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Butternut squash gratin

Her love for gratin dishes started at age 15, when Alethea Harper spent a summer abroad in central France. Her host mother, Annie, was a “genius” in the kitchen and one of her dishes was Gratin Dauphinois, which pairs thinly sliced potatoes with cheese. In the U.S. this French dish is commonly known as scalloped potatoes or potatoes au gratin. Harper insists that her gratin could never be as good as her host mothers. “Somehow her potatoes would just melt…

Jean Quan embraces “underdog” status in mayor’s race: “I’m not intimidated”

Jean Quan will be the first to admit she is not expected to win next year’s Oakland mayor’s race. But she’s also the first to say her chances are better than a lot of people think. “I have, in every race I’ve run in, been outspent and have been the underdog,” Quan said in a phone interview. “I’m not intimidated.” An Oakland City Council member since 2003, Quan issued a press release in mid-September announcing her decision to form an…

Cal Protests

A helicopter whirs and circles overhead. The din of chants, shouts and screams echo all the way up Telegraph and, as I get nearer, I can see energy ripple through the gathering crowd like ripples in a bowl of water. Signs and banners wave and bob with the undulation of some 5000 people. Everything is in the Technicolor of the midday sun and accompanied by yelling, drums and occasional rounds of protest songs. Overhead the sky is a perfect blinding…

North Oakland Now: No breakthrough in Campbell search

A volunteer-led search yesterday in the Oakland Hills for missing 5-year-old Hassani Campbell turned up a sweatshirt and a sock on Chabot Road near Highway 24, but Campbell’s foster parents said the clothing did not belong to the boy. “The sweatshirt was a different brand and a different size, and the sock was a big red sock — [Campbell] wasn’t wearing a red sock,” said John Burris, an attorney advising Campbell’s foster parents. At a press conference this afternoon, Oakland…

No signs of boy found in Lake Elizabeth: Search galvanizes community but reveals no clues

Volunteers from throughout the East Bay formed a prayer circle near a reedy lagoon called Lake Elizabeth in Fremont on Saturday morning as they gathered to undertake a grim task. The official goal of the search party—some 100 people strong—was to find the missing five-year-old Hassani Campbell, a Fremont resident who vanished sometime around August 10. Yet in their appeals to a higher power, they were already girding themselves for the chance of finishing empty-handed. “It is our prayer, Lord,…