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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 lakes and rivers, anywhere we've manipulated water, …

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 Cambodian immigrants. Locals argue over who has the …

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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 orchards, and he’s passing these on to the next gene…

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 -- I'd never reported on one. So in this story, I pro…

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 it’s changing—getting windier, drier, and hotter. Some…

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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 returned, to see how the people I met are trying to connect.…

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 work has helped keep the family in the beef business.…

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 to try to survive in the 21st. The monks of New Clai…

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 County in search of the Hangtown Fry.…

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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 genome to learn more about this plant. But what role do…

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 lay their eggs, and won’t make it back up the Klamath …

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 powerhouse, dairy). Nuts aren’t just an economic driver…

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 about farmers who are helping birds, and some new rese…

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 degrees. I spent some time in the Eastern Coachella Va…

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 the back of Val’s Liquor in the city of Napa. The st…

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, their spouses and kids can always share a meal with t…

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. In this story, I join the county's food bank director…

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 family freezers around the country: the frozen burrit…

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, which is where we go for this story about dry farming adv…

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 a lot of state and federal money earmarked for farmw…

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 Gold Rush…just not the kind you might expect.…

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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 history — the Shasta Dam — by nourishing the workers who c…

“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 "Cs" to learn about the role food plays for a crew of …

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 Sticky Fingers Brownies. "The business changed," Meridy …

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 worked to rehabilitate their land... and their community…

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 India's Punjab region. This gathering in Yuba City is the…

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 paint, huge family portraits, and tons of posters and fly…

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 its impact on future tree crops.…

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 microphone.…

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 black morel mushrooms that grow in the springtime after a…

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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 discover the history behind some dishes you won’t find anyw…

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.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 “relocation” or “internment camps” over 75 years ago. For t…

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 said yes.…

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 body weight a day.…

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 and gambling mix?…

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 hourly wages may shock some people on the outside, but for this story I talked to inmates who say the job gives them something else.…

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 their feet can swell whole sizes. They say the only thing they talk about more than their feet is food.…

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 Workers and know the name Cesar Chavez, but before he became the embodiment of the strike and international boycott, a small group of Fi…

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 car-campers, bear canisters for backpackers. Along with reporter Marissa Ortega-Welch, I found out: this problem of bears wanting to …

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 highway, and it’s responsible for luring nearly half of all tourists to Inyo and Mono counties. But there’s almost nothing natural about…

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, she says, through inter-ethnic friendships and connections.Bởi Lisa Morehouse

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 habitat for native wildlife, including key resting spots for migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway. In this episode, I follow up on stories I heard about some strange bedfellows working to reverse …

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 county, reporting on people and places at the intersection of food and culture and history and economy. Places like the Mitla Cafe. F…