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Cooking for Solutions 2013 – Gut Instincts

The evolution of offal-pioneering chef Chris Cosentino continues to surprise – and so does his stance on true sustainability.

What would Wolverine eat? No really, what would the Marvel Comics superhero eat? It’s a subject that had buried into the brain of Chris Cosentino, the San Francisco powerhouse chef best known for bringing guts ...

Cooking for Solutions 2013 – Hog Wild Times

Hog Island Oyster Farm stars at Cooking for Solutions, celebrates 30 years and stares down big threats.

At the Hog Island Oysters in the San Francisco Ferry Building, the staff often sees oysters disappear – whether they’re baked with butter and bacon, served in an assortment of Tottens and Salt Ponds or ...

Cooking for Solutions 2013 – Fish are Jumping

Seafood Watch updates keep eco-savvy consumers, chefs on their toes.

I never really thought of myself as the sea-snail-eating type. But the Monterey Bay red abalone appetizer at the C Restaurant & Bar is tender and perfectly chewy, its ocean essence counterbalanced by earthy black ...

When Zombies Attack

Big Sur survivalist Tyson Curtis will be ready.

To prevent zombies from devouring his flesh, Tyson Curtis eats things that can’t taste much better, like fox meat, foraged thistle and acorn flour. To survive in a world where the undead can smell humans ...

WINE & FOOD 2013: Give Us Mercy

With abiding bravery against the elements – and a brand new tasting room – upstart Mercy Vineyards solidifies Arroyo Seco’s rep.

Michael Griva wants to take us on a motorcar tour of parts of his Griva Vineyard – west of Greenfield, in Arroyo Seco – in a red, convertible, windowless (and seatbelt-less) 1916 six-cylinder Buick. It’s ...

WINE & FOOD 2013: Tube Meat Takeover

Butch Francis expands his Cowboy Sausage empire in inspired and crazy ways – including a pitch for national TV.

The Sausage King is in his element. There are women to flirt with and politicians to shmooze. There are old customers who didn’t realize he was again selling at the Oldtown Salinas Farmers Market after ...

WINE & FOOD 2013: Seitan Worshipping

The big new thing coming out of Moss Landing, Sweet Earth Natural Foods, will give healthy plant-based eating a big ol’ boost.

~ • ~ Talk about a burrito with everything. The Anasazi burrito from Sweet Earth Natural Foods includes some of the same heirloom Anasazi beans that once sustained the ancient cliff-dwelling Pueblo people of the ...

Bullets and the Threat to Public Health

The medical director of Natividad’s E.R. says its time to look at gun violence in a more holistic way.

You might think that emergency physicians (EPs) have the ringside seat when it comes to seeing the impact of gun violence. You would be partially right. We do take care of gunshot victims, but what ...

The Big Bang

Advocates say firearms legislation in California misses the mark on proper gun control.

Chris Gillespie, owner of Markley’s Indoor Range and Gun Shop in Watsonville, jokes that buying a gun in California is like buying a house or a car because of all the paperwork. In reality, buying ...

Packing Heat

Want to legally carry a concealed weapon in Monterey County? Be prepared for a long application process, and a very long wait.

“I wish he had never pulled a gun.” That’s the only thing Phil Nash would change about the evening he shot a man in self-defense. In April 2001, Nash, then an officer with Carmel Police ...

Arms Race

New state law would fund the hunt for guns legally purchased by those who aren’t supposed to own them.

Monterey County Sheriff Scott Miller knows they’re out there. He also knows his department is too hamstrung to do much of anything about it without help. “They” are the weapons that were at one time ...

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Nick Cummings

Nick Cummings sits behind a metal grille in a San Bernardino jail visiting room. The 57-year-old has a bristling mustache and long, slicked-back grey hair. His arms, laced with tattoos, are inked the color of ...

Setting Jimmy Free

Former Soledad prison teachers are working to free a convicted murderer whom the state parole board refuses to release. They say Jimmy Segura’s only crime is not being sorry for something he didn't do

Two ducks flap low over a glimmering lake. The flight is captured in a closely cropped frame that imagines a clear sky and a patch of forest in the background, some scrubby brush in the ...

By The Book

A look at the research side of NPS

Research dollars and faculty positions have indeed grown at the Naval Postgraduate School in recent years, but those funds come overwhelmingly from the U.S. Department of Defense, leaving Dean of Research Jeffrey Paduan scratching his ...

Raising The Bar

The NPS Foundation also took some heat from the federal investigation; what’s next?

Retired Adm. Hank Mauz managed the Foundation through its biggest growth years in the ’90s, not that it’s amounted to very much. The Foundation has just $4.4 million in assets, according to IRS filings, and ...

Going Overboard

In the aftermath of unprecedented NPS firings, some fear the Navy is questioning the school’s very existence.

The day after U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced the immediate dismissal of the Naval Postgraduate School’s top two officials, Under Secretary of the Navy Robert O. Work touched down in Monterey and spent exactly ...

HOME AND GARDEN 2013 - Everything Zen

Three Seaside residents take the unconventional approach to their yards.

Frog Days Of Summer “I’m a frog addict,” claims Pauline Burton. “And the (plastic lawn) flamingos bring out the color of the grass.’ Burton has lived at her home on Juarez Street near the top ...

HOME AND GARDEN 2013 - Living Small

Creative storage ideas helps maximize even the most modest square footage.

Jenny McAdams answers the door to her Seaside home with her 5-month-old, Max, strapped to her chest. The baby is as mellow and cheerful as his mom; the Ergo carrier even matches her sweater. They ...

HOME AND GARDEN 2013 - The Smother Effect

Sheet mulching is a cheap and easy method of eco-friendly weed murder.

The vision: a sweet little plot of drought-tolerant lawn for my kid to play on. The reality: 320 square feet of stinging nettle dominating what was supposed to be a carpet of freshly seeded blue ...

HOME AND GARDEN 2013 – Get Rid of Your Lawn

Everything you know about gardening is a lie; here’s how to change your thinking.

A neat lawn is a point of pride, a well-trimmed tribute to the gods of the American dream. A flashy car, a white-picket fence and a grassy emerald lawn – that’s the good life, or ...

Bridging Gaps

Jeff Bridges is an ordinary guy who just so happens to be extraordinarily talented.

When Jeff Bridges is asked how he’d like to be remembered, he doesn’t take much time to ponder an answer. “I guess as a human being just like all the rest of us,” he says ...

Monterey County Weekly Summer Camp Guide 2013

Summer Camp Listings

All Saints’ Summer Fun in the Sun Students from kindergarten through middle school can choose from subjects such as art, drama, cooking and science, with music offered for grades four and above in this five-week ...

MCW Summer Guide 2013 - For Those Who Want to Rock

Sam’z School of Rock teaches nascent rockers the chops they need to play as one.

It starts with the guitarist, a skinny teen with earbuds dangling out of his shirt collar. He sends a rhythm of crunchy, distorted chords barrelling through his Epiphone Les Paul guitar. Dunn, nah, nah nah. ...

MCW Summer Guide 2013 - Animal Style

SPCA Animal Camp teaches kids how to care for critters, and each other.

Every Monday, the Flanders family eats mac ‘n’ cheese. Between 11-year-old Gabby’s dance classes and mother Teri’s salary as a schoolteacher, there wasn’t much room left in the family budget for a donation to the ...

MCW Summer Guide 2013 - At the Edge of the Wild

Regional Park District instructs kids on how to get outside – in their own backyards.

Dave Gruber writhes on the ground, clutching his right forearm. He lifts his fingers momentarily to reveal a massive wound spurting bright red. A group of five 9 – and 10-year-olds gather around the man. ...

Moore Better Building

What the Weekly’s esteemed architect might have thought of LEED.

That postmodern architect Charles Moore was drawn to the water should come as no surprise. A quick bit of Google stalking reveals his Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton University focused on how the presence of water ...

Green and Platinum

The Weekly’s intrepid pursuit of top LEED certification.

We knew something was up right around the time Weekly Founder and CEO Bradley Zeve had the building painted periwinkle, red and yellow. (Weekly staff described that yellow as “duck-egg yolk,” “spicy mustard” and “subcutaneous ...

2013 Annual Best of Readers' Poll

Survival of the Bestest 

• • • • VIEW IT, SHARE IT: The Best Of Monterey County 2013 digital edition for your computer, tablet and mobile device: www.mcweekly.com/best WATCH THE GUERRILLA IN ACTION Go Here to see The Guerrilla ...

Thinking Conspiratorially

Why is it that people die when we talk about gun control?

When it comes to the emotional issue of gun control, Harry Truman had it right when he said, “The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know.” I’ve been thinking ...

Defying Gravity

At Hartnell College, a NASA-sponsored science academy turns Monterey County school kids into budding scientists. Here’s hoping federal math doesn’t ground them in their mission.

Angelica Meza’s adventures in science began on a dirt road by a lettuce field shortly after she watched Star Wars for the first time. She had the tools of a 5-year-old: tape, her white-and-purple two-wheeler, ...

We Shall Overcome

The head of the NAACP talks to the Weekly about discrimination large and small.

Days after hosting the 44th NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles, NAACP President/CEO Ben Jealous spoke to the Weekly about growing up biracial on the Peninsula, various fronts in the modern civil rights movement, and ...

Black, White and Grey Areas

In a groundbreaking new book, Peninsula residents Ann Todd Jealous and Caroline T. Haskell examine racism – with essays

The childhood stories are telling. Here are three: When Maren, who lives in Pacific Grove, was a little girl, her grandparents employed black husband-and-wife couples as cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, mechanics and dining room servants. Dinner ...

The Big Gamble

Racetrack developers hope economic gains override environmental losses.

A fresh-faced CSU-Monterey Bay student takes a flight from Monterey to Los Angeles, then a train to the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club near San Diego, where he’s dazzled by a horse-racing wonderland. We see a ...

Reading the Breaks

Handicapping the pros and amateurs according to the momentum they bring to Pebble Beach.

Sometimes you’re hot, sometimes you’re not. We all face it. Thankfully, and scarily, change can come quickly. Just ask Tiger Woods – and we’re not even talking about his fire hydrant accident that sent him ...

Walker This Way

A far-ranging conversation with the man behind 11 number ONE hits, including “Live Until I Die.”

Clay Walker’s supposed to be answering the questions. But he’s got one for me: “Am I a little philosophical today? I’m sorry.” Our talk travels from golf’s life lessons to tear-jerking stadium shows to the ...

Uncharted Country

Clay Walker has a great golf swing, platinum records and a crippling disease. What he’s doing with them would make Bing Crosby proud.

Things got real interesting – and flat-out real – for Clay Walker in 1996. He completed his fourth album. He welcomed his first child into the world. He watched his fifth single hit number one. ...

True Believers

The vision of Marina as a medical-marijuana Nirvana has one big problem: a government unwilling to take the plunge.

Marina residents Nobia Monsauret and Kevin Saunders have a dream that looks something like this: The ramshackle barracks of the old Fort Ord – the ones that nobody has been able to knock down or ...

Girl In the Air

Carmel’s Brita Sigourney has been wearing skis since toddlerhood. Now she’s ready for her biggest event yet – the Winter 2013 X games.

Ask any skater grinding the curbs in your neighborhood parking lot, or any brand manager for an international sports apparel line, and they’ll tell you the same story: The X Games rule. Spawned by cable ...

HEALTH & FITNESS 2013 – A Six-Pack in Just Six Miles

An underground running group builds in creative motivators, like beer.

They’ve been called “drinkers with a running problem” – and when you build beer stops into a six-mile run, it may be an apt characterization. The Hash House Harriers are an international social club of ...

HEALTH & FITNESS 2013 – Fish As Drugs

Genetically modified super salmon tries to swim through a hole in the regulatory net.

If you want to bury an unsavory news story, the afternoon before Christmas vacation is a good time to break it. The FDA chose Dec. 21 to release its long awaited Environmental Assessment (EA) of ...

HEALTH & FITNESS 2013 – Hospital Food Trays Gourmet

Monterey County’s medical centers reinterpret the lesson that food is medicine.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit how good the shrimp scampi at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital is, considering it’s, well, hospital food. But this is flavored with garlic and lemon, sautéed in a mild wine-based sauce ...

HEALTH & FITNESS 2013 - Going with the Gut

Local naturopath promotes a GAPS diet based on fermented vegetables, homemade yogurt and gobs of animal fat.

The severed turkey feet, with their thick toenails and mud-caked pads, are the stuff of an amateur horror flick – especially for a recovering vegetarian. But I’m determined to make my first homemade foot broth ...

HEALTH & FITNESS 2013 - Taking Recovery to National Dance Fame

How J.R. Martinez beat crippling injury, slimmed down and won Dancing With the Stars.

A funny thing happened to J.R. Martinez on the way home from the burn unit. “I got heavy,” Martinez says. “When you’re a burn patient, your metabolism gets thrown out of whack. You’re in recovery ...

HEALTH & FITNESS 2013 - The Treadmill Less Traveled

Rare but revolutionary ways to better well-being, from turkey-foot broth to beer jogs.

It turns out the boss at the Jump N Around bounce house emporium on Del Monte Boulevard in North Monterey won’t let adults use the assemblage of slides, castles and other inflated shapes as an ...

By The Book

Jose Castañeda can’t seem to shake the controversy that’s dogged him for years - but that might be precisely what Salinas needs.

Salinas City hall was packed on Dec. 18, as an overflow crowd filled the hallway to watch as Mayor Joe Gunter, Councilwoman Gloria De La Rosa and Councilman Jose Castañeda were sworn in to office. ...

Smartphone Photos of the Year

Images Are Everything

Taken with cell phone cameras and shot on the fly, reader-submitted photos show the depth and breadth of life in Monterey County. Ed Bassett, the late, great dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, ...

Make it Snappy

Monterey County offered up a wide range of emotions in 2012.

Whenever someone says Monterey County is boring, I laugh. There was a lot to see in the county last year. Photo Gallery 2012 Photos of the Year - News and Feature On the fun side, ...

Unpredictably Genius

The annual 101 Word Short Story Contest rumbles through realms of humanity and dog deaths. 

Each year they emerge mysteriously, with a life all their own, like zombies from the mist: Strangely consistent themes cropping up amid scores and scores of short-story entries. Most of the pieces will still spool ...

Button Down World

Monterey author Anne Ylvisaker crafts a writer’s life – and a book series – from the imagined world of the Button Family.

It’s a promising Saturday afternoon in December, and children’s book author Anne Ylvisaker looks like she is right where she wants to be: standing in front of an audience of a dozen people, in the ...

Authors Extra

Local authors of children’s, middle grades and young adult books worth checking out.

Beverly Cleary. The 96-year-old was born on a small farm in Oregon but now calls Carmel Valley home. Her book series, like Ramona, Henry Huggins, Ralph the Mouse and Beezus, have earned her accolades including ...

A Boy’s Life

In the chapter titled “Yellow Brick Road,” a grandson’s questions about the world beyond his experience lead to the start of a great journey.

After supper Ned walked Granddaddy Ike to his one-room cottage next door and helped him get settled in his chair. “Read me a chapter, will you?” said Granddaddy, sitting back with his pipe. “You’ll fall ...

On The Beat

New Salinas police strategy aims to build relationships, not rap sheets. But has it helped cut crime?

Salinas Police Officer Richard Lopez watches as a tall teenage boy with a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes slinks toward the street, taking drags from a cigarette. The teen, halfway across the neighborhood ...

The People V. Eva Ruiz-Gomez

A Family-court battle turns ugly as a mom faces felony charges of interfering with the rights of her son’s father. the teen at the heart of it wonders why the courts won’t listen to him.

Eva Ruiz-Gomez steps through the double doors of Courtroom 13 at the Monterey County Superior Courthouse, her long, dark hair pulled back from her face, and asks for a phone. “I need a phone. I ...

South Rising

Santa Cruz Warriors will figure into Golden State’s success in surprising ways.

Though they have yet to touch their own floor for as much as a brief three-man weave, Santa Cruz Warriors enjoy a hometown edge over their NBA Developmental League competition. “Say you’re on [fellow D-League ...

What About Bob

The Golden State Warriors’ rookie general manager epitomizes the team’s surprising new brand of basketball.

It’s a brisk November night in Northern California when the Golden State Warriors zoom out to their most prolific quarter of the young 2012-13 season. They score 39 in the first period – with tall ...

Party with Pluck

A community turkey slaughter brings us nose-to-snood with Thanksgiving dinner.

On the last morning of their last day on Earth, the turkeys Jamie Collins raised from poults to fat adults gather under the low-hanging branches of a towering Mexicali avocado tree. They coo and warble, ...

Oh My, DRI

Sales of organic produce are growing, but proponents still face an uphill battle in the fight over issues of nutrition and pesticide residue.

DRI: dietary risk index, or how much pesticide residue remains on conventional vs. organic produce. Sales of organic foods are growing by 10 to 20 percent each year in the United States. More than 10 ...

The Invisible Woman

An extended interview with Mary, who is homeless.

One of the photographers of the Carl Cherry Center exhibition, Becoming Visible: The Face of Homeless Women in Monterey County, suggested talking to a homeless woman who asked to be referred to as Mary. Mary ...

Hiding In Plain Sight - About The Photographers

(left) “I was having a rough day and one of these women could tell,” Lina Vital says. “First, she wasn’t scared to call me on whatever emotion she saw come up. She saw my pain ...

Hiding In Plain Sight

A new exhibit at Carl Cherry Center shows the pictures and tells the stories of the most vulnerable population – homeless women.

The catalog for the Carl Cherry Center’s latest art exhibition opens with a quote from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me… When they approach me they ...