Sacramento is nicknamed the "City of Trees" for a reason. Even in its most urban core, the city is filled with fruit trees. So what happens when those trees produce more fruit than the owners can harvest, let alone eat? One option is to let Harvest Sacramento take care of it. This year alone, the group has collected more than 13,000 pounds of fruit from the Sacramento area, all of which goes to the Sacramento Food Bank. Harvest Sacramento organized a Midtown Fruit Harvest on Saturday in which 25 community volunteers helped pick more than 1,300 pounds of citrus for the food bank. In just three hours, the group collected grapefruit, oranges, lemons and kumquats from nine houses in the grid

Loosen your belts. Sacramento's most famous burger place, The Squeeze Inn, held its grand reopening celebration Thursday morning. The celebration featured guest appearances by Mayor Kevin Johnson, City Councilman Kevin McCarty and County Supervisor Don Nottoli as well as music, speeches, a raffle and a burger-eating contest. Several hundred people shuffled into The Squeeze Inn throughout the lunch hour for special prices on the burger known for its famous "cheese skirt," which extends an inch beyond the bun. The burger is constructed by cooking a one-third-pound beef patty and putting "a giant handful of cheese" on top of, and around, the burger, said Squeeze Inn employee Keith Lenhart.

        Sacramento has a lot of great things happening for St. Patrick's Day and we wanted to Highlight just a few for you.  Come and celebrate St. Patrick's Day week with de Vere's Irish Pub and a few of our close friends! SATURDAY MARCH 13TH-   DE VERE’S PUB- JOIN US FOR ST. PRACTICE DAY with $4 Tullamore Dew and $1 off draught beers from 4-8pm   OLD SACRAMENTO’S PARADE- Celebrate with your entire family at Old Sacramento’s 14th annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Enjoy the parade, Irish food, and their new beer gardens! For more information CLICK HERE!   SUNDAY MARCH 14TH-   DE VERE’S PUB- JOIN US FOR BRUNCH before, during and after the Shamrock’n half Marathon. We will have brunch

Paulette Coffman and her daughters Chelsea and Brittany are crazy about cupcakes. They’re so obsessed with baking cupcakes of every conceivable flavor that they opened their own business in downtown Davis called Let Them Eat Cake! The Parisian-themed shop features three daily flavors. Let Them Eat Cake’s menu describes their red velvet cupcake, Scarlett, as a “scrumptious red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting,” while their chocolate cupcake, the Dubliner, is hailed as a “Guinness Stout chocolate cake with chocolate butter-cream frosting.” Their third daily flavor, called Illegally Blonde, is described as a “fluffy, vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.” In addition to the three stapl

Sacramento's Beer Week is in full swing. Bars and restaurants all over the city are celebrating by offering special dinners, drinks and events. Mulvaney's Building and Loan hosted its Pigs-n-Pints event Tuesday evening. Guests were treated to a delicious five-course meal, family style, in the events room at the corner of 19th and L Streets. The packed room of men and women came from all over the Sacramento region. Business professionals, civic leaders and students all sampled the beer and food. The meal was prepared under the watchful eye of owner Patrick Mulvaney with the entire kitchen crew pitching in. The first course consisted of fresh asparagus with country ham and Vega farm eggs

It is not hard to find someone struggling during these tough economic times. Take, for instance, Devon Lee. He and his wife have two children, but both are unemployed. “We need food, clothing, resources,” said Lee. “Money is a big issue.” But some relief came to Lee in a big way. He was one of more than 3,000 families to receive food assistance from a distribution organized by Feed The Children, the international hunger relief organization. Feed The Children distributed eight semi tractor-trailers full of food items at Cal Expo on February 24. Salvation Army-Sacramento was a partner agency of Feed The Children and pre-identified the recipient families. The boxes are designed to help a f

  "You moved where?"    "Sacramento"  "Why?"         Sacramento is not thought of very highly by a lot of Bay Area-ites.  I'm not entirely sure why.  I suppose many cannot separate the town from the stink wafting up from the State Assembly and Capital.  Politics as a whole is repugnant to your average person, and California's is especially loathsome. It's an unfortunate metonymy, "Sacramento" for the sludge that leaks out of the State Assembly, but it is to be expected.  When one considers "Washington DC", its a rare soul who thinks of the Smithsonian first and the politics second.   I grew up in Menlo Park, decidedly Bay Area-centric.  In the circles I came of age in, Sacramento wasn't

Springtime will soon be in the air and you and your family are invited to get take a break from the 9 to 5 and city life to experience the awakening of life. The Center For Land-Based Learning at the Farm on Putah Creek is hosting Welcome Back Springtime at the Farm on Putah Creek Sunday March 28, 2010 from 10:00am – 4:00pm. The Center For Land-Based Learning is a non-profit whose stated mission is to “engage youth in learning experiences on the land that foster respect for the critical interplay of agriculture, nature and society.” Under the leadership of Mary Kimball, Executive Director, the Center uses a network of farms, ranches, and natural ecosystems as educational laboratories for

Sunday was the Lunar New Year for several Asian cultures, including the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese New Year celebration, Tết, began Saturday morning in a parking lot on the corner of Stockton Boulevard and Fowler Avenue. It started with the City of Sacramento's ribbon cutting ceremony for Little Saigon. This was followed by a New Year parade proceeding south down Stockton Boulevard to Florin Road, where participants viewed the County of Sacramento's ribbon cutting ceremony and participated in the Tết Festival. The following is a photo journal of the weekend's events and festivities. For more photographs and information, please read this article on the festival and celebration. Councilma

Imagine huge burgers, each smothered in a fried "skirt" of melted cheese with a side of hot, thick fries. If this sounds familiar, you probably know that I'm talking about the Squeeze Inn in Sacramento. The Squeeze Inn is a tiny restaurant known for its burgers that have so much cheese you have to experience it to believe it. The restaurant has been in its original location for about 30 years, taking orders from customers who literally waited in lines out the door. The popularity of the Squeeze Inn is not just known to Sacramento locals, but also caught the eye of Food Network star Guy Fieri and was featured on his show "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." Even with the restaurant's great pop

This week marks the first Sacramento Beer Week.  Breweries, restaurants and bars throughout the Sacramento region will shine a spotlight on beer.  Sacramento Beer Week will feature more than 200 events including brewer’s dinners, beer and cheese pairings, rare ale tastings, pint nights and brewery showcases. Sacramento Beer Week seeks to brew up interest in beer generally and in locally brewed craft beer in particular.  The period following the holidays and before the warmer Spring weather is traditionally a slow period for beer sales, and Sacramento Beer Week organizers hope their event will be a shot in the arm for the local economy. Local brews won’t be the only ones showcased during

Eat from 20 of Sacramento's downtown restaurants with the purchase of one ticket supporting a 10-year-old boy fighting secondary cancer. The For Ben Food Crawl is from 2 to 5 p.m. on Feb. 28.  Each restaurant will have  drink specials, a taste of their food, and tons of great people exploring the grid of Sacramento while supporting Ben and his family. Beating levels while playing Nintendo DS, building cities with Legos, and making people smile are just a few of Ben's talents. But, that is not all he does. Ben has survived a brain tumor two years ago and now is battling secondary cancer in his spine. Intense treatments, intelligent doctors, unlimited prayers, and his close family and frie

Love is in the air but more importantly, so is butter. Although Valentine's Day is fast approaching, don't worry. There is still time to book a romantic evening. Restaurants all over town have special menus to mark the occasion. Below are menu samplings from several local restaurants: Paragary's, 1408 28th St., and Cosmo Cafe, 1000 K St., are having a special weekend prix fixe menu in honor of Valentine's Day. Paragay's menu will include an appetizer, entree and dessert. Entree choices are petrale sole or beef short ribs braised in red wine. Cosmo also will offer three courses, with an entree choice of roasted lamb loin chop or grilled Hawaiian swordfish. After your meal at Cosmo, keep t

To truly understand what makes wine great, it helps if one knows how it is made. The process of creating wine involves more than just the type of grape, the soil and if it is meant for a bottle, jug or box. And although all of these variables factor into the final product, the character of a wine is determined during the aging process, while stored in barrels. Usually the public isn’t provided the opportunity to witness what makes great wine, and more importantly, to sample it before it hits the wine list at The Firehouse Restaurant or the shelf at Trader Joe’s. Not anymore.  For the third consecutive year, over 20 El Dorado County wineries will open their cellars for Bring out the Barre

Get ready for the 22nd Annual Winter Wine & Food Fest benefiting the Make-A-Wish Foundation® on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at the Sacramento Convention Center. This premiere food & wine event will once again showcase over 60 exceptional local restaurants and food purveyors and 60 of the finest wineries and top area microbreweries. The general admission tasting and extensive silent auction begins at 5:00 p.m. and continues until 7:30 p.m. Live music will be provided by the Over The Edge Band. For an additional cost, the evening continues on with a special VIP Program that also includes an exclusive live wine auction and runs from 7:45 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The event is attended by more than

Sacramento environmental groups gathered Thursday night to recognize local leaders in sustainability and to raise funds for local environmental projects. Sustainable Sacramento was hosted by Pesticide Watch and Slow Food Sacramento. The event was held at Hot Italian Pizza and Panini Bar in midtown Sacramento. As attendees escaped the damp streets and persistent rain, they were greeted warmly by Paul S. Towers, state director of Pesticide Watch Education Fund, and Slow Food Sacramento’s Kathy Les. Hot Italian co-owner Fabrizio Cercatore poured glasses of red wine and brought out a variety of pizzas for guests to enjoy. Pesticide Watch, a statewide organization based in Sacramento, seeks t

I used to go to a Trader Joes back in the early 90's that felt like a warehouse of bulk bins, locally made artisan bread, and produce from the central valley. As I grew into adulthood, and the Trader Joes franchice kept pace with their spurious growth across the US, the store changed. Actual artisan food disappeared, as nearly everything came from a single warehouse in Los Angeles, with most--if not all--of the produce getting trucked up from Central America.  Trader Joes cleverly masks their mass-production, oil-gulping delivery network with the ubiquitous Friendly Flyer, a marketing coup that has convinced us all that they are the local grocer and baker and butcher. We're caught in this

Dine Downtown is back with stomachs and wallets rejoicing. Restaurants across the grid opened their doors, welcoming patrons with tantalizing three- or four-course dinners for $30. I decided to eat at Biba Tuesday night for the first time. As a lifelong resident of Sacramento, the aura of Biba is undeniable. From her now classic cooking show, Biba's Italian Kitchen, multiple cookbooks and award-winning cuisine, Biba Caggiano is a powerhouse in Northern Italian cuisine. With so much hype resting on the meal, I'm happy to report it didn't disappoint my high expectations. The antipasto offered a choice of Polpette di Granchio e Cappe Sante (crab and prawn cake) or Barbabietole Arrosto (beet

Sacramentans can support sustainability, the environment and decreased use of pesticides at a local fundraiser being held next week. Pesticide Watch and Slow Food Sacramento are teaming up to host the event, Sustainable Sacramento, on Thursday, Jan. 21. The event will laud local sustainability leaders and raise money for Pesticide Watch, a statewide organization based in Sacramento. "The commitment and expertise, the money and time that's required to step out and do things differently than the easy, conventional approach to raising and distributing food is something that should be recognized," said Charity Kenyon, membership director for Slow Food Sacramento. The event will honor Harves

The fifth annual Dine Downtown week is back January 8 through January 17 with 35-featured restaurants. Dine Downtown is the perfect opportunity to sample the best Downtown restaurants like The Firehouse, Biba Restaurant, Bistro 33, and Ella Dining Room & Bar on a budget. How it works: Each Dine Downtown restaurant will offer a prix-fixe three-course dinner menu for $30 per person that typically includes your choice of an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. All you have to do is ask for the Dine Downtown menu once you’re seated. Restaurants like Morgan’s at the Sheraton Grand Hotel and The Pilothouse Restaurant also offer special wine pairings to complement each dish. Plan ahead: Take a