Along a stretch of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way where bars on the windows aren’t going out of style anytime soon, a little congregation met and prayed on Monday night, as it has every night in recent weeks.

Flanked by an entrance to Highway 24 and a liquor store, the Lighthouse Mosque opened its doors just before 9 p.m., and those who had just broken their daily fast trickled in to pray and hear a little piece of the Koran sung in Arabic.

Muslims in Oakland are in the last third of the month of Ramadan–its most intense part, as observers continue to fast during daylight hours, declining both food and water until the sun sets. Fasting can be more challenging when Ramadan falls during the summer months, as it does this year. Daylight, and with it the Islamic obligation to fast, lingers long in August.

Like the Christian observance of Lent, Ramadan is a period of spirituality, purification, and self-reflection. It’s also supposed to be philanthropic period, during which Muslims donate money or time to charitable purposes. Many Muslims decline to eat, drink, smoke, or have sex during daylight throughout the month. The obligation doesn’t extend to young children, or those who are pregnant, diabetic, or have other limitations.

“You definitely get hot and thirsty, but you learn to pace yourself,” said Jenny Mattheson, a Lighthouse Mosque member, about giving up food and water on hot summer days. “It’s really a wisdom, because when you’re fasting, you can’t spare the energy to get upset or get all worked up about something.”

The month of Ramadan is the ninth in the Islamic calendar, which is based on 12 lunar cycles. This lunar “year” is shorter than the earth’s rotation around the sun, and therefore Ramadan isn’t tied to a particular season. It happens a little earlier every year, beginning and ending with a new moon.

At Lighthouse, the congregation is ethnically diverse. Blond Nordic types pray alongside those of Asian and African descent. However, most have at least one thing in common.

“Our mosque is probably 90 percent converts,” said Abdul Latif Finch, the imam here. Many, including Finch, are Americans who were raised in other faiths and still have non-Muslim family members. Evidence for its members’ local heritage piles up in the doorway as people arrive: Crocs, Converse All-Stars, flip-flops and Adidas, cell phones and eco-friendly BPA-free water bottles.

Unlike other mosques in the area, which often cater to a single ethnicity or nationality, Lighthouse services are held in both English and Arabic. The mosque’s few hundred members—men, women, and children—pray together in the same small, cream-colored room. “There are no barriers out there, so why would there be in here?” Finch said.

Lighthouse is three years old, but it replaces another mosque, Masjid al-Iman, which outgrew the small space and moved to Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. Finch, 35, was in the first class of graduates from the newly-established Zaytuna College, an Islamic seminary in Berkeley.

On Monday, there’s no food, only a little socializing and “Tarawih,” the singing of one thirtieth of the Koran’s thirty parts. Lighthouse worshippers break their daily fasts together only on the Saturdays during Ramadan. Other days they eat at home, after the sun sets.

Before Tarawih, a few members of the Lighthouse mosque met early, sitting on the carpeted floor and reflecting on what makes Ramadan valuable to them.

“A sense of intimacy and closeness, because everybody’s fasting together,” said Mattheson. She smiled and turned to Finch, the imam, who had been quietly listening. She pointed mischievously.  “Now you!” she said.

Finch’s answer reflected his recent trips to the East Coast and Arizona for various speaking and teaching engagements. “It’s not just happening here, this sense of heightened spirituality, where people aren’t feeding the base self,” Finch said. “It’s the same thing in Pennsylvania, the East Coast, the desert southwest.”

“The whole entire community across the globe, there’s a real beauty to that,” added member Ally Alexander.

“Fasting also really makes you appreciate the fact that you have access to fresh, clean drinking water and great food,” Mattheson later wrote in an email. “And makes you much more empathetic for the people who don’t.”

Ramadan begins with the appearance of a new moon. Some Islamic traditions calculate its arrival mathematically, while others rely on local sightings with the naked eye. The month begins when someone—any member of any age from any mosque—sees the first sliver of new moon. Each community determines how and when its members will begin observing.

Before this Ramadan began, some worshippers from Lighthouse headed to the hills to try to spot the new moon firsthand, getting away from the city’s light pollution and looking out into the sky from the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. The first night they went, before predictions suggested the moon would be visible, it was also too foggy. “The next day we could see it,” Finch said, and for Lighthouse, Ramadan began.

But this year’s observance has encountered some awkward timing. The month of self-denial is usually followed by a big three-day party, called Eid al-Fitr. “Eid, that’s more like Christmas,” said Zahra Billoo, director of the Bay Area chapter of Council for American-Islamic Relations. “Ramadan is more like 30 days of Thanksgiving. You’re doing a lot of reflecting and introspection.”

However, the last day of Ramadan 2010 could fall on September 10^th, depending on when the new moon appears.  Some in Muslim leadership worry that celebrating anything on September 11^th could be misconstrued.

“The idea is all you need is one video of someone smiling on 9-11 and you have the potential for backlash,” said Billoo, explaining some Muslims’ anxiety.

Eid’s also arriving on the tail end of a stream of anti-Islam incidents nationwide, including a brick thrown through the window of a mosque in Madera, California, the stabbing of a Bengali Muslim cab driver in New York, various attacks on Muslims in the South Bay, and the well-publicized protests of the construction of a community center near Ground Zero in New York City.

“We always have to be careful about how others perceive us,” said Jason Hamza Van Boom, a spokesman for the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California in Oakland. “On the other hand, during Ramadan, we’re able to concentrate on the spirituality and focus on prayers and community togetherness.” Van Boom added that there had been discussion by several clergy to make this year’s Eid celebration on September 11 into a day of national unity and healing across faiths.

“The current wave of nativist xenophobia is certainly grating, but it’s clearly coming from a fringe of nut cases and Klu-Kluxer types,” wrote Rashid Patch in an email to Oakland North. Patch directs the Alalusi Foundation, a non-profit fund for international humanitarian aid.

“Well, during Ramadan, besides giving up food, drink, smoking, and sex during daylight hours, Muslims are also supposed to give up getting angry,” he wrote, explaining the attitude he tries to maintain, despite concern over anti-Muslim sentiment.

He noted that, as a counterbalance to an anti-Muslim element, there’s been a lot of interfaith support coming from Christians and Jews, and interfaith dinners have been held across the Bay Area. Patch said he’d been to one on Sunday at Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley and another will be held at the Berkeley United Methodist Church on Saturday, September 4.

And as with any observance based on community and eating together, Ramadan is observed with traditional foods. Many break their daily fasts with a small bite, perhaps some milk and dates.   Then comes prayer and a larger meal, sometimes shared with relatives or the entire congregation.

Persians and Turks commonly have soups made from lamb, bean, and grain, Patch wrote, while North Africans may eat lentils and barley.

“Every Muslim grandmother from West Africa to the China Sea has at least three recipes for a special soup for breaking fast in Ramadan, and every single recipe is the only real, authentic one for the special Ramadan soup,” he wrote.

For Lighthouse members, it’s a bit different. Its communal meals reflect the cross-section of its constituency.

“You have your cornbread with your chapatti,” said member Ally Alexander. A recent meal included chicken and macaroni and cheese—Oakland soul food.

Ramadan meals, called “iftar,” are publicly available throughout the month in Oakland. On Wednesday, Masjid Al-Islam in East Oakland had a chicken and waffles night, according to Mattheson, and the Oakland Islamic Center in North Oakland has free food every night. Lighthouse has free meals Saturday nights.

Fine wine, microbrews and delicatessen chocolate never tasted so good with a little bike grease.

In conjunction with the Eat Real Festival last Saturday at Jack London Square, 13 two-wheeled foodies pedaled along Oakland’s waterfront to meet the neighborhood’s culinary artisans and sample their creations. Riders ranging from ages 20 to 60 spent the balmy afternoon meeting others who shared a passion and palette for local, sustainable chocolate, tea, beer and wine.

Nancy Finkle, one of the 13 bikers who pedaled along Oakland’s waterfront as part of Eat Real bike tour, samples the Urban People's Common Lager at Linden Street Brewery.

At $40 a person, or $30 for members of East Bay Bike Coalition and Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, the bikers were invited to share what tour organizer Karen Hester says are three of her greatest loves: eating, biking and drinking.

There’s a lot of exploring to do in Oakland, Hester said, who considers this tour, now in its second year, “like going on a little day vacation in my own backyard.”

Throughout the four-hour bike ride that began and ended at Jack London Square, riders pedaled for a total of six miles.   They dismounted at their first stop before they could break a sweat, and were welcomed to Linden Street Brewery with pitchers of cold microbrew lagers.

Located in a historic 1890’s brick warehouse near the Port of Oakland, Linden Street Brewery makes beers native to the West Coast. By using a lager yeast fermented at ale temperatures, Liden produces a similar recipe to the European lagers early immigrant gold seekers tried to recreate in the warmer Bay Area climate. The brewery is known for its Burning Oak Black Lager, a roasty, slightly sweet light-bodied black beer, which debuted at last year’s Eat Real Festival.

A self-defined “neoindustrialist,” owner and beer architect Adam Lamoreaux says he’s committed to the revitalization of Oakland by bringing high quality food and drink manufacturing back to the city.

Lamoreaux delivers most of his beer via bicycle, and told the bikers he’s trying to source all his ingredients within 100 miles of Oakland and keeping the end product 80-90% organic. “If you see a guy carting two kegs of beer behind him,” he said, “that’s probably me.”

Beer and chocolate seemed like a strange combination, but at Vice Chocolates, the second stop of the tour, the unusual combination of unlikely ingredients is emphasized. I-Li Brice, a one-woman chocolate-crafting machine, sells at her online store and at the Oakland Temescal Farmers’ Market.   One step into Brice’s chocolate-producing kitchen and the decadent aromas ensured the riders that they would have no problem following Vice Chocolate’s motto–Just Give In.

Eat Real bike tour riders made a pit stop a Vice Chocolates to sample candies like the "Domina" (left), dark chocolate ganache with earl grey tea creme fraiche and orange and the "Rasgasm" (right), dark chocolate ganache and raspberries.

The Vice product uses fair trade chocolate from Venezuela, and is loaded up with unlikely ingredients, like lavender, chipotle, garlic, merlot and lychee.   A favorite of one rider, Nancy Finkle, was the “Vixen,” a Dark chocolate ganache, passion fruit and chili pepper chocolate that gave a spicy edge to the inherit sweetness of the fruit.

Finkle, an Oakland resident, was on the tour with her husband, who was managing the drinking and chocolate-eating while riding a unicycle “This is a way for us to get in a little bit of a ride,” Finkle said. “We’re tasting some really great local food and getting to know the producers, and can still join in later at the Eat Real Festival.”

With beer and chocolate fresh on the tongue, riders staggered onto their bikes and cleansed their palette with the wind off the bay before landing at their third destination, Urban Legend Cellars. Owner and producer Steve Shaffer poured his biodynamic, organic wine, starting with a crisp 2009 Sauvignon Blanc, progressing to a deep and smooth 2008 Teroldego.

The grapes are brought down from a couple of different Northern California wineries, he said, and are fermented at the Shaffers’ Jack London-district warehouse space and tasting room, which opened in March of this year. Even the glass is made in Oakland, and all the pre-material that is part of the process is composted, he said. “We think this helps lower our carbon footprint by not trucking our product and materials around,” Shaffer said. “We’re aimed at catering to locals.”

Steve Shaffler introduces Eat Real bikers to his winery, Urban Legends Cellars.

The final destination on the tour was the tearoom and warehouse of Numi Organic Tea. By this time, there was no hiding the barrage of yawns. Nearly four miles, five wine tastings, two beers and enough chocolate to work off for the next week, it was time to indulge in simpler refreshment. While sampling Numi’s iced teas, the crew continued to enjoy one another’s company.

“These are old traditions that we lose track of,” Hester said. “If you go to the Arabic world people spend a lot of time drinking tea and sharing tea.” As she hugged some riders, now new friends, goodbye, she continued, “I love that about this tour. We just spend time hanging out, drinking and eating together.”

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs,” knowing the source of your meat, and two days of street food gluttony.

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If you want to ride with the scraper bike king, you better wear a helmet.  Tyrone “Baybe Champ” Stevenson Jr., known around Oakland as the “king” and creator of the scraper bike movement, announced his new rule of the road Saturday near Oakland City Hall.

“Everybody is riding without a helmet, but once they see us wearing them more frequently then it will be cool,” said Stevenson Jr., who now requires anyone who rides with him to wear a helmet.  “They’re going to start pimping them out just like our bikes.”

About thirty riders showed up with their tricked-out bicycles as part of a bike ride and festival organized by Stevenson.  After a safety talk from the Oakland Department of Traffic Safety, the group rode—with their bike helmets—to Arroyo Viejo Park for a day of food and music.

The event was the latest of about twenty over the past three years organized by Stevenson and his group, Original Scraper Bikes.  Last year, hundreds of riders circled Lake Merritt to take a stand against gun violence.  Saturday’s theme was bike safety, a mission that Stevenson is taking on with Oakland Parks and Recreation.  With funding from the city, he has given out 250 free bike helmets at parks around Oakland. The helmets are white—all the better for riders to customize just like their bikes.

“These young men and women don’t have the appropriate safety equipment,” said Stacey Perry, of the Oakland Department of Traffic Safety.  “They think helmets look kind of dorky. They’re beautiful bikes, so we came up with the idea of letting them decorate their helmets.”

Most riders Saturday agreed that if you have foil on your rims, there is little chance of seeing a helmet on your head.

“No one wears helmets in East Oakland,” said Jamesha Creer, Stevenson Jr.’s cousin.  “They don’t want to because it cramps your style.  It’s good that he’s promoting safety.  They’ll follow what he does.”

Stevenson is credited with inventing the scraper bike: a customized bicycle decorated with cheap materials like aluminium foil and food wrappers.  Riders at Saturday’s event showed up with foil, Cheetos bags and even beer cans on their spokes.  Stevenson said he would love to see Oakland bikers channel their creativity from their rims to their helmets, but, he said, “They have to wear them, customized or not.”

All photos by Carl Nasman except for the third picture in the slideshow, which was taken by Teresa Chin.

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Heavy winds carried the scents of marinated meats and roasted garlic, with a slight hint of propane. Dogs of all sizes trampled on peoples’ feet as they weaved their owners through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Despite the noise around them, children napped in strollers with sunshades, guarding them from the sudden spurts of heat on an otherwise perfect Saturday.

Oakland is encouraging gluttony this weekend as the city hosts two festivals, flooding the streets with thousands of locals and out-of-towners eagerly waiting to sample the various treats.

The three-day Eat Real Festival at Jack London Square focuses on cooking healthy, affordable meals with sustainable local ingredients, while the 23rd annual Oakland Chinatown Streetfest, a two-day event on Saturday and Sunday, showcases traditional Chinese delicacies with a cultural backdrop of performers and informational booths. Groups of people have been trekking the traffic-ridden six blocks to get from one festival to the other.

“It think the festival is a good thing,” said Jenny Ong, executive director of the Chinatown chamber, as she watched satisfied business owners packing up their booths at the Chinatown StreetFest late Saturday afternoon, only to set up again early Sunday morning. “It’s to promote the economic vitality of Chinatown, to celebrate the local Asian culture.” Ong said nearly 100,000 people have so far attended the event over the weekend.

Susan Coss, director of Eat Real, estimated that by the end of Sunday, the same number of people will have passed through during the three-day festivities just overlooking the waterfront at Jack London Square.

Although this is only its second year, the Eat Real has attracted a substantial following of businesses wanting to showcase their culinary capabilities. Nearly 200 vendors—including street food trucks, restaurants, and information booths—participated at each event. Each one added their own touch to the gluttonous experience.

Anna Ming, co-owner of Gerard’s Paella, spent nearly two and a half hours combining a cornucopia of ingredients for the catering business’ most popular item—chicken and seafood paella, made with chicken, Ecuadorian white shrimp, mussels, rice, saffron and smoked paprika, roasted red bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, garlic, green beans, lemons, and garbanzo beans. The dish is made entirely with organic ingredients, unless requested otherwise. Ming, and fellow co-owner Gerard Nebesky, find themselves slaving over the paella pans year-round.

“We travel coast-to-coast making paellas,” said Ming. “We’re all over the place. We cook almost seven days a week.” Aside from a lull in business during the months of January through March, Ming and Nebesky, alongside two other chefs, are sometimes booked for up to four events in a single day. But the cooking isn’t the only daunting task for the four-person crew. Each of the custom-made paella pans they travel with is about as big as a queen-sized bed.

Another vendor specializing in catered events was Global Soul Street Eats, owned by Jessica Phadungsilp and Christina Aviles. Only four months into the business, both have already established a following, with customers leaving the booth shouting praises about their jambalaya. As of midday Saturday, nearly half of the pre-prepared 60-gallon batch of jambalaya was already settling in the stomachs of a few hundred happy festival-goers.

Aviles said she spends an hour and a half constantly stirring the concoction of orzo, tomatoes, all-natural sausage, organic chicken, tomato paste, and the “holy trinity” of garlic, onions, and celery. “It’s slowly stewed with lots of love.”

Adding to the global food experience was Soul Cocina, a San Francisco-based restaurant. Co-owner and chef Roger Feely provided more than just his bhel puri, a rice dish mixed with diced vegetables. He let people witness the special way in which the dish’s sauce of garden mint chutney is prepared, using a bike-powered blender A young man was happily pedaling the blue one-wheeled bike, watching the blender—that sat atop the wheel, between the handlebars—form the forest green chutney paste.

“We didn’t want to use any kind of electricity,” said Feely, as he worked alongside his wife and co-owner, Desiree. “Everything is 100 percent handmade.” In addition to the homemade chutney, the dish had Indian puffed rice, fried lentils, cilantro, green chilies, boiled potatoes, and yellow, red, and green heirloom tomatoes. As he doled out the remnants of one batch, Feely scurried to the back table in the tent, determined not to keep his customers waiting. After eyeing the measurements of each ingredient, which were all raw—with the exception of the rice, lentils and potatoes—Feely tossed together the colorful vegan creation.

Katie McKinstry, a mechanical engineer from Oakland, was just as impressed with the food as she was the bike-powered blender. “I like the combination of the mint with the crunchy aspect of the puffed rice,” she said. “It tastes like summer.”

In nearby Chinatown, grills ran strong as thick cuts of meat were slapped onto the grill and served on skewers, buns and paper plates. Though the primary language was Cantonese, evident by the chatter of thousands of locals, people didn’t need to know the language to understand what good food was.

At Saigon BBQ, based in San Francisco, owners Helen Nguyen and her husband Khoi Xa served up their signature barbecue sticks, which were finely cut pieces of chicken slathered in their homemade barbecue sauce. They even offered sugar cane juice, made fresh using two-foot long pieces of sugar cane stems and running them under a large steel rolling pin, forcing the sweet liquid out and flattening the stems until they resembled torn corn husks.

Across the way, Happy Dumplings served up its own rendition of the kebob, adding a spicy kick. The husband-and-wife team of James Kerson and Shuhui Jiang sprinkled a medley of spices on their cumin-based lamb kebobs. Also on the menu were the restaurant’s signature item of water fried buns (shui jin bao), available in chive and pork, and cabbage and pork, and vegetarian—with freshly chopped carrots, tofu, pickled vegetables, mushrooms, and ginger. Kerson prides himself in being able to make the pastries on demand.

Attending the festival for another year, 13-year-old Kenny Yu, of Alameda, stopped by Happy Dumplings with his father, in search of something to munch on as he strolled through the rest of the fair.

“It’s quite good,” he managed to say, while nodding and tearing the tender lamb meat off of the two skewers in his hand.

Though the Jack London Square and Chinatown food trucks will be gone by Monday morning, there’s nothing to worry about; they’ll be back on the streets at their usual locations. And anyone craving for a dish from the restaurants that labored under small tents and over portable grills can now enjoy the same food—trading in the picnic benches and paper plates for a booth and tablecloth service.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs” and knowing the source of your meat.

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In one corner of Oakland’s second Eat Real Festival, the annual Jack London Square celebration of locally produced food, the very scrappiest of the sustainability enthusiasts challenged the public to take the movement home. And they didn’t mean starting an herb garden.

Instead, these local farmers and butchers paraded out animals, both alive and not, urging consumers to look their food in the face.

“Your great-grandmother probably went out and killed a chicken for dinner every night,” said Novella Carpenter, author of the food memoir Farm City, who was selling produce at the festival and talked about her chicken culling demonstration — that’s humane slaughtering and cleaning — scheduled for Sunday. “What we do is get people in touch with their meat,” Carpenter said. “The demonstration is to empower people, but it’s also to remind people of our heritage.”

Chickens, goats and bees all made an appearance Saturday, as did many of the local food movement’s best-known personalities. For those who want to get in touch but aren’t quite at Carpenter’s level, David Budworth was on hand with a lower-key alternative. Budworth, aka Dave the Butcher, chatted with a crowd of 300 to 400 people about the evils of factory farming while he and his colleagues from Avedano’s Holly Park Market butchered a goat.

On a stage in the festival’s “Urban Homesteading” section, Budworth suspended the newly dead, skinned animal from an anchor-shaped hook attached to metal scaffolding. He deftly broke it down into sections and explained each step, all the while encouraging the crowd to move away from mass-produced “boneless, skinless, chicken breasts” and try something different from their local butcher — like goat.

“A lot Americans don’t eat goat, even though it’s lean and protein-rich,” he said, and placed his hands on the animal’s hindquarters. “And they won’t eat tongue, for example, but they’ll eat this,” Budworth said. “It’s a lot of mental stuff people need to work through.”

Later, Budworth talked about the recently invigorated local food movement. “People are moving away from the whole 24/7 Safeway thing that was so popular in the ’70s,” he said. “People have been wanting to source more locally in the last few years.”

Budworth is happy to help, whether by butchering meat for his clients or teaching them to do it themselves. Avedano’s offers monthly classes that teach basic knife and butchery skills, that Budworth says “will help people break free of their fear of this.”

For the less carnivorous animal enthusiast, Eat Real provided ample information on rearing chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and on beekeeping. Ken Kirkland and Mario Klip manned an impressive booth designed to walk the urban farmer through each step of housing backyard chickens. Kirkland, owner of Woolly Egg Ranch, provided a vast selection of the birds, which customers were able to purchase on the spot.

Kirkland’s chickens put the red hen that graced barnyards of yore to shame — today’s urban farmer has gone designer. These “heritage birds” come in a variety of colors and sizes, sport froufrou plumage, and cost $15-$30 a pop. According to Kirkland, the more familiar White Leghorns and Rhode Island Reds are bred for mass egg production and can range from difficult to downright mean. “The heritage birds breeds are not as productive but are better backyard birds,” he said. “And the eggs they produce are better than store-bought eggs. They’re all different colors: green, champagne, speckled, brown, and pink.”

Naturally, these couture chickens need couture housing, and that’s where Klip comes in. As the owner of a small business called Holland Hen Houses, Klip says his motivation was to give the urban farmer an alternative to the unsightly chicken coop. In 2009, Klip started selling his “attractive, European cottage-style, locally-made hen houses” to the public, and thus far, he said, business is booming.

“Chickens are very popular, especially in this area,” Kilp said. “I read somewhere recently that it’s the fastest growing hobby in the U.S.” And though he’s doing business stateside, the Netherlands-born Klip paid homage to his homeland by naming different cottage models after Dutch cities and artists — “Utretch,” “Amsterdam” and “Rembrandt,” among others.

Once you’ve purchased your chickens and made them a home, one looming question remains: What next? Heidi Kooy, who lives in Excelsior with her husband, two children, two goats, two chickens, a dog, a cat and a rabbit, has the answer. At her “Backyard Chickens 101” presentation, Kooy addressed everything from vaccination to chicken feed, and she was frank about the downsides.

“You have to do some pretty gruesome things,” she said. “I’ve had to stick my hand up a chicken’s backside. But it’s not that bad, really!” Kooy also addressed the legality of backyard farming. “You can only legally keep two chickens in San Francisco, but the city is on a complaint basis,” she said. “They’ll only bother you if someone complains about noise or smell. So, the key is being on good terms with your neighbors.”

Frankie and Jeannie Morrow, who gave Eat Real’s presentation on goat milking, said they’re on such good terms with their neighbors that many of them help care for the couple’s six goats in exchange for milk. Why? “It’s the closest thing to human milk,” Frankie Morrow said of goat milk’s health benefits. “It’s easier to digest, and it makes it easier to digest other food, too.” The Morrows also make goat cheese and ice cream, but say the rewards of goat ownership extend far beyond food. “Because goats have been with us since the dawn of time, we’re really comfortable around them and they are really comfortable around us,” Frankie Morrow said. “We think of our goats as pets. Each one has a distinct personality.”

Marina Shoup, Vice President of the San Francisco Beekeepers Association, added “escape” to the list of benefits urban animal rearing provides. “It slows me down,” she said. “I get to pay attention to forces greater than my own.” That tone of deference was palpable in the language and attitude of every Eat Real vendor and presenter, especially the ones working with living creatures. Responsible animal ownership set the tone for the day, as did a focus on proper care, preparation and respect. Heidi Kooy put it plainly, “If you’re not sure about this, don’t do it,” she said. Or, if it’s just the final product that appeals, start with a trip to your neighborhood butcher shop.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes “good eggs” and encourages a weekend of street fair gluttony.

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With nearly 550 million eggs being pulled off grocery shelves nationwide during one of the largest egg recalls ever, and with thousands of people infected with salmonella after eating contaminated eggs, the idea of eating eggs can seem a little daunting. But not all eggs are created equal. The eggs involved in the recall are from just two large-scale factories in Iowa, whereas “if you look at a regional food system, you don’t have that same kind of impact,” says Eat Real festival director Susan Coss. This is a point that she and the other organizers of this weekend’s festival hope to make at the second annual three-day event that will showcase locally produced foods, including eggs.

Eat Real beer mugs. Photo by greenkozi via Flickr Creative Commons.

The festival kicks off on Friday in Oakland at Jack London Square, where approximately 90 food vendors will sell their specialties, ranging from Jamaican jerk chicken to lobster rolls to Guittard chocolate crème brulee. There will also be a beer shed with 30 breweries, a wine barn, cooking demonstrations on topics like how to fillet a fish, and jamming, pickling and brewing contests.

But more than just showing off gourmet fare, the Eat Real organizers’ broader goal is to show people that good food is locally accessible, healthy and affordable. “Having these major food recalls this week drives home why we love doing what we’re doing at Eat Real,” says Coss. “Ultimately what we would like to do is reinforce this idea of why regional food systems are important.”

Part of the idea behind Eat Real is to introduce people to locals who are growing produce, raising animals and brewing beer on a small scale. One of the farmers on hand at the festival to talk about small-scale chicken farms will be Eric Koefoed. He and his wife, Alexis Koefoed, own Soul Food Farm, where they tend to 1,200 laying chickens—which produce 600 to 900 eggs a day—and 6,000 meat chickens. Their chickens do not live in coops and are free to roam all over the property, which is located in Vacaville. “We’re a small diversified farm and our chickens are outside all day long doing what chickens do, which is chasing bugs and eating grass,” says Alexis Koefoed. “As small farmers, we are trying to create a better model and cleaner food, by animals that are treated better and are living in better conditions.”

Additionally, Wooly Egg Ranch, which is based in Mill Valley, will have live chickens for sale along with a chicken-raising starter kit and tips on chicken keeping.  Right next door, a “Good Egg” booth will be set up with local egg farmers, including Koefoed, available to talk about the egg recall, egg safety and how small-scale production is different than factories like those in Iowa.

In the large-scale factories, up to 1 million chickens can share one facility, with six or seven chickens living in one cage under artificial light, eating feed laced with the hormones and antibiotics that gets them to produce two to three eggs a day. “When you have a large density of animals in the hundreds of thousands, you’re going have constant outbreaks of disease,” says Alexis Koefoed, “because you’re not going to be able to meet health and food safety standards.”

A laying hen. Photo by Phae via Flickr Creative Commons.

Alexis Koefoed says that what happens in factories also changes the nutritional and flavor components of eggs. “All of those things that are happening in an industrial model—with chemicals and an aggressive laying cycle—all of that stuff ends up in their eggs,” she says. “It’s a sad reflection of what an egg should be.” When her chickens lay eggs, she says, it’s on their own time frame. What is produced, she says, is a “completely different version of an egg.”

Both Coss and Koefoed believe that the egg recall is creating the perfect opportunity to talk about the industrial food system. “It’s shining a spotlight on industry farms and how the system needs to be re-hauled and re-imagined,” says Koefoed. “I’m excited to think that this might turn millions of people towards their farmers markets.” Coss agrees, and points out that when eggs are produced and sold on a local scale, the possible spread of any disease is minimized. “That’s not to say salmonella doesn’t exist on these small farms—it does—but you’re not recalling millions of eggs,” she says.

At Eat Real, the farmers in the “Good Egg” booth will talk to people about handling eggs when they’re preparing food, along with egg safety and how to take care of eggs. They will also have different types of eggs on display and information on how to buy local, pasture-raised eggs from small-scale farms. “We as a society have drifted so far from where food comes from that we do not have any relationship with it,” says Coss. “It’s exciting to do a event that’s all about that.”

The Eat Real festival runs from Friday, August 27 to Sunday, August 29. For more information on the vendors, schedule and activities through the course of the festival, visit their website.

Read more Eat Real coverage on Oakland North: Eat Real promotes knowing the source of your meat and encourages a weekend of street fair gluttony.

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Thousands of people came out for Oakland's Art & Soul festival.

Written across the “Why I love Oakland” canvas, put up at the Art & Soul festival, were testimonials like “I love Oakland because it’s diverse,” “Because of our rich culture,” “I love Oakland because the people here are amazing and welcoming” and “cuz it’s real!” So many people had written on the canvas that by the afternoon of the second day of the festival, there was no more free space to write.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the organizers of Art & Soul pulled out all of the stops for this year’s festival and thousands of people came to enjoy. Part music festival, part street fair, part educational outreach, dozens of vendors and information booths were set up in downtown Oakland. There were amusement rides, balloon tying, all sorts of food, a wine garden, local artisans selling jewelry, hats, and paintings. And then there was the music line-up—MC Hammer and CAKE headlined Saturday while Sheila E., John Handy and Lenny Williams headlined Sunday.

“The focus was all on Oakland around music,” said Harry Hamilton, the associate producer of the festival. “All of the artists currently live in Oakland or have an Oakland home.” Art & Soul is put on by the City of Oakland and Hamilton said what matters to him most is that people are having fun and celebrating the city’s music, heritage and art. “I wish we could capture the spirit and keep it with us all year round,” he said.

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The aptly-named Celeste Burrows armed herself with scissors, pens, and a two-inch wide roll of paper on Friday night, ready to lead 12 adults and three children on an unusual journey. She unrolled and cut lengths of paper and handed them out, instructing each person to write “sun” on one end and “Pluto/Kuiper Belt” on the other.

Burrows teaches astronomy at community colleges and at the Chabot Space and Science Center on Skyline Boulevard in Oakland, but on Friday she was dressed to hike, wearing a warm vest and with her pants tucked into her boots. She was ready to guide a simulated walk through the solar system, a roughly four-mile loop through Roberts Park starting at the science center and ending in the dark. Similar hikes combining nature and astronomical lore have been conducted through Chabot in the past, but the opportunity arises infrequently.

Before the walking commenced, Burrows wanted her charges to learn a bit about interplanetary distances by charting out the planets on paper. The exercise clearly showed that no one in the group had much of a clue where any of the planets are in relationship to the sun.

Burrows moved around from person to person, asking what planet they thought went halfway between the sun and Pluto. No one knew. It was Uranus, she said. How about halfway between Uranus and the sun? Everyone was still stumped. It’s Saturn. How about between Saturn and the sun? They were still clueless, though curious, copying from neighbors and waiting for Burrows to fill them in on the next planet’s location.

Saturn and its rings. Photo from Chabot Space and Science Center.

The maps also clarified that most of planets ­– Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – orbit far closer to the sun than distant Neptune or Pluto do. Pluto, considered too small to be a proper planet, is located along the Kuiper (rhymes with “hyper”) Belt. About 5 billion miles away from the sun, the belt marks a sort of border for the solar system; it’s littered with many “small” objects including dwarf planets like Pluto, as well as asteroids and leftovers from the solar system’s creation.

After getting an idea of where things lie in the solar system, the hiking group headed out into the woods, accompanied by a sliver of moon slowly rising in the west, as Burrows pointed out. If it had been slightly darker, they might have seen Venus, Mars and Mercury coming into the sky alongside this crescent moon.

But the real purpose of the hike wasn’t merely to stargaze but to try to fathom the layout and scope of the solar system while enjoying dusk in the woods. Burrows asked the group to imagine that the sun was around a meter in size, perhaps the length of one big stride. If the group’s starting point at Chabot was the sun, she said, it would be roughly 46 steps to the first planet, Mercury. The group embarked from the entryway, counting steps across the road toward the trailhead.

One of the smallest in the party, a little girl in a bright pink and purple knit poncho, counted out loud for everyone. The count stopped the group in the middle of the road, at virtual Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. After a quick briefing by Burrows, the group took 48 more steps to Venus. The second planet from the sun is actually the hottest, even though it’s farther from the sun than Mercury. It used to be considered a twin to Earth, being of similar size. However, it swelters at more than 850 degrees Fahrenheit under a thick atmosphere of heat-trapping greenhouse gas, more than 95 percent carbon dioxide.

Forty steps later, when the group arrived at “Earth,” it was about 7:30 p.m. and the actual sun hung low in the sky. Golden light slanted through the redwood trees of Roberts Park onto huckleberry bushes and ferns. Dull thuds from footsteps on dirt and mossy fallen wood were punctuated with cracking twigs and camera clicks. The observatory and its concrete finally invisible a stone’s throw behind the trees, the hike had begun in earnest. Next stop, Mars.

In space, it takes ten minutes for the radio waves traveling the speed of light from Earth to reach the rovers that cruise the Martian surface, and another ten for the waves to get back to Earth. None of the physical objects that humans have sent to Mars – satellites that orbit the planet, or the two rovers exploring its surface – have ever returned: the only Martian objects that we have, come from the rare meteors are knocked off Mars and happen to land on Earth.

A hiker asked, How does that happen? Mars would have to collide with an asteroid of sufficient size to send Mars rock flying off at its escape velocity, the speed that objects need to reach to free themselves of a planet’s gravity, Burrows explained. It’s about 11,300 miles per hour on Mars. (Earth’s escape velocity is about 25,000 miles per hour.)

Passing Mars, the group continued to walk as night fell on Roberts Park. Every year, Burrows explained, our planet bravely plows into clouds of space dust, the trails left behind comets away in other parts of their orbits. When this detritus–mostly ice and pebbes–hits our atmosphere, it burns up. At night, the larger of the glowing particles are visible to the naked eye, appearing as streaks across the sky as they fall to earth.

Late last week, meteor buffs everywhere looked to the sky to catch the fantastic showers caused by the Perseid meteors, an event that happens every August as Earth intersects the detritus left by the Swift-Tuttle comet. The comet itself is on its way out to the edges of the solar system and won’t return for 116 years. Unfortunately for those hoping to catch a glimpse of the Perseid meteor shower during Friday’s hike, a solid fog began to roll in along the distant ridges as the group arrived at a mock Jupiter.

Roughly an eighth of the distance between the sun and Pluto, sits the solar system’s biggest planet, Jupiter. “If someone was looking at our solar system from some alien place they would describe it as ‘the sun, Jupiter, and some scruff,’” Burrows said.

Jupiter’s distant next-door neighbor Saturn looks almost as large, though, if you add its huge rings, she said. However, Saturn, as an object of scientific interest, is somewhat eclipsed by its many moons. Two of the 62 moons of Saturn that have been discovered so far—Titan and Enceladus—show evidence of liquid matter, which might indicate a potential for life, as does the presence of carbon. Titan has rivers of liquid ethane and methane, organic gases on Earth but both containing carbon. Enceladus shows simple organic compounds, too, and may hide liquid water below its frozen surface.

Solar-Go-A-Round Exhibit. Photo from Chabot Space and Science Center.

From the Earth, it takes a bit less than an hour for light to reach Saturn. For the hikers, it took a similar amount of time to reach virtual Saturn. And for an actual robotic spacecraft, the Cassini-Huygens mission, the journey from the Earth to Saturn took seven years. Fortunately for those participating in Burrows’s guided hike, it didn’t take quite so long to return back to Chabot, where, on a clear night, Saturn and the closer planets can be viewed through the observatory’s telescope, open to the public until 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

It’s the last chance for Chabot visitors to see the center’s Solar-Go-Round exhibit, a virtual tour of the solar system, which closes forever at the end of the month. It will be replaced by Bill Nye’s Climate Lab, an exhibit about climate change and energy.

Upcoming events at Chabot are listed here.

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Ernesto Vilchis shows off his tongue, tripe and cow's cheek tacos.

Looking up into the small ordering window of Tacos Sinaloa’s bright orange and chrome taco truck, Ernesto Vilchis asks for a serving of marinated tongue (lengua), crispy tripe (tripas) and cow’s cheek (cabeza) tacos. As he waits for his food to be grilled to order and topped with condiments such as pickled jalapenos, radishes, lime, cilantro and hot sauce, he says that it’s food like this that reminds him of his home in Mexico.

“If an American travels to another country, they might want cupcakes or waffles,” he says. “It’s the same for us.” Menu items that aren’t often found in ordinary U.S. restaurants, with ingredients like beef brains and tongue, are what Vilchis craves when he feels homesick. “It gives me memories of my place and my family,” he says. As his tacos are handed to him through the small window, he holds up his plate to admire–three little corn tortillas covered with steaming meat and topped with green and red salsas–and says, “This is really delicious.”

Tacos Sinaloa is one of the most popular taco trucks in East Oakland; and not only does it serve up traditional Mexican tacos like tripe and cow’s cheek, it also has items for the less faint-of-heart, such as barbecue pork (al pastor), grilled chicken (pollo) and steak (carne asada). Four years ago, Tacos Sinaloa doubled its menu by opening up an exclusive seafood taco truck parked right next door to the original truck, with menu items like octopus ceviche (pulpo), shrimp tostadas (camarones) and oysters (ostras), which distinguishes it from the dozens of other taco trucks in East Oakland. It serves up bowls of seafood in a spicy red salsa and crispy tortillas topped with little pink shrimp and big hunks of green avocado.

One of the cooks in Tacos Sinaloa's seafood truck waits to take orders.

When Lupe Bueno first fired up Tacos Sinaloa in East Oakland in 1999, he had no idea how popular it would become. A thin, humble man with gray hair and a moustache, Bueno says that when he first started the business made only $50 a day. “I worked day and night,” he says, “17 or 18 hours every day during that first year.”

But, then, little by little, Sinaloa’s reputation grew. Now, his business has 12 employees, the two trucks, a big outdoor and indoor seating area where people can eat after ordering food from the trucks and a prep kitchen where prep-cooks ready some of the ingredients used in the trucks.

Unlike other food trucks in the Bay Area that rove from spot to spot being followed by Twitter and Facebook fans, Bueno has always parked in the same location—the intersection of 22nd Ave and International Blvd—renting the parcel of land where he parks, which is a former A&W drive-in. He also keeps his menu consistent with the same ingredients and recipes. “We have exclusive flavors for the food,” he says. “We have used the same recipes for years.”

Bueno moved to the U.S. in the early 1970s to work as a migrant laborer picking grapes, peaches and cherries. He is originally from Sinaloa, Mexico—a coastal state known for its seafood. Bueno first learned to cook when he moved to Oakland in the 1980s and worked at another taco truck. From there he invented his own recipes and built up a clientele that followed him when he opened Tacos Sinaloa. When he started up the seafood truck four years ago, he says that he had been thinking about it for a while.

Gavin Ames finishes up his meal.

As people line up at Bueno’s seafood truck, they rave about the quality and price of the food—tacos go for $1.25 a pop. Because there is a steady stream of people stopping by throughout the day, the ingredients stay fresh with the prep-cooks always bringing in giant tubs of freshly cut onions, cilantro and Sinaloa’s coveted spicy red salsa.

One customer, former cab driver Gavin Ames, finishes up his lunch and says that he’s had his fair share of tacos over the years. “This is by far the best taco truck in Oakland,” he says enthusiastically. “The shrimp tostada is to die for.” He calls Tacos Sinaloa a “destination taco truck” because he drives out to East Oakland for the sole purpose of eating one of Bueno’s fish burritos or shrimp tacos.

In addition to tacos, burritos, quesadillas and specialty items like the ceviche, Tacos Sinaloa also offers typical Mexican drinks like horchata—an icy drink made with rice, milk and sugar—and champurrado, a warm thick concoction made with corn flour, chocolate, cinnamon and milk.

Bueno has no plans to open a restaurant; he says he likes having the self-order trucks and spacious eating areas. But, he is looking to start another truck. “We are looking for another place, another city maybe,” he says. “I’d like to open one in Berkeley.” He plans to keep the business in the family and eventually pass it onto one of his three children.

Tacos Sinaloa takes pre-orders and host private parties. It is located on 2138 International Boulevard at 22nd Avenue and is open every day of the week.

Connect with Oakland North on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Facebook fans voted for us to cover Tacos Sinaloa as their most recommended Oakland food truck. Read other stories in our food truck series: Jon’s Street Eats, CupKates, and Seoul on Wheels.

Workers separate curd and whey from the soymilk to make tofu.

Deep in West Oakland, behind a big gray façade, is one of the most lauded soymilk, tofu and yuba factories in the Bay Area—Hodo Soy Beanery. Inside, Minh Tsai, tofu master and co-founder of Hodo, runs around wearing tall white rubber boots and a striped railroad hat while checking on each steaming batch of soy milk, tofu and yuba—that’s the dried skin that forms off the top of heated soy milk.

Hodo is unique because all of its products are hand-made, organic and are only sold locally. Because Hodo doesn’t use any preservatives in its soymilk, tofu or other products, it’s hard for people outside the Bay Area to buy their food. The company’s emphasis is on freshness and high-quality taste.

“For us, we are taking back tofu,” Tsai says. “If you do it right, it’s not that boring white block. Good tofu you can just eat.” Tsai is originally from Vietnam and says that he remembers drinking fresh warm soymilk from the market when he was young. He wanted to bring that same hand-made quality to soymilk and tofu made in the U.S. “It’s nothing earth-shattering,” he says. “It’s how people in the Bay Area look at food. The only earth-shattering thing is that we’re doing it with tofu.”

Minh started Hodo in 2004 with his brother-in-law Dean Ku, who works on the marketing side of the business. They first started selling homemade tofu at the Palo Alto farmers market—every week it would sell out. “It did well, to our surprise,” says Ku. “And we thought, ‘Hey, there’s a demand for this.’”

The two began working out of a small factory in San Jose and sold to more farmers markets, including the one at San Francisco’s Ferry Building. Eventually, several Bay Area top chefs, including the Slanted Door’s Charles Phan and Coi’s Daniel Patterson, began requesting Hodo’s tofu and yuba to use in their restaurants.

Last October, Hodo moved to West Oakland. In the 1920s, the building that now houses their soy beanery was a candy factory; it spent the last 20 years as a bakery. “We like that it has food heritage,” says Ku. They have between 25 to 30 employees, the majority from Oakland. Being a presence in the community is important to Hodo—they regularly host factory tours for school groups and residents of West Oakland.

Another important aspect for Hodo is to use organic and bio-diverse soybeans that have not been genetically modified. “For me, I realize that when I eat, I want to eat the best things,” says Tsai, which he says means food that’s organic, local and made by who love making food.

Hodo gives tours of their factory to the public every week.

In addition to plain soymilk, tofu and yuba, Hodo also makes packaged products, like spicy tofu braised in a teriyaki sauce, thinly shredded sheets of yuba, pan-fried and tossed with a sesame paste, and tofu salad made with sesame oil, cilantro and edamame, which they sell at farmers markets, Whole Foods and Monterey Market. “When I think about making tofu,” says Tsai, “the fact is that it has to taste awesome.”

Hodo offers one-hour tours of the facility that include a video, Q&A and samples of their foods. For more information go to Hodo’s website.

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