Cynthia Dea
Cynthia is the Living editor at KCET.org. Prior to her role at KCET, she mostly wrote about food, contemporary art, and social justice issues for a variety of publications and websites. She also worked as a cheesemaker in London and kitchen assistant in Paris.
Chinese New Year starts on January 25 and families are gathering around the table this week to welcome the 15-day holiday. Here are eight dishes to eat to bring in the year of the rat.
What did our restaurant forefathers serve for Thanksgiving dinner?
"Annabel Langbein: The Free Range Cook" premieres on October 6th and continues every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:30 p.m. on KCETLink. Win a copy of her latest cookbook.
Get your hands dirty and volunteer at one of L.A.'s many community farms and gardens.
This square mile of planned residential neighborhood in South L.A. is one testament to the Olmstead Brothers legacy. Since the 1950s, it has flourished as an African American community with an especially artistic bent.
Pasadena is proud to maintain its all-American image, yet beneath the gleam it projects, the city of roses has some dark and peculiar history.
"Pack a healthy meal when you send your kid to school. Some of the least healthy food I've seen come from home."
Before it was called "America's first suburban Chinatown," Monterey Park was home to white and Mexican settlers and Japanese farmers. In the 1950s it was called "the Mexican Beverly Hills."
"A monoculture system doesn't actually provide very good conditions to support our native pollinator communities."
The move for one fair wage would "primarily impact women, women of color," she says. "We're addressing income inequality and gender inequality, and the poorest in America. The wage has been stuck [at $2.13] for the last 25 years."
A cooking workshop at the Getty Villa prepares dishes that were the fusion of two millenia ago -- the merging of Gaul and Roman foods in modern-day France.