CONSUMED with Jaime Lewis

Kirstin Sherritt owns The Secret Garden in San Luis Obispo, a shop that specializes in tea, herbs and spices. I’ve known Kirstin for a while, just through the grapevine of life in SLO, and I’ve watched her grow what was a tiny little back-patio business into a thriving community. The shop overlooks San Luis Creek, with jars of all kinds of raw botanicals: bark, leaves, petals, buds, rinds and spic...

A couple weeks ago, as I was scrolling around on Instagram, I saw photos from the recent grand opening of The Bridge Cafe in downtown San Luis Obispo. This isn’t just any eatery, though. In collaboration with the Cuesta College Culinary Arts Foundation, The Bridge Cafe is a social enterprise, providing culinary training and employment for people who have previously been incarcerated. As I looked a...

My guests Stephanie Nye and Kirsten Finberg are each lovely in their own right, but because they are longtime friends who work side-by-side at the Morro Bay Farmers Market each Thursday afternoon, they are magic together. Stephanie (aka Soupgangsta) is the brains behind Farmers Market Inspired Soups, a company she’s had for many years that feeds folks tasty soups made from produce she gets at the...

Vicki Carroll is the president of Hospice du Rhône, an organization of wine producers across the globe that promotes Rhône-varietal wines. It's hard to believe there was a time that people didn't know what syrah or grenache are, but it really wasn't all that long ago. As the administrator for Hospice du Rhône, Vicki has worked to coalesce the efforts of Rhône producers all over the world to share...

Andrea Chavez oversees Talley Farms Fresh Harvest, a community-supported agriculture program with 3,500 subscribers across the Western U.S. Talley Farms has been around for four generations, but when the Talley family wanted to start a weekly subscription-based harvest share program in 2012, they hired Andrea. Her expertise in the produce business is a marvel, as you’ll hear from our conversation....

Janie Willheim is the spark plug behind Lumina Wines, a producer of what she calls “small batch wines made for happy consumption.” A graduate of the Cal Poly University wine and viticulture program, by day, Janie works on the winemaking team at Desperada Wines, whose winemaker Vailia From was on the podcast back in 2019. And because Vailia is married to fellow winemaker Russell From of Herman Stor...

Sara Garofalo teaches the principles of Ayurveda and intuitive eating to clients across the country, and across the world. She’s been featured on Medium, NBC Miami, Yahoo and Voyage LA for her approach to working with clients who struggle with disordered eating habits. Sara lives in San Luis Obispo, but she grew up in Italy, near Milan, and developed an eating disorder at a young age. With her cli...

This is a special between-seasons bonus episode with the folks behind two of the Central Coast’s most flavorful restaurants, Ember in Arroyo Grande and The Spoon Trade in Grover Beach. My conversation with Brian and Harmony Collins and Jacob and Brooke Town took place November 29, 2022 in front of an audience at There Does Not Exist brewing in San Luis Obispo as part of the Consumed Live event ser...

Sam DeNicola and Matt Gamarra are the bakers behind Bread Bike, a community-supported bakery in San Luis Obispo. Here’s the business model: people mill whole grains and bake them into hearty loaves of bread, then bike it around to people in the community. I’ve had a Bread Bike subscription for a while now, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE bread day. Here we talk about how bread became a thing for both Sam and...

Peter Cron is the executive director of the San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority, and he is a treasure trove of answers for all the burning questions I had about garbage. It turns out that we in SLO County do a pretty decent job of leading the way with managing waste. In fact, we’re the first place in the nation to use an anaerobic digestion facility to process organic wast...

Katherine Knowlton is a personal chef and food stylist who recently launched Happy Chance, a low-dose fruit bite made with whole foods, natural sugars, and clean cannabis. Based in Santa Barbara, Katherine has spent years developing what she calls a “healthy alternative to the modern day gummy.” We talked a lot about what she meant by that, because I had no idea how crazy the ingredient list was o...

Jaime Dietenhofer is co-founder and CEO of Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company, based out of Buellton, California. I’ve been drinking Fig Mountain since they opened in 2010, and I’ve always appreciated their laser-focused house style. That style has its roots in early discussions between Jaime and his father, Jim Dietenhofer—extending as far back as Jaime’s senior year of high school. The two of the...

I recently scrolled through Instagram and saw a post from the San Luis Obispo Food Bank featuring a young woman named Claire who had raised $5,000 for the organization since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. She is 12 years old and writes a weekly newsletter called RNC Gardening Tips and Tricks, which she prints and hand delivers for just a dollar per month, and all the proceeds go to the Food...

Jack Alger is the owner and mind behind Mutiny Burger in Paso Robles. The roots of the little burger cafe begin with Jack’s work in the beer industry. As he sold beer across the U.S. for Lagunitas Brewing and others, he built up a knowledge bank of his favorite spots for burgers, burritos—whatever local specialties he resonated with. He even built an Instagram account called @burritohunters that s...

Kristen Telling is a homesteader and cooking instructor living in the countryside between San Luis Obispo and Los Osos. Her website’s homepage reads: “Be inspired. Create boldly. Eat well. Cook Like A Lover: liberate yourself from recipes and cook with passion and creativity.” And that’s what Kristin is all about: simplicity, nourishment, something she calls “ancestral eating,” and compassion towa...

Gibsey and Josh Beckett own and operate Thibido Winery, based in Paso Robles, California. Josh Beckett is one of **those** Becketts—the Beckett family that established Peachy Canyon Winery, one of Paso’s OG producers. He grew up surrounded by wine and viticulture, along with his brother Jake. The two of them left Paso Robles for college, without any intention of returning. Not only would they retu...

Ariela Gottschalk and Jeff Pienack own Halcyon Farms in Arroyo Grande, California, but you might know it better as Rutiz Farms. In early 2022, Ariela and Jeff bought the farm from longtime Central Coast farmer Jerry Rutiz, who presented the offer to them specifically. Ariela has lots of history managing the farming operation at Growing Grounds in Santa Maria, a farm that employs and benefits adult...

Dr. Ricky Volpe is a professor of agribusiness at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, where he teaches the economics of food retailing, industrial organization, and applied econometrics. In essence, Ricky teaches about grocery stores: how food is sourced, moved, valued, priced, organized, sold, and understood. It all started with a road trip he took with his girlfriend, now wife, to Walm...

Recorded live August 31, 2022, CONSUMED Live featured host Jaime Lewis in conversation with brewers Matt Brynildson of Firestone-Walker Brewing and Max Montgomery of There Does Not Exist; and founder of Topa Topa Brewing Company Jack Dyer.   Available for purchase at letsgetconsumed.com .

Hardworking actors at the Great American Melodrama in Oceano share favorite pre- and post-show foods, plus stories from the GAM snack bar. Listen in as Toby Tropper, Mike Fiore, Meggie Siegrist and Jeff Salsbury, plus interim artistic director Katie Worley Beck, talk about “showrritos,” refusing to pay for popcorn ever again, and lactose intolerance pills as a superpower. Stick around to the end t...

Seaweed authority Spencer Marley hosts foraging tours along Highway 1 that have been covered by huge media outlets. My family took a tour, and Spencer taught us all about local seaweed, and he even prepared us bowls of a simple seaweed ramen on his campstove, right there on the beach. Here, Spencer talks about how he came to love the ocean, and love teaching people about seaweed. Website: marleyfa...

Anyone who’s had backyard chickens in San Luis Obispo has probably heard of Barbara Bullock. For me, I knew her only as “Barbara the Chicken Whisperer” — I even had her in my phone that way — because she helped me with my backyard flock when we had chickens at our old house years ago. Barbara knows just about everything there is to know about chickens, from what they like to eat, what’s toxic for...

Right before the pandemic hit, a little company called Harvestly started up in San Luis Obispo County. In essence, Harvestly is the farmer’s market, brought home to you. On the website, you can pick and choose from items that are in-season, grown and made by local farmers and producers — then pay and wait for the delivery to arrive. Think of it like Instacart with a heart, from dirt to your door....

Julia Child, the godmother of American cuisine, spent the final years of her life in Montecito, California, just up Highway 101 from where I live in San Luis Obispo. She was a big fan of Santa Barbara and the Central Coast, and she invested her energy here until her death in 2004. Since then, her longtime friend Eric Spivey has grown the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts...

April Cole Worley is the owner of Mender, a company that makes and sells CBD-based body care products and edibles. Based out of Atascadero, California, April has hustled hard for several years to educate folks on the benefits of CBD-based products, including her most recent venture into candy-making with renowned New York confectioner Michael Fertucci. The result is a product that Mender calls “ca...