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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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
“Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions, and more!” That’s the actual motto for the California Conservation Corps, the state program that puts …
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 …
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 …
Last month a parade drew over 80,000 people to the Sacramento Valley. Before any floats passed, people in colorful clothing and turbans sprinkled …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
You might expect the winners of a California high school culinary competition to come from one of the state's restaurant destinations like Los …
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 …
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 …
On this Day of Remembrance, here's a story about Japanese Americans in California. Japanese Americans have been particularly vocal in opposition to …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Making license plates is the stereotypical job for a prisoner, but there’s a group of inmates in the Central Valley have very different work. They supply milk to almost all the prisons in the state system. The low …
The thru-hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail start in Mexico, traversing 2650 miles into Canada. The lazier among us might have just read Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s PCT memoir. But the hikers, their toenails fall off, and …
At the beginning of September in 1965, one of the most significant movements in modern day labor history -- the Farmworker Movement -- began in California's Central Valley. You’ve probably heard of the United Farm …
When you camp in Yosemite and other parks with bears, you can’t just leave your food out on the picnic table or in your car overnight. Anything with a scent has to be stored in bear-proof containers: bear lockers for …
If you are driving along the striking Highway 395 in the Eastern Sierra, chances are you’ve come to fish for trout in one of the area’s alpine lakes. Fishing is synonymous with life in the communities that dot the …
Rosa Hernandez left Oaxaca when she was 20 to work in the fields in Madera, California. Now, she co-owns a restaurant, cooking the food of her homeland for the many indigenous Mexicans who live in the area. She did it, …
California grows a lot of rice, second only to the Mississippi Delta. But like a lot of agricultural development, rice cultivation took away a lot of …
The Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino is proof that sometimes a restaurant is more than just a restaurant. It’s the first stop in this new podcast: California Foodways. I'm Lisa Morehouse, and I'll be travelling county by …
California Foodways producer 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, …
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