18 minute read
EDIBLE NOTABLES
EDIBLE NOTABLES MIRACAL BREAD
When Plan B means big flavor bread without the brick and mortar
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BY ANINA MARCUS PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL TROUTMAN
Huy Vu, baker and owner-operator of Miracal Bread, likes to jokingly refer to his sourdough as “the new Wonder bread.” Even though its name Miracal was mistakenly misspelled, the bread is definitely a wonder; it is nothing short of “mira-calous” with big bursts of flavor in a 1½ pound loaf and a top crust the color of roasted chestnuts.
On any given Tuesday you can find Vu, signature cargo pants, tie-dyed T-shirt and sandals, at the Alvarado Street farmers market selling his breads—pecan brown sugar with lemon zest, blue corn, rye and rosemary, chicharron, jalapeño and Cheddar and his most popular variety: garlic, sundried tomato and mozzarella. His secret: minced fresh garlic, sautéed in butter. Vu is all about the endless possibilities of ingredients.
“I get bored easily,” he admits and then adds, “Maybe that’s why I love doing this.”
You have to love it when you are the one-man-band of bread: baker, buyer, dishwasher and marketer.
Bread maker and pickleball player Huy Vu bakes all his “fully-loaded” loaves three at a time in his home kitchen for two or three farmers markets a week.
Vu is always on the move. Even when he is standing still, he rocks back and forth, or shifts side to side, or cracks his knuckles as if something is about to begin. So it is really no surprise that this whole thing started at one of his favorite hangouts: the Morris Dill Tennis Courts in Pacific Grove, where he loves to play pickleball. It’s a far cry from the office job he trained for.
You can blame it on the recession of 2011, but a bachelor’s degree in economics and accounting from UC Santa Barbara landed him nowhere. Vu quickly found out he didn’t like the field. “Numbers can change really quickly according to what your bosses tell you and no one was hiring anyway,” he says.
When Vu moved back to the Monterey Peninsula, he got a job at English Ales Brewery in Marina but this still did not satisfy his restlessness or creativity. He enjoyed the product, but not the production line aspect. Yet the idea of breadmaking was born while hanging around all that live yeast action. He watched a few YouTube videos and a friend lent him the book Flour Salt Water Yeast by Ken Forkish. He says he learns best by doing and watching, not reading, and admits somewhat reluctantly that he still does not own one single book on baking.
After taking a year off and exploring his birthplace of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where his parents still keep his childhood home (Vu calls the city “capitalism on steroids”), he returned to California in 2020, with a mindset to do sourdough. At that time, the full tilt force of COVID-19 had just begun and lockdown was everywhere. As it turned out, so was sourdough baking! All of a sudden everyone was doing it.
Vu started back playing pickleball at the Pacific Grove courts and casually mentioned to a friend that he was searching for an established sourdough starter to start his own baking project. Through a stroke of good luck, the friend hooked him up with Dario Aguirre, the baker at Claudio’s Specialty Breads, who gave Vu his very own sourdough starter. This sent him into a state of turbo-charged baking while his hungry, happy, carb-craving pickleball friends got all the free samples.
Unlike the hollow crusty rolls of Vietnam, which serve as a vehicle for stuffings such as cilantro, jalapeño, steamed ham or other dried meat, Vu wanted to come up with an already “fully loaded bread” as he describes it, “more moisture with a doughy interior with fillings baked in.” One of his most recent varieties contains pine nuts, smoked
paprika and anchovy-stuffed olives. He pulls the dough into a circle, careful to keep the thickness the same all the way around, then pats the fillings gently down into the dough, quickly gathers up the corners and turns it over, tucking in and rotating the dough to shape it into a boule or a ball.
Vu currently bakes out of his house (using a cottage food permit) and the day I visited, he was ready to put the last eight or nine loaves in the oven. He started the night before at 5pm by mixing the dough and then putting it to rest in the fridge overnight for the first phase of “proofing,” which allows acids to form and gives it the characteristic sour taste. At 5am the next morning, he punches down the dough, adds the fillings and then lets the dough rest for the second proofing. “Yes it’s a long day,” Vu says as he puts his soft white dough mounds in cast iron pans and into a 550° F oven, with another cast iron pan placed on top as a cover. “I’m all about the hand made, not the machine made,” he says, and hands on it is, especially when the oven can only hold three loaves at a time.
The breads bake 20 minutes, but the last six to 12 minutes are the most crucial for getting the deep rich chestnut color on top.
“I gave up on a timer, but have been training my nose to pick up the scent when the bread is done. I’m getting pretty good at it. After all, I know people eat with their eyes too, so I have to stay close to the loaves to get the color and smell I want,” he says.
Vu has only been baking since March of this year, but is now selling at both the Alvarado Street and Marina farmers markets, as well as at the Oldtown Salinas market occasionally.
As he loads his freshly baked bread (a total of 42 loaves, which will sell out well before the farmers market closes), Vu tells me, “I’m still in the experimental phase. A few weeks ago I brought a bread to market which I called the McFlurry—crumbled Oreo cookies soaked in condensed milk.” He gestures thumbs down. “That did not work at all, but I’m still enjoying the work. Just still not ready for the brick and mortar. How could I run off for three or four hours of pickleball?” he reasons and then adds somewhat hesitantly, “And oh yeah…one other thing. I still have not figured out the sleep part.”
Miracal Bread
instagram.com/miracalbread831
Anina Marcus works as a physical therapist in her day job, helping people get back on their feet. When not doing that, she is thinking about what to make for dinner, perfecting the ears on her sourdough breads and trying to find enough time in the day to daydream. She can be reached at aninamar12@gmail.com.
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EDIBLE NOTABLES SOWING CHANGE
Addressing food insecurity head on at Esperanza Community Farms
BY ASHLEY OWEN PHOTOGRAPHY BY CRYSTAL BIRNS
Hermelinda Vasquez harvests a crate of cauliflower, on the opposite page. On this page some of the farm bounty and volunteers, including Mireya Gomez-Contreras holding romanesco and Ana Rasmussen with arms full of green beans.
Kids and teens discovered with delight that the green tufts at their feet were not weeds but carrots, while others found out how to pick the ripest corn on towering stalks at Esperanza Community Farms’ annual u-pick event in Watsonville. The farm’s rolling three-acre plot is fertile ground for growing vegetables, fruits and a local food movement.
“It’s one of the satisfactions of agriculture, to see the people and show them how the products grow, where they come from, what we do for the plants,” says Guillermo Lazaro, co-leader of the farm. “It is a wonderful experience to see the diversity of the community; to see them happy, it makes me happy.”
The project promotes healthy eating and economic justice by providing affordable organic produce to under-resourced families in the Pajaro Valley. It was started in 2017 by Santiago Moreira, a farmworker, his daughter Candy Moreira, a nurse, and Ana Rasmussen, a local social and environmental activist. Initially the farm was supported by a two-year grant from the Central California Alliance for Health (CCAH) and designed in partnership with the county clinic in Watsonville to ensure children on the diabetes to obesity spectrum, and their families, had consistent access to farm-fresh produce.
“Food insecurity was the reason the program was started,” says Mireya Gomez-Contreras, who was one of the farm’s first CSA members before joining the organization in 2019 as co-leader. “They came at this problem with the intention to ensure that families that are low income had access to nutritious local organic food. It was very literal. We need to grow the food, package the food and take the food to them.”
A year into operations, the team unexpectedly lost the land it was renting, which meant the farm no longer qualified for the grant and everything came to a halt. Fortunately, the CCAH agreed to re-award the funds if Esperanza secured new land.
After a year of hibernation, the founding team was ready to re-establish the program and recruited Gomez-Contreras to make it happen. She brought passion and extensive experience with nonprofits and systems change, as well as farming and social justice. Once the land on Lee Road was secured, they needed to get operations up and running and hired Lazaro, a lifelong farmworker newly trained and certified in organic farming practices through the four-year program at the Agriculture & Land-based Training Association (ALBA) in Salinas.
“My whole life I was farming, but I got into how to grow more natural,” he says. “It’s not just about growing produce; it is so many other things, taking care of the environment especially.”
Beginning with 16 families served in the first year, the farm has grown large enough to provide produce for more than 100 food-insecure families or individuals and 50 other CSA members who simply want to support the project. Though it expanded its reach, Esperanza still gets food to those who need it most—offering CSA delivery and accepting SNAP benefits, which is rare in most CSA programs.
“At the end of the day, we come from this community,” says Gomez-Contreras. “Because everyone on the team comes from that experience, that’s really foundational. It also gives us the ability to connect with our members.”
After a small, impromptu student tour in 2021, Gomez-Contreras realized that education was another avenue to support the organization’s mission. Within a few months the farm hosted more students from more districts around the region, involving them in planting, weeding and other farm tasks. During a tour with Pajaro Valley High School in fall 2021, the students started saying, “We want to eat this,” and asking, “Why can’t we eat this at our school?” From those remarks sprouted an idea to achieve just that: serve locally grown, farm-fresh salads at the high school, conveniently located a half-mile from the farm.
Last spring Gomez-Contreras and a core group of PV high schoolers held weekly meetings to develop the program, and once Gomez-Contreras secured funding from a local donor the Farm 2 Cafeteria (F2C) pilot launched for summer school. Student volunteers helped harvest vegetables and prep salads in the cafeteria for daily lunches, and as more students got involved in the program over the summer, enthusiasm spread. As a result, F2C
Farm manager Guillermo Lazaro (top left opposite page) trained at ALBA in Salinas and passes along some of his knowledge to youth volunteers during the summer months.
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Student volunteers instigated the farmto-cafeteria program providing salads and fresh vegetables to the lunchroom at nearby Pajaro Valley High School.
has continued during the school year— and expanded to trial runs at three other schools in the district.
“Because this community is so agricultural and so many people work in that industry, I think there’s extra pride in knowing it’s local and a lot of extra love goes into these salads,” says Jeanie Aitken, the food and nutrition services director at Pajaro Valley Unified School District. “I’m super excited that Mireya has the vision and drive to do this. She supports so many people in the community through Esperanza, and it’s wonderful that she’s expanding into the school environment and what’s possible. We’re just trying to pave the way and figure out how to do it.”
Social justice work is not easy but the Esperanza Community Farms team remains committed, motivated by the wins they’ve had so far and humbled by the challenges they’ve faced.
“I grew up my whole life as a farmer but when I came to this program, it was totally different. We never stop learning here,” says Lazaro. “That’s why we invite our community, so they can see and learn where the food comes from. To try to connect more people as a community and participate in this, that’s the mission. This is what Esperanza is.”
Esperanza Community Farms
275 Lee Road, Watsonville esperanzacommunityfarms.org
Ashley Owen is a writer and recent Massachusetts transplant. Her passion for learning about local food is only overshadowed by her passion for writing about it. Or maybe eating it. Safe to say, she is a lover of food and words, and also driving very fast in the left lane.
Monty McKissock makes sure customers feel welcome at his bar.
EDIBLE NOTABLES CABIN FEVER
For 86 years, Felton’s only dedicated bar has been serving the community in more ways than one
BY LAUREL MILLER PHOTOGRAPHY BY GENEVA RICO
Does a bar sit in the woods? In this instance, the bar in question—Monty’s Log Cabin—really is on the edge of the forest, just across the road from Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park on Highway 9. The 86-year-old roadside tavern was designated a historic landmark in 2007, but its role in the community goes far beyond architectural relevance and serving alcohol.
The tavern’s slogan, “Does a bar sit in the woods?” was coined by a former bartender.
Ask any of the longtime patrons about Monty’s and the word “family” is sure to come up. Longtime proprietor Monty McKissock says he considers his staff and regulars members of an extended clan. Like so many neighborhood bars, his business is less a watering hole than a place where one can find camaraderie, compassion or a helping hand.
From the outside, Monty’s is no less inviting. The exterior is adorned with fairy lights and vintage neon signs; a hitching post to the right of the entrance provides “parking” for thirsty horseback riders from Covered Bridge Equestrian Center. “Sometimes it’s nothing but horses and Harleys out front,” says McKissock.
The history of the watering hole, formerly called George’s Log Cabin, is intertwined with McKissock’s own story. The post-and-beam cabin was built in 1936 by Frank McCrary, founder of Big Creek Lumber, for George and Stefaneta Graziani. George was an Italian immigrant who met his bride while stationed in Siberia during World War I. The couple arrived in the United States in 1920 and moved to Felton a decade later.
The cabin was originally a trading post, from which the Grazianis sold sundries and supplies to campers. A digital article on Historypin (author unknown) states, “The story is told of someone asking, ‘George, don’t you need a license to sell that beer?’” Graziani reportedly obtained a liquor license within the hour and by 1937, the trading post had become an Italian restaurant and bar. Stefaneta cooked in her home kitchen next door and served meals in the cabin’s diminutive dining room. A walk-in refrigerator behind the building served as a de facto butcher shop, where whole animals including wild game were broken down.
By the time McKissock arrived in Felton in the late ’70s, the Grazianis’ son, George Jr., was running the 33-seat establishment. George Jr. had muscular dystrophy and was unable to hold a bottle with his hands, so he poured drinks by tucking it into the crook of his arm, recalls McKissock. A buzzer at the bar was connected by a string to the family home; if George Jr. needed help, he summoned his father.
McKissock, 72, hails from upstate New York, but as a former Marine, he’s been stationed all over the world. A nomad by nature, his first visit to Santa Cruz was during a West Coast road trip in the early ’70s. “Like most stories, there’s a girl involved,” he says, adding that the couple eventually settled in Sunnyvale, where he started driving a truck to make ends meet.
While McKissock was captivated by the San Lorenzo Valley because of its resemblance to the Adirondacks, he also felt a kinship with the locals. “Felton had a huge hippie scene at the time,” he says. “There was a lot of long hair, me included.”
By this time, McKissock was working as a graphic designer and bartending on the side at Don Quixote’s, now Felton Music Hall. He was also an occasional patron of George’s Log Cabin, but he didn’t become well-acquainted with the Grazianis until he started holding VFW events there.
In late 2000, George Sr. and Stefaneta’s daughter, Rose, approached McKissock and asked if he’d like to take over operations. The timing was fortuitous, as McKissock’s primary graphic design client had just moved out of state, and he needed work.
“They just happened to hit me at my life’s sweet spot,” says McKissock. “It was such a gift to get this place.” He made some improvements to the property, including turning the adjacent open field into a
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backyard with seating and a fire pit. The interior has remained mostly unchanged, a hodge-podge of vintage taxidermy and beer signs, biker memorabilia and swags of fake foliage and twinkle lights.
McKissock eventually changed the name of the bar with Rose’s blessing, but he didn’t have an opportunity to buy the place until November 2020, after the property had changed hands a number of times. “I bought it because it felt like the fruition of something,” he says. “I just loved this place, and I was blessed to have the family entrust it to me. It’s just kind of wrapped its arms around me.”
The best part of the job is the people, says McKissock. The tavern has always had its devout regulars and while most of the old-timers have passed on, there’s a new generation of locals, tourists and folks up from Santa Cruz. “We get bikers, campers, working class, millionaires,” says McKissock. “That’s what keeps it interesting.”
Like many bartenders, McKissock says he enjoys talking with his customers, even when he’s hearing about their problems and offering guidance. “Sometimes people just need a conversation to help them figure it out for themselves. I also believe in that old school attitude of, if someone needs something, you get off your bar stool and go help them.”
Longtime bartender Janette Waters echoes those thoughts, “Everyone knows Monty. He’s got great stories and he really cares about people—we’re like an extended family. He saw me through breast cancer and sat with me during chemo. That’s pretty rare in a boss, but he’s also a friend.”
For the community, then, Monty’s Log Cabin is more than just a bar. It’s part of the social fabric of Felton, a place McKissock describes as a neutral “Switzerland.” “Everybody is welcome here. We’re a mixed bag of nuts, but I don’t allow proselytizing—this isn’t the place for it.”
Although he’s at the bar every day, doing everything from ordering and bartending to wiping down tables, McKissock says he still thrives on the constant exposure to new people and ideas. “I’m not a guy who can retire, and the bar business keeps me young,” he says. “This is my forever job.”
“This bar is an extended family; we know what’s going on with our customers and we celebrate and mourn together,” says longtime bartender Janette Waters.
Monty’s Log Cabin
5799 Highway 9, Felton
Laurel Miller is a food, spirits and travel writer and the former editor of Edible Aspen. She grew up on a California ranch and has been writing about regenerative agriculture for over 20 years. When she’s not tethered to her laptop, Miller enjoys farmers markets and any trip that requires a passport. She’ll take a Mission burrito over a Michelin star, any day.
