CONSUMED with Jaime Lewis

Two Broads Ciderworks, Maggie Przybylski + Morgan Murphy, San Luis Obispo

Matt Cross Tap Takeover Episode

Maggie Przybylski and Morgan Murphy are the married team behind Two Broads Ciderworks, a cidery in San Luis Obispo that they launched in 2017. Matt and I had our eyes opened wide to the process of turning local apples into dry, beautiful cider. This is what you might know as hard cider — an apple cider that has fermented and become alcoholic. San Luis Obispo County is really great for cider-making because we have a strong tradition of apple-growing here, and Two Broads Cider definitely makes the most of it. If you love cider, you’ll enjoy hearing about Maggie and Morgan’s methods, tastes, and travels. And if you don’t currently drink cider, I guarantee you’ll want to give it a try after hearing us drink it.

Two Broads Ciderworks / @twobroadscider

Dr. David Cleveland, Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. David Cleveland and his students at the University of California at Santa Barbara set out to research the way locally-grown food is consumed in Santa Barbara County. They discovered that Santa Barbara is feeding just about everyone but itself, and that a good amount of what gets shipped out comes back via warehouses in northern and southern California among others. David saw this as just one signal of what’s broken in the American and international food system. But as he continued his line of thinking, he made another key discovery that evoked lots of comments on Huffington Post — and not from the folks you might suspect. David’s been featured on Freakanomics Radio and in a story by Barry Estabrook from The Atlantic, who coined the term The Santa Barbara Syndrome, referring to the 99 percent-out, 1 percent-in phenomenon.

Daniela Soleri, David A. Cleveland and Steven E. Smith: Food Gardens for A Changing World

Website: cleveland.faculty.es.ucsb.edu

Hatch Rotisserie + Della‘s owner Maggie Cameron, Paso Robles, California

Maggie Cameron owns Paso Robles restaurant The Hatch with her husband and partner Eric Connolly. They also own and operate a new pizza joint called Della’s, which is right next door to the Hatch in downtown Paso Robles. She says the two restaurants are very different: that Della’s is the gin to The Hatch’s whiskey. Spoiler alert: Maggie and I laugh really hard at one point in our conversation and the audio gets pretty crazy. Hopefully you find the story about my college pizzeria as hilarious as we do. Either way, Maggie is so fun and personable, you can see why her restaurants have enjoyed such unbridled success. Listen as Maggie talks about the difference between luck and hard work, pimento cheese, and the dream of becoming bicoastal.

Website:

Hatch
Della’s

Instagram:

Hatch
Della’s

Mushroom hunter Dennis Sheridan, Los Osos, California

Los Osos Mycologist Dennis Sheradin studied biology at Cal Poly Pomona, moved to work at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and became a photographer of the natural world, including insects, reptiles, amphibians, plants, and yes, mushrooms. His photos have appeared in National Geographic, Ranger Rick, and California Wild, and he is active in field monitoring and DNA collecting for mushrooms around the world. He spoke with me about how mycelium helps plants talk to each other, how he encourages people to take responsibility for catching their own edible mushrooms, and yes, quite a bit about psilocybin and microdosing - and macrodosing - magic mushrooms. Check the show notes on letsgetconsumed dot com for links to the books he mentions here, as well as links to the various organizations for which Dennis leads mushroom walks on the Central Coast.

Website: dennissheridan.com

Resources mentioned:

• Morro Coast Audubon Society

• Small Wilderness Area Preservation (SWAP)

• SLO Botanical Garden

• California Native Plant Society

• “Mushrooms Demystified”
  David Arora

• “All that the rain promises and more”
  David Arora

• “The entangled web”
  Merlin Sheldrake

• “How to change your mind” Michael Pollan

• iNaturalist mushroom identifying app

 

Hearst Castle, Dr. Amy Hart + Tara Stephenson, San Simeon

Hearst Castle is a 90,000 square-foot estate built by media magnate William Randolph Hearst between 1919 and 1947. Hearst famously entertained the who’s-who of his age, including Charlie Chaplain, Clark Gable, Winston Churchill, Hedda Hopper, Greta Garbo, George Bernard Shaw, and many more. In 1958, the Hearst family gifted Hearst Castle to the state of California, making it a California State Park and a museum. I wanted to know about how Mr. Hearst ate up on his enchanted hill, so I asked a couple experts over. Dr. Amy Hart is a historian with California State Parks, and Tara Stephenson is Director of Development for the Foundation at Hearst Castle. We talked about Hearst’s grazing habits, his double-vaulted wine cellar, and his favorite late-night snack, Welsh Rarebit.

Website: hearstcastle.org

Instagram: @foundationathearstcastle

Village builder Roberto Monge, San Luis Obispo

Roberto Monge was born in a village near Suchito, El Salvador, and lived there until he was 8 years old, when his family had to flee the war-torn country of their birth. Since landing in the United States many years ago, he has poured his life into rebuilding the village of his youth, wherever he lives. And that’s how I met Roberto: at a barbecue in his backyard years ago, surrounded by our neighbors. Gathering people together for celebration, grieving, and marking time is an art that Roberto practices regularly, and of course, food is the thread that runs through it all. He built an earthen oven in his backyard that turns out legendary chicken, and whenever he celebrates Dia De Los Muertos, like he did last weekend, and which I attended at his house, there is a tamale-making party the day before. We chatted about the importance of building a village, supporting one another, and bringing what you have to the table.

City Repair SLO

Wine + food critic Stephen McConnell, Avila Beach, California

By day, Stephen McConnell is a general contractor, but by nights and weekends, he is an independent wine and restaurant critic — like, really independent. On his food blog eatdrink101.com, he details his opinions on restaurants across the Central Coast, including white linen and fine dining establishments to fast food chain restaurants. On his blog wine1percent.com, he sips a new wine every day and writes a review of it. Every day! These are both extraordinarily well-visited sites, as are the corresponding social media pages for each, no doubt because Stephen McConnell does not hold back. He skewers and praises restaurants, wines, servers, chefs, and dishes very openly. Listen to this singular Central Coast personality talk about his take on the term “wine snob,” growing up Seventh-Day Adventist, and his obsession with crows.

Website:

wine1percent.com
eatdrink101.com

Instagram:

@wine1percent
@eatdrink101

SLO Food Systems Coalition, Ellen Burke + Claire Tuohey-Mote, San Luis Obispo

Claire Tuohey-Mote and Ellen Burke are members of the San Luis Obispo County Food Systems Coalition, a community-based organization whose goal is to promote a sustainable, equitable, profitable, resilient, and health-promoting food system. From my perspective, the FSC brings all the players to the table to help everyone thrive: consumers, farmers, those who are food insecure, government, nonprofits and the community at large. They assess the strengths and weaknesses of the system and form work groups to address policy. I’m fascinated by how much Claire and Ellen know about our local food economy, and I think you will be too.

Website: slofoodsystem.org

Instagram: @slofoodsystemcoalition

Castoro Cellars + Bethel Rd. Distillery + Whale Rock Music Festival, Paso Robles, California

Niels and Bimmer Udsen started Castoro Cellars Winery on Paso Robles’s Highway 46 west in 1983, making them one of the area’s oldest wineries. With a focus on Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel, the Udsens built a huge following of people who love their “dam fine wine.” Music and art have always been a big part of what the winery has to offer, with a concert series presented by the San Luis Obispo Folk Music Society since 1996, and the now-famous Whale Rock Music and Arts Festival every September. What began as a 30th birthday party for the winery developed into an annual two-day party, featuring nonstop concerts in the vineyard, eating, drinking, yoga, a silent disco, a mini natural history museum, an art gallery, and lots of kids’ activities. That event is produced by the whole Udsen family, especially Niels’ and Bimmers’ sons Luke and Max. We talked about the Udsens’ Bethel Road Distillery, music, whale bones, Syrah, and more.

Websites:

Castoro Cellars
Bethel Rd. Distillery
Whale Rock Music + Arts Festival

Instagram:

@castorocellars
@bethelrddistillery
@whalerockmusicfestival

Home cook Vincent Rodriguez, Hesperia, California

Vincent Rodriguez is a 14-year-old home cook and caterer from the high desert of Hesperia, California. I learned about him through my friend and his aunt, Alli Wallace, who said he is a crazy talented cook, that his parents give him an ingredient allowance every week, that he could talk my ear off about how to cook a roast. I decided I had to meet Vincent, so he and his mom Tasha drove up from Hesperia just to talk with me on the CONSUMED podcast. This is a slightly shorter episode because I felt a little like I was torturing Vincent with my many questions, but you’ll be impressed by how much this young man knows, particularly about meat.

Instagram: @foodbyvincent