Food

When the facelift was announced for the iconic 1917 Grand Central Market cries of concern went up among the regulars (and the chattering class). Will they force out my beloved carniceria to make room for a yuppie oyster bar? Will a fancy cheese shop displace the cheap produce? Where will I get a burrito the size of my head?
You may have heard something along …

Prison pinch. The clock is ticking for Governor Jerry Brown: Federal judges have given Brown until midnight tonight to explain how the state will further reduce its prison population.
California has already released tens of thousands of inmates or transferred them to local jails as part of Brown’s realignment program. But the courts say California needs to shed another 9,000 inmates to insure that remaining …

Prison problems. California is going to need to find a place to put more than 3,000 inmates currently serving time at the Pleasant Valley and Avenal prisons. The federal official responsible for overseeing healthcare in state lockups says prisoners who are at high-risk for contracting valley fever will have to be housed elsewhere. That includes inmates with chronic illnesses, such as HIV infection, but …

The idea sounded simple enough: to feed the attendees of a festival with locally produced food. The people behind Uber Lebenskunst in Berlin took that very seriously, amassing their larder starting 15 months ahead of the festival date.
Meaning: They grew the sunflowers and reaped the seeds in order to make the oil.  Grew the rosehips to make the wine and then the vinegar. Ewes …

We’ve been eagerly following the Hunger Cycle, a series of nine plays to be commissioned and produced by Cornerstone Theater over six years—all in the service of shining a spotlight on some of the great food issues of our day: Hunger, and food equality.
Now, the latest installment is up, performed on the campus of schools that houses the Cocoanut Grove Theater (you know, where the Ambassador …

Where do you like to eat? Our friends over at Good Food asked their audience which side of town they preferred and what their favorite restaurants are. You can add yours, too!
Good Food jumped into the Eastside versus Westside debate too. It’s a timeless LA foodie argument. Who has it better? The West LA residents who live a stones throw from the latest gastropub? …

Gun dump. A pair of gun buyback events netted more than 1,500 firearms, including several dozen assault weapons. The number might have been even higher had the city not run out of gift cards. L.A. typically holds its gun buyback events in May, but they were moved up in hopes that collective anguish from the Newtown shootings would spur more people to give up …

Port dispute. Seven of the eight terminals at the Port of Los Angeles and several others at the Port of Long Beach are idle this morning. Longshoremen are honoring picket lines thrown up by about 70 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The clerical workers are involved in a two-and-a-half-year-old contract battle with APM Terminals, which operates most docks at the twin-port …

Defining marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court could jump into the fray over the same-sex marriage this week. The justices will consider several cases, including one stemming from Prop. 8, which outlawed gay marriage in California. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Proposition 8 earlier this year – saying that the 2008 ballot measure was unconstitutional because it took away an existing right, …

Happy Thanksgiving. From Skid Row to the San Fernando Valley, thousands of homeless people will get traditional Thanksgiving dinners today. Major League Baseball donated $10,000 to help feed up to 5,000 people at the annual Mozel Sanders Thanksgiving dinner at El Camino College’s Compton Center. The Laugh Factory in Hollywood will hold its 33rd annual free Thanksgiving Dinner, with comic entertainment to boot. L.A. …

Over at The New York Times, Mark Bittman says that we should stop wasting so much poorly cooked Turkey and focus more on sweet potatoes. And CNN has a cringe-worthy story about Twinkie-stuffed Turkey (video of the “Tur-twinkie”is here.)  ABC reports on the Butterball Hotline, because “talking turkey is serious business.” But not everyone eats the beloved Thanksgiving bird.
In fact, Which Way, LA? producer Evan George …

I just came home from the grocery store, where I picked up the turkey I’ll prepare and serve Thursday for a rag-tag group of friends, their family members, and friends.

Some people have had a rough year financially and otherwise; others of our guests are doing okay, or better than okay.  No one we know personally is starving or on the streets. But, you don’t …

Terror arrests. Four Southern California men have been charged with plotting to kill Americans overseas by joining al Qaeda and the Taliban. A federal complaint unsealed in Riverside says one-time Pomona resident Sohiel Omar Kabir traveled to Afghanistan in July to arrange for terror training. Kabir is an Afghan native and naturalized U.S. citizen. The 34-year-old served in the Air Force from 2000 to …

The last couple of years, we’ve all heard a lot (maybe too much) about Los Angeles’ hipster gourmet food trucks and how the trucks have made the city the tastemaker of the American street food scene.
But what’s gotten much less attention is L.A.’s other street food community, the thousands of mostly poor immigrants who sell food from sidewalk pushcarts and small portable kitchens around …

The failure of California to pass the GMO proposition is the least of the concerns of the millions of poor people who don’t get enough food every day, much less healthy food.
Cornerstone Theater’s latest production, “SEED: A Weird Act of Faith,” is the second of nine plays it’s committed to produce over the next six years about hunger and food inequity in our culture. …

How hot an issue are genetically-modified foods and the debate over Prop 37? We went to a local supermarket and talked with some shoppers to find out:
“It just seems like it’s a no-brainer,” said one shopper. “We need to know what’s in our food and make decisions based on the evidence that we just don’t know enough about GMO’s to expose ourselves and our …

For yesterday’s annual food edition, Mark Bittman, author of many cookbooks and the leading food writer for the New York Times Magazine, asked his readers what he should do. All they wanted, he found, was something on “big farming, small farming, sustainability, politics, poverty and, of course, truly delicious food.” He found it all in the same place: California’s Central Valley, running 450 miles, from Bakersfield up …

The public appetite for local produce is getting pretty ravenous these days. Farmer’s markets keep sprouting up all around L.A. (shout-out to the brand-new Motor Ave market in Palms!), and opportunities to order a box of produce delivered to your door are flowering like an orange tree in the California sun. Less than 20 years ago, there were 450 Community Supported Agriculture programs, also …

Here are some of the stories that KCRW will be following throughout the day…
Crowds of onlookers cheered as the Space Shuttle Endeavour rolled out of LAX early this morning atop its 160-wheel carrier on its way to Exposition Park. The shuttle is currently idling at La Tijera and Sepulveda Boulevards. It’ll get moving again about 1:30 this afternoon. Multiple street closures are planned along …

For the fourth year in a row, Care Harbor opened today at the LA Sports Arena. From now until Sunday, it will offer free medical treatments to almost 5000 people who are poor and uninsured. This year there’s a new wrinkle: they’ll hear how the state will be implementing the Affordable Care Act, who can qualify and how. Also, in a new boost for …