"A CSK doesn't just deliver local, sustainable product, it provides you with a ready-to-eat meal." [Flickr: Neighborhood Notes] You try your best to be green, buying local when you can, recycling, conserving water, the list goes on. But when it comes to participating in a Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) share, you stop short. Unknown quantities of a random assortment of vegetables piling up on you week after week? Eeek. If this sounds like you, or maybe you don't like too cook or find it too time-consuming or too isolating, Community Supported Kitchens to the rescue! A Community Supported Kitchen (CSK) is a new idea to connect farmers and eaters, especially those eaters who wand to eat locally, but currently...
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Seven years and $30 million in the making, Berkeley Bowl West, a younger sibling of the more than 30-year-old Berkeley Bowl (what some call the independent grocery store Promised Land) in South Berkeley, California, is finally open. According to the blog Scavenging, the deli section "could outfit every picnic in the state, and "its 16 grocery aisles resemble airport runways (for small planes, but still)." Eventually, there will also be an adjoining cafe with made-to-order dishes from the wood-fired oven and rotisserie. Berkeley Bowl West 920 Heinz Avenue , Berkeley CA 94710 (at Eighth Street; map) 510-898-9555; berkeleybowl.com...
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Like novels, sandwiches get bragging rights when they are so thick, they make you stop and think, "wow, that might take you a while, but I bet it's good." At Berkeley's
Brazil Fresh Squeeze Café, the
veggie sandwich is four-inches thick, and that's only after squeezing it to clear the roof of your mouth
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This guy wants to be an everyman's Chez Panisse. How does he do it? --Making choices: he switched from Straus Family Creamery milk back to regular milk when he realized not enough people cared about the difference. --Wasting less: "Businesses in general and restaurants in particular are extremely wasteful," says Ross. --No tablecloths, less laundry, reducing the quantities used of bleach. --Occasionally losing money: "Muse has not broken even consistently," [Ross] says. "Quality is very important to me, and I keep ratcheting that up. Oftentimes the bottom line isn't there. It's not a great way of running a business." Sounds like a pretty cool guy. Here's an article on another one of his restaurants....
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