneers, and remind us of their legacies.
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Humble Burger Helped Fuel the Building of Shasta Dam
At Damburger in Redding, each burger patty is so thin, it gets crispy on the edges. It's never, ever served with a tomato. The Damburger original’s a signature item the burger joint's been making since the 1930s, when it helped fuel one of the most impactful engineering feats in the state’s…
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Feeding the Trailblazers
“Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions, and more!” That’s the actual motto for the California Conservation Corps, the state program that puts young adults to work outdoors. In Marin County, they have the tough job of building and maintaining world-class trails. I spent a rainy night with the...
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Home Baked: One Woman's Subversive Response to the AIDS Crisis
The coronavirus brings back memories of another public health crisis, where the federal government was slow to respond and communities had to take care of each other: the AIDS epidemic. One woman who became an unexpected caregiver is Meridy Volz. Starting in the 1970s, she ran a bakery called...
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After Devastating Fire, Farmers and Ranchers Heal Soil, Community
So far this year, wildfires have burned more than 4 million acres in California. That’s more than double the previous record. I thought it might be a good time to hear a story I reported from Calaveras County. In 2015, after it was devastated by the Butte Fire, a group of farmers and ranchers...
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Sikh Festival Reminder of Century-Old Farming History
Last month a parade drew over 80,000 people to the Sacramento Valley. Before any floats passed, people in colorful clothing and turbans sprinkled water on the street and swept the concrete, cleansing the route. They were celebrating a holiday of the Sikh faith: the 500-year old religion from...
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Trans Man Finds -- and Creates -- Refuge in Family's Small-Town Cafe
Jackson is a Gold Rush-era town with quaint brick buildings on its Main Street, and a reputation as the last of its kind to get rid of brothels and gaming halls. It’s pretty quiet, now, except when you walk into Rosebud's Cafe. It’s a place that shouts its values from its walls: bright green…
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Cherries: A "Canary in a Coalmine" for Ag and Climate Change
There’s just something about cherries. They’re small, sweet and crunchy, with an early harvest that tells us summer’s coming. Right now, though, this beloved fruit is a bit of a canary in a coal mine. Since the drought, experts have looked to cherry harvests for warnings about climate change and...
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Lynda Trang Dai Goes From Pop Star To Sandwich Maven
What do Jimmy Buffett, Jay-Z and Kenny Rogers have in common? They’ve all parlayed their fame to sell food, in restaurants and chains. In Orange County, there’s a banh mi sandwich shop run by Lynda Trang Dai, a Vietnamese pop star who’s as comfortable behind the stove as she is behind the...
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"Chasing the Burn" For Morel Mushrooms
The Valley Fire that hit Lake County in September, 2015 was one of the most destructive in California history. The hills here, once thick with pines and firs, now look like a moonscape with trees. This is just the environment that draws mushroom hunters who ‘chase the burns' in search of the…
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A Tiny, Rural High School Wins Top Culinary Prize
You might expect the winners of a California high school culinary competition to come from one of the state's restaurant destinations like Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Sonoma County. In March of 2017, though, top prize went to tiny Greenville High School in Plumas County.
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Eating Chinese Food On The US/Mexico Border
If you ask people in the city of Mexicali, Mexico about their most notable regional cuisine, they won’t say street tacos or mole, They’ll say Chinese food. Just north of the border in Imperial County, the population’s mostly Latino, but Chinese restaurants are super popular, too. I went to…
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Nancy's Airport Cafe
Between Sacramento and Redding, Highway 5 cuts through the middle of rice country. In the town of Willows, right next to rice fields, there's a one-of-a-kind restaurant that's popular with travelers, farmers, truckers, and pilots: Nancy's Airport Cafe.
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Farming Behind Barbed Wire Fences: Japanese Americans Remember WWII Incarceration
On this Day of Remembrance, here's a story about Japanese Americans in California. Japanese Americans have been particularly vocal in opposition to President Trump proposed Muslim ban and Muslim registry. They have long memories of being incarcerated during World War II in what were called...
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Beef Is Much More Than "What's For Dinner" At This Northern California Ranch
Jim and Mary Rickert came together because of cows. They met and fell in love at Cal Poly. Within a decade, they were managing a ranch just below the Oregon border in Siskiyou County. It was a struggle. But their lives -- and the business -- changed when they got a really weird offer, and they…
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Invasive 20-lb Rodent Could Wreak Havoc on Ca Ag
Merced County is California’s sweet potato capital. In this story, co-reporter Angela Johnston and I meet a sweet potato farming family that’s facing a crisis that could wreak havoc on the entire agricultural industry. It weighs 20-pounds, has orange bucked teeth, and can eat a quarter of its…
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A California Tribe Bets on Olive Oil
The Capay Valley is pretty serene, except for the cacophony inside its most lucrative business: the Cache Creek Casino. Up to 2,000 visitors a night swell the valley’s population and traffic, causing tension between local farmers and the tiny tribe that runs it. In this story we ask: do farming…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
For California Foodways, reporter Lisa Morehouse spends a lot of time in her car. She’s on a kind of mission: to travel to every county in the state, finding stories about food, agriculture, and -- most importantly -- the people that make both possible.
HOSTED BY
Lisa Morehouse
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does California Foodways have?
California Foodways currently has 50 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is California Foodways about?
For California Foodways, reporter Lisa Morehouse spends a lot of time in her car. She’s on a kind of mission: to travel to every county in the state, finding stories about food, agriculture, and -- most importantly -- the people that make both possible.
How often does California Foodways release new episodes?
California Foodways has 50 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to California Foodways?
You can listen to California Foodways on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts California Foodways?
California Foodways is created and hosted by Lisa Morehouse.
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