Salumi-the large category of pork-based comestibles that see some combination of salting, stuffing into intestines, and curing-can easily become an obsession. Salame, prosciutto, pancetta, sausage, and the like demonstrate that fermentation and aging work wonders not just on grapes and grains, but on meats as well.

Besides the porcine pleasure of eating them, there is for those who get really hooked the challenge and reward of making them. Just ask Paul Bertolli, former chef and cookbook author for Chez Panisse and the man who made the reputation of Oliveto restaurant for uncompromising, authentic Italian food. During his tenure at Oliveto, Bertolli traveled often to Italy to learn the art of the salumiere. He brought the fruits - or rather, the meats - of that labor to his restaurant's tables, especially during the annual "Whole Hog" dinners.

Bertolli's most recent book, Cooking by Hand, includes a lengthy, gracefully written chapter on salumi-making. It functions as an inspiring treatise on the subject, with a discussion of traditional techniques, instructions for the modern home kitchen, advice on equipment, tips and warnings, and recipes for a wide range of salumi.

Salumi-making gradually consumed more and more of Bertolli's attention, to the point where he decided to leave Oliveto and concentrate all of his attention on stuffing pork flesh into casings. Thus was born Fra'Mani, an artisanal salumi-making operation based in Emeryville.

After months of preparation, Fra'Mani recently began selling its first products to restaurants and food markets, including the Berkeley Bowl, Monterey Market, The Pasta Shop, Star Grocery, and Whole Foods. The first products to come out in June were two sausages (a classic Italian with anise and garlic and a spicy Italian, which adds sweet, dried peperoncini) and Salametto, a small, hearty salame laced with garlic. Other, longer-aged salami, such as Salame Toscano and Soppressata, will become available soon, after they finish their terms in Fra'Mani's aging room.

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I had the opportunity to taste a range of Fra'Mani salumi in June at Slow Food events in San Francisco and Oakland. Not surprisingly, every one was excellent. The standouts were a superb Coppa di Testa, with its beguiling visual, textural, and flavor variety, and the aforementioned Salametto, which was an outstanding accompaniment to a wide range of Italian regional wines that we were tasting.

Bertolli is not the only East Bay chef to seek out a clientele for his salumi obsession. Christopher Lee, another Chez Panisse alumnus, has long included his house-made salumi on the menu at Eccolo on 4th Street in Berkeley, and John Smulewitz recently added his own salumi to the choices at his trattoria-style Dopo on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. These are happy times for thus of us who can't get enough of the whole hog

Berkeley's food revolution began on a police car's roof in Sproul Plaza on October 1, 1964. Three thousand students spontaneously trapped the cruiser that held fellow student Jack Weinberg after he deliberately violated new and capricious campus rules. The impromptu crowd listened as Mario Savio, a tall, curly-haired student with a worried look, climbed on top of the police car and spoke to the throng.

He didn't talk about food. He didn't talk about farmers. He talked about the university's limits on free speech and the problems with modern education. But a new American cuisine stirred that day, built on the philosophy of Savio and his peers: You could only solve problems by going around the establishment, not by working within it.

The Free Speech Movement pushed Savio into the limelight, but his politics were more evolutionary than many recognized at the time. Berkeley became a magnet for left-wing activists during the early 60s. "Berkeley was where it was at if you wanted trouble," says David Lance Goines, the activist and graphic designer who created the iconic Chez Panisse artwork and typography. The turbulent student body came to distrust the authority figures who dragged them from civil rights protests and imposed arbitrary rules on campus.

After the Free Speech Movement, students such as Alice Waters protested the government's stance on Vietnam and civil rights. But the protests became riots when volunteers from the school and community tried to form People's Park in 1969. Governor Reagan called in the National Guard to stop the peaceful conversion of UC land to a community park. The People's Park protectors gushed down Telegraph Avenue, pursued by the tromp of boots, the whoosh of tear gas canisters, and the occasional bang of martyr-making gunshots. The town's residents were outraged. Savio created 3000 activists; Reagan created ten times that many.

When the smell of tear gas dissipated from the paperbacks at Cody's Books, and Guardsmen marched back to their homes and families, a thrumming energy filled the void. The activists had beat the establishment. The First Amendment protected political student groups on campus. The government was pulling troops from Vietnam. Trees grew in People's Park. Anything seemed possible.

SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Savio's philosophical heirs found their next fight in Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet, which came out in 1971. The book educated its many readers about the ecological consequences of industrial agriculture. Veterans of Berkeley's protests had no problem believing that government and agribusiness had short-changed the environment for financial gain.

Local shoppers took up the cause and bucked the mainstream food chain. They sought out organic produce-at that time a fringe movement by maverick farmers. They tried to shorten the distance between the soil and their supper plates, the first stirrings of the Eat Local movement that motivates modern-day foodie philosophers. Then, as now, the just-add-water fertility of California's Central Valley enabled this food lover's utopia: It's easy to find local produce when a sprawling agricultural region sits just over the hills.

This new political movement had better side effects than the tear gas and jail time that activists faced in previous fights. Local food meant fresher food. The same passion that inspired an organic farmer also inspired him to grow great produce. California cuisine's central tenets came to life in local kitchens and produce aisles.

"Flavor was our aesthetic," says Kermit Lynch, who opened a wine shop to fund his musical career and then became an importer whose passion for traditional French wine has a fanatical following throughout the country. The counterculture that settled in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s appreciated beauty and explored it in the local art scene. Film buffs watched art films and classics at the Telegraph Repertory Cinema. Music lovers listened to jazz and blues at Larry Blake's. Poetry enthusiasts browsed the West Coast's largest selection at Cody's Books. It made sense to explore the beauty of food.

THE HIPPIES

The combination of aesthetics and politics meshed well with the Hippie ideals that wafted from San Francisco on a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. The radicals in Berkeley wanted to change the world: The Hippies wanted to live in a different one. They believed that if you lived your life the way you thought the world should be, the world would join you.

The Hippie mentality appealed to the new population of drifters and dreamers who came to Berkeley to live out an alternative lifestyle. Mario Savio proclaimed victory for free speech in 1964, but America heard "Anything goes in Berkeley." The town's population began to self-select: "Nice" people stayed away, "troublemakers" came in droves. Left wing artists replaced the conservatives who dominated the town in the early 60s. Mainstream-defying collectives sprang up everywhere, including the Cheese Board, the successful business that Elizabeth and Sahag Avedisian sold to their employees in 1971. Co-ops, including grocery stores, created an automatic community among the members, who shared a common vision of a better world where they could effect change while running errands.

One of the new immigrants was present-day culinary memoirist and Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl, at the time "a Gypsy with abundant black curls tossed over [her] shoulders and a multicolored skirt that swept the ground." She came not as a student but as someone who wanted a life that fit her parameters of happiness. She worked at The Sparrow, a collectively owned restaurant, and prepared meals for a large gaggle of artists and neighbors who dropped in each night. "Berkeley was very bohemian," she says, "full of people like us."

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A RICH TOWN

Berkeley's economy made alternate lifestyles possible. Students weren't rich-dumpster diving appears in Reichl's Tender at the Bone and Jo Freeman's At Berkeley in the 60s-but they could make ends meet without a parent's wallet and the rules that came along with it. David Lance Goines and Alice Waters paid tuition ($75 per semester) and rent and threw fancy dinner parties while he worked halftime at a printing press and she worked part-time as a waitress and a teacher. Reichl and a group of fellow artists bought a 17-room house for $29,000.

Students and those in the flats could make ends meet, but the food scene succeeded because of the town's moneyed set. Diners packed Narsai David's eponymous restaurant on Kensington Circle, which offered elegant menus and a wine list that won one of the first three Wine Spectator Grand Awards. Shoppers bought French charcuterie at Victoria Wise's Pig By the Tail. They flooded into Alice Medrich's Cocolat and cleared out her desserts.

They didn't mind that Medrich drew her signs by hand or learned to make desserts just ahead of consumer demand. They supported Chez Panisse even when it had mismatched chairs and an awkward layout.

They understood good food, and they wanted to recapture the taste of France.

FRANCE

France was on the country's brain. Julia Child's TV Show The French Chef first aired in 1963 and Richard Olney wrote about the simple French cuisine of the countryside. It seems like every other food lover in Berkeley had traveled to Europe. France then was much like Southeast Asia today: A place to travel cheaply and have a food epiphany around every bend. Country French food retained the connection to the land that American food had lost. If flavor was an aesthetic, France dictated the standards of beauty.

Those who went to France returned with a burning need to bring the food home. Alice Medrich sold truffles and pastries inspired by the ones her French landlady had made for her. Kermit Lynch visited small, traditional wine makers in the countryside and brought back the character-rich bottles that would earn him a national reputation. Steve Sullivan tasted authentic French bread and resolved to make it here, first in the kitchens at Chez Panisse, and then at Acme Bread. Alice Waters had an epiphany as she ate at a restaurant that grew its own vegetables and threw a line into the river when she ordered fish.

ALICE'S RESTAURANT

Alice Waters, a pretty young woman with a far-off look in her eyes, was the Mario Savio of the food movement. The Berkeley culture shaped her, but she had the energy and vision to spearhead the revolution and rally those around her. "She is a restaurateur in the old tradition," says wine writer Gerald Asher of his friend. "She knew how to source the best ingredients, and she knew how to get the best from her chefs." She turned her back on haute cuisine, the established definition of gourmet food, in favor of simpler food that showcased the beauty of good ingredients. Her food supported her political beliefs that agriculture needed to find harmony with the environment. She felt that if she served the kind of food she believed in, the world would find its way to her and change its attitudes. Anything seemed possible.

After Alice Waters, the food revolution's history slides into a well-worn groove: Chez Panisse flourished in the unique Berkeley environment, fueled by Waters's passion and a dash of luck. James Beard trumpeted the restaurant's cause, and Chez Panisse became a destination and an example. Waters' novel approach to cuisine changed the American restaurant landscape. Stylized French food ceased to be the gold standard, replaced by chefs who worked closely with farmers and proudly listed the growers' names on menus. Many cooks came through Chez Panisse's got her religion and spread it throughout the country as they became prominent chefs in their own right. Small cheese producers such as Laura Chenel could succeed because the restaurant's chefs provided a market. All who ate there learned the lesson well: Great food and great ingredients are two sides of one coin.

Berkeley's food movement had such a profound influence that modern Americans take its results for granted. Shoppers find European-style bread in their supermarkets without knowing that Steve Sullivan's crusty loaves inspired the baker. Coffee drinkers order gourmet coffee from Starbucks-for all its commercial ills, the chain's coffee is generally better than what its customers drank before-without knowing that three friends of Alfred Peet emulated his Berkeley store in Seattle. Dessert lovers swoon over elegant pastries without knowing that the chef's influences probably link back to Alice Medrich's top-quality, ingredient-driven desserts. Foodies everywhere shop at farmer's markets without seeing the young woman who made a national movement out of the belief that you should know who grew your produce.

Mario Savio's fights had definite endpoints. The battle for your palate is 30 years old and still being fought.

The author would like to thank Sylvan Brackett, who provided invaluable assistance.

It was not so long ago, as some folks remember, that ice cream, candy, and doughnut trucks roamed the neighborhoods, chiming their bells to beckon the kids, Pied Piper fashion, to follow the sweets. Today in West Oakland, there's a rolling market that is more likely to be filled with healthful drinks, dairy products, and organic vegetables-the People's Grocery's Mobile Market broadcasts a hip-hop beat to attract urban customers to its graffiti-clad storefront.

This market-on-wheels provides an alternative to the corner mini-markets in neighborhoods where full-size supermarkets are all but missing. But the People's Grocery goes an extra step, bringing healthy foods at equitable prices. Organic dinosaur kale and Swiss chard, picked only a few hours before, are sold at one dollar per bunch, a lower price than those found at Whole Foods or the farmers' markets. The guiding dictum of this community enterprise is "Healthy Food for Everyone."

On a sunny May morning, Jason Uribe, Farm Manager for People's Grocery's Urban Agriculture Program, directs neighborhood volunteers in one of the program's urban gardens where vegetables are grown for the Mobile Market. Bush beans are to be planted that day. To prepare the earth, these urban farmers will be moving compost and clearing out the cover crop of pea plants that helped to restore nitrogen to the soil.

The garden is both a playground and a classroom, where learning is in direct participation with the earth. A few neighborhood kids, who are excited to dig in this rich dirt, are sure to uncover a wriggling host of earthworms as they till the fertile plots. Also among the early season volunteers is a college student interested in health and nutrition. By summer, People's Grocery will have several young paid interns helping to maintain the four gardens around town. "We are not just gardening, but giving back to the community," says Uribe, making it clear that the opportunity could have great impact on the futures of the youth. Not only is the garden a source of organic produce for the market, it is a professional training ground.

In the quest to expand production, People's Grocery is in active pursuit of land partnerships that could widen the food shed of West Oakland. One of the most promising opportunities is being developed through SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture Education), a Berkeley-based organization that is developing Urban Edge Agricultural Parks in communities like Sunol (about 30 minutes south of Oakland). The goal is to increase the possibilities for local food production and also to provide a hands-on environment to train young people in sustainable food systems.

The commitment to fostering young-adult professional development through paid programs is at the heart of the People's Grocery philosophy. Through the Collards n' Commerce Youth Entrepreneurship Program, young people work full time in the summer and part time during the school year studying cooking, nutrition, gardening, and business. During the school year, youth deliver peer-to-peer instructional presentations, help run the Mobile Market, and manage an after-school gardening program at Hoover Elementary School.

People's Grocery also runs the Urban Rootz Food & Justice Camp, a free youth program that introduces issues related to food systems. The young people learn about the negative effects of processed foods, the inequalities in access to healthy groceries, and how food impacts personal, communal, and environmental wellbeing.

Recognizing the need for continued education and professional development, People's Grocery has teamed with Bauman College, a holistic nutrition and culinary arts school in Berkeley. People's Grocery's own Geralina Fortier is the first scholarship student at Bauman and upon graduation will bring her newly gained knowledge of health and nutrition back to Oakland as a Peer Nutrition Educator. A future outreach alliance through the University of California at Santa Cruz Farm and Garden program will offer a six-month study in sustainable agriculture.

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During a winter class, Camille's interest in nourishing naturally was expressed by her choice of body-warming recipes using seasonal vegetables. Complementing the timely cycle of the earth to the table, the menu included butternut squash soup, quinoa/millet with seaweed and herbs, baked beets with garlic-basil vinaigrette, and a quenching ginger spritz. Camille sprinkled the demonstrations with tips on the medicinal aspects of common foods, explaining how beets and garlic might literally enliven a meal. The healing warmth of the food on that winter's night matched the warmth in the room as the students joined hands around the table and shared thoughts about what they appreciated in their lives. Some laughs and smiles ensued before Camille led the group through a prayer of thanks for the food. The blessings were sealed with the knowledge learned in the kitchen and the gift of a nutritious and healing feast prepared by the group. It was a lesson to carry to the next meal. That night the students were participants, not only observers, coming together to cook, to learn and to celebrate life's nutritious offerings.

After four years of operation, People's Grocery is focused on fulfilling one of its original goals: to create a physical store. But the notion of the "store" is considerably different from our accustomed market experience. People's Grocery envisions a Wellness Village: a central establishment housing an education center that supports the health needs of the local community. In this learning and service utopia, trained youth workers serve their customers as Wellness Providers, a role focused on proactive and direct health support. Brahm Ahmadi, Executive Director of the People's Grocery, illuminates, "The grocery store is focused on providing a broad array of services and educational outlets to you as no longer the consumer but now the client, now the member, now the human being and there is a relationship." People's Grocery recognizes the "emerging client," a person on the edge of making a decision to embrace a healthier lifestyle, particularly around diet. "What we are trying to do is to create a host of wrap-around services and educational supports to help them make the full step into that lifestyle."

Self reliant by design, the growing People's Grocery network is a comprehensive approach to harnessing and developing sustainable food systems in West Oakland while promoting health and youth professional development. People's Grocery wants to go beyond the common corporate means of growing, distributing, selling, or preparing foods. They look to foster a network and essential dialog concerning our connection to food and healing. The People's Grocery store will be a physical hub through which the dialog continues, a central location to sell healthy foods, lead discussions, seminars, and cooking classes, sample urban agriculture, and train the young-all in the comfort of the people's backyard.