A recent post on our Instagram account has lead me down a nostalgic path. I've always been fortunate but looking back over the years, I had to work really hard to get so lucky!  (with the great Annie Sommerville from Greens Restaurant) People forget. I forget! In the early days, I sold the beans almost exclusively at farmers markets. I couldn't get into the Napa market (which was idiotic but a tale best saved for another time), so I did the Yountville, Calistoga, and St Helena markets in Napa. I quickly expaned to the Grand Lake market in Oakland and...

Delilah Snell, the genius behind Alta Baja Market, had the idea to celebrate our heirloom beans and throw a real party. Years earlier, we had a nice dinner but this time we wanted to make some noise. COVID is still with us but it's arguably under better control and it's just been too long for some of us. Well, me, in particular. I wanted to have a party!  Delilah had thought of everything so early October, I flew in, checked in and then was whisked off to Carlos Salgado's Taco Maria in Costa Mesa. I've known Carlos casually since the last...

Last autumn I was in Italy for the first time in way too long. This was the funny time when we all thought this covid thing was waning and we were heading back to normal. Weren't we cute? Regular followers of Rancho Gordo know of our love and admiration for the amazing Judy Witts Francini. She is a powerhouse of knowledge about the Italian kitchen and nothing makes her happier than sharing her secrets. She has many. Judy arranged for me to meet with some members of the cooperative that is keeping the Sorana bean production going. Unable to meet...

It has been a long time since I played in the garden. I have not been a good steward of my land and as we got busier and busier over the holiday season, I left my precious Oaxacan runner beans to fend for themselves. We experienced a very wet season, followed by several nights with freezing temperatures and the mornings have been foggy. You would have thought my forgotten bean crop would be a goner, but you'd be wrong. Mid-February and this is my harvest. I looked and I saw a few funky pods. When I opened them, the beans...

My friend Canice saw this photo of me from the early 1980s in Sestri Levante. It's a beach town in Liguria, Italy and I spent many summers there in my early 20s. She wrote: I wanna use this photo to persuade young people to live a little, while they have the chance. Sestri Levante, early 1980s I know exactly what she means. I wouldn't go back to my youth for anything but your twenties are a time to really let things rip. Yes, you can go to Europe at any age but you find as you get older you can't...

Rancho Gordo Supper in Orange County to Highlight Heirloom Mexican Beans, Support High School Art Program On Sunday, July 8, Rancho Gordo, renowned purveyor of heirloom beans, will hold its first-ever supper in Southern California at Alta Baja Market in Santa Ana. The special event will feature three courses prepared by some of Rancho Gordo founder Steve Sando's favorite SoCal restauranteurs: Delilah Snell and Richard Lu (Alta Baja Market, Electric City Butcher), Evan Kleiman (Angeli Caffe, KCRW's Good Food) and Carlos Salgado (Taco Maria). Each course will highlight different Mexican heirloom beans offered by Rancho Gordo, recently featured in the...

Imagine a damp, cold, rainy day in Milano, Italy in 1988. One young, bored expat trying to figure out his role in Italy (and the world, really) is presented with a copy of a book called A Bowl of Red and a bag of chile powder. I was compelled to make the stew and the aromas and flavors made me so homesick, I was near tears. Chiles and cumin weren’t standard fare for me in Milano. I was pretentious and fancy, as only the young can be, but this wallop of nostalgia hit me hard. These flavors sent me back...

In Hidalgo, a meal with my pal Lupe is essential. She is a great cook. I would almost describe her cooking as colonial. She prefers good olive oil to manteca (lard) and while she's fiercely patriotic and loves all aspects of her Mexican culture, there's a European sensibility to a lot of her dishes. When we were filming the article that featured the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project for Sunset Magazine last year, Lupe made this dish and it's forever haunted me. She told me it was from Michoacan and called Minquiche. I've done some research and there are similar elements but...

For me, there's little better than a road trip in Mexico. My friend Gabriel estimated that over nine years we've traveled approximately 50,00 kilometers (about 32,000 miles) together. I'm glad he likes to drive! I'm also thankful we all like the same music and have the same hunger for Mexican food. On the way to the Huasteca of Hidalgo, we stopped at Convento de los Los Santos Reyes in a pueblo called Metztitlan in the sierra. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to do, especially when the site is deserted and we are free to run and...

My favorite sentence is, I just got back from Mexico. I would like to write it more often! The down side is coming home to an empty refrigerator. This morning, after pots of French Roast coffee (the Mexicans do many things well but good coffee is mostly hidden), I made brown rice, garbanzo beans and a salsa from the new chiles I bought on my trip. They're oak-roasted heirloom chipotles from the Huasteca of Hidalgo. They are incredible and we were going try and import them but the FDA requirements are so tough that we had to pass. It's a...

There have been too many times I've felt I was "too busy" to take a vacation and ended up so much better for the time off. I'm sure I know best, and relaxing and taking a break from the daily routine is not so important, or so I tell myself. Here's a little secret: I don't know everything. I don't even know what's best for me sometimes. I've just come back from a beyond wonderful week last week in Kauai with pals. I loved it so much I'm in discomfort thinking about it. Coffee, beach, eat, beach, eat, rinse, repeat....

Random Photos from over the last several years with the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project. I am one lucky fellow!