Hello Friends,

During the pandemic I started receiving monthly missives sent out by Trisha Cole. On a nearly poster-sized sheet of paper were her handwritten and illustrated thoughts of being with family and friends, along with recipes, gardening tips, and more. Now there is a book which is many things, a remembrance of a historic time in our recent collective history; a cookbook; and a manual of how-to's on topics ranging from car camping to throwing a party. It is filled with recipes, poems, games, inspirational quotes, travel tips, and more. The lack of communal societal recognition of those early pandemic days doesn't reflect well on us. This book celebrates the small wins of home and family life that just might be a guide to how we get through these newly difficult times. It's Life at the Dumpling.

I'm leaving mid-week for Oregon, first to Oregon City to visit with a dear friend. Then the two of us are driving to the Oregon coast to stay with my cousin, who seeks shelter there each summer from blazing Arizona heat. Weather predictions are low 50s to mid-60s. What bliss! Looking forward to a week of cooking and laughing to reinvigorate me.

Speaking of reinvigoration, over a decade ago, one of my closest friends bought a Costa Rica beach shack in an idyllic spot. She recently spent over a year completely rebuilding it into a beautiful and comfortable getaway. Her property sits at the mouth of the Nosara River where it meets the Pacific Ocean. You can sit on your couch or bob in the pool and watch magnificent sunsets as the monkeys frolic overhead. But the best part of the experience is my friend Jill. Take a look.

Be strong and help how you can.

Evan

The Week's Dining Highlights from the GF Team

From Evan: Host of Good Food.
A dear friend is moving to Europe, so I thought I would have her over for a market-driven California dinner. I bought everything earlier in the day at the Sunday Hollywood Farmers Market. We had corn cut off the cob sautéed in butter and a gorgeous yellow tomato from Vang Farming Ventures; Jimmy Nardello frying peppers, simply fried in olive oil, and roasted baby potatoes from Weiser, green beans braised with olive oil, tomato and onion, a Reed avocado from JJ's Lone Daughter Ranch. To finish –– and unphotographed –– was a stellar melon from Weiser. This summer's must-eat.

From Gillian: Supervising Producer of Good Food and voice of the market report.
A cup of Double 8 Dairy's buffalo milk soft serve topped with olive oil and sea salt at Palace Market in Point Reyes. The buffalo milk has a higher fat content than cow's milk, giving the soft serve a richness akin to buttercream frosting. Wowza. 

From Laryl: Senior Director of Good Food.  
The Godmother with hot peppers from the reopened Bay Cities, on a sailboat, in the middle of the ocean.

From Elina: Digital Producer of Good Food. 
The spumoni at Scarantino's, an old school, red-sauce Italian restaurant in Glendale, is maybe the best spumoni I've ever had! They tell me they get it from Brothers Desserts in Orange County. If you eat here, don’t skip dessert!

The Louvre in Paris is the biggest and most visited museum in the world. It has 400 rooms. According to writer and journalist Elaine Sciolino, it would require 18,000 steps to walk through all of them. Of course, you should see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, but in Adventures in the Louvre: How to Fall in Love with the World’s Greatest Museum, she invites us to see the museum through my favorite lens — food.

"For most Americans, the 400,000 tons of chemicals used to kill weeds, bugs, and fungi each year are invisible," writes journalist Lisa Held. But these pesticides have profound impacts on every part of our food chain. 

Imagine telling a depressed farmer who feels like he's in a rut to go out on his farm, find a rut and sit in it for awhile to get a different perspective on his relationship to the land. Kaila Anderson, who grew up on a small, 160-acre farm in northeast Kansas, wanted to do something to help. Exploring the idea that stress for farmers is deeply intertwined with the land, she developed a tool — the LandLogic Model — to treat depression, anxiety and other emotional issues in farmers. The idea is to connect mental health to identity.

Remember during the pandemic when we met strangers on street corners to pick up an order of ice cream or enchiladas? You can pre-order and pick up specialty mangos from Omar Vaid, a man who didn't set out to be a mango dealer. Selling Pakistani mangoes to the diaspora in Southern California was supposed to be his side hustle. But even at $40 for a box, business is booming. Omar is our guest on this week's In The Weeds.

Southern California has plenty of celebrity chefs but Alex Weiser is the closest thing we have to a celebrity farmer. Throughout the year, he grows 15 kinds of melons at Weiser Family Farms in SoCal. I picked up three varieties at the Hollywood market last week and I'm here to tell you they make supermarket melons taste like cardboard in comparison. Do yourself a favor and go get a couple. Here's a video of Alex explaining a few varieties.