How is California's economy faring compared to the rest of the United States? How big data is transforming the way employers hire and fire, recovered Nazi looted-art to be donated to LACMA, Getting to know LA's powerful labor leader Maria Elena Durazo, Some of LA's top chefs give their Thanksgiving cooking tips, Tuesday Reviewsday: Billie Joe Armstrong & Norah Jones, Glen Hansard, and more.
How is California's economy faring compared to the rest of the US?
President Obama is in Los Angeles today, headlining a number of Democratic fundraising events.
He'll make a speech to employees at Dreamworks Animation in Glendale, where he is expected to talk about job creation. Although the employment picture has been improving in California, the state's jobless rate is still higher than the national average. The unemployment rate in Los Angeles remains higher than that for the state as a whole.
Jerry Nickelsburg, senior economist for UCLA's Anderson Forecast, joins the show to give us an better view of the employment picture now and in the coming months.
Big data is transforming the way employers hire and fire
This time of year around most offices, things are usually pretty tame. The holidays are here, maybe you're slowing down your productivity because you're thinking about the holiday vacation. Maybe you're spending a little time doing some shopping online?
But after this next conversation, might not feel so comfortable wasting time online. Some companies are using a new emerging trend called "People Analytics," gathering all sorts of data information to hire, assess, and maybe even fire workers
Don Peck, deputy editor of The Atlantic magazine, wrote about this new trend in this month's issue. If you're not already worried, the title of his piece might do the trick: "They're Watching You at Work."
Nazi-looted art to be donated to LACMA
Most of us are aware of the ongoing controversy over art that was looted by Nazis during World War II, and which now hangs in museums around the world.
Lawsuits and settlements have returned much of that art to its rightful owners, but a recent recovery story has an unusual twist to it. A twist that will bring a previously plundered piece to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Christopher Knight, art critic for the Los Angeles Times, joins the show with more.
Getting to know LA's powerful labor leader Maria Elena Durazo
She's been called the most powerful person in Los Angeles. Not the mayor, not the police chief, not any city official, but Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.
She might not exactly be a household name, but Durazo wields enormous influence in this city, where labor is still a major force to be reckoned with.
Reporter Hillel Aron, who wrote a profile of this power broker for the current issue of Los Angeles Magazine, joins the show with more.
Geologist's dream unearthed by the 405 construction project (photos)
If you're heading to grandma's house this week and you're stuck on the 405, consider this: While the 405 expansion project through the Sepulveda Pass may be a headache for you, it's had a silver lining for geologists.
The roadwork has given them a rare glimpse into the history of the Santa Monica Mountains. KPCC's Science Reporter Sanden Totten recently took a road trip through the eons.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Billie Joe Armstrong & Norah Jones, Glen Hansard, and more
It's time for Tuesday Reviewsday our weekly new music segment. This week we're going to be talking about rock with Shirley Halperin from The Hollywood Reporter and Chris Martins from Spin Magazine.
Interview Highlights:
Chris's Picks
Artist: Blood Orange
Album: Cupid Deluxe
Release Date: November 19
Songs: "Chamakay", "Time Will Tell"
This is the work of Dev Hynes, a solo artist and songwriter for others (Britney, Solange, Sky) whose new album really defines this "indie R&B" moment. His production looks back fondly on '80s eurodance, Prince-ly purple haze, and smooth jazz sax. Guest spots from members of Dirty Projectors, Chairlift, and others. He walks this great line between black and white, gay and straight, brain and body, foreign and familiar, and isn't afraid to forge his own path even as his cache grows as a proven hit-maker. Paris-born, London-raised, New York-based auteur whose early projects were punkier rock (Lightspeed Champion, Test Icicles). Great story, even greater artist in the making.
Artist: Nils Frahm
Album: Spaces
Release Date: November 19
Songs: "Hammers" "Says"
Nils Frahm is a Berlin-bred pianist/composer who studied under a student of the last scholar of Tchaikovsky, and yet his approach breaks from tradition. He experiments with drone both using effects such as tape loops, and sheer manual dexterity (via flurries of notes), and also incorporates analog synths into his live performances, where improvisation plays a large part. This album is the first to capture his concert work but it's not a boring old live album. It's culled from two years of performances, and Frahm refers to the individual tracks as field recordings, as they include room sound, cell phone beeps, etc.
Shirley's Picks
Artist: Glen Hansard
Album: Drive All Night (EP)
Release Date: Dec. 3
Songs: “Drive All Night,” “Step Out of the Shadows”
“Drive All Night” was a track on Springsteen’s Glen Hansard teams with Eddie Vedder Jake Clemons and Joe Henry. Recording of “Drive All Night” was largely inspired by Hansard’s relationship with Jake Clemons, nephew of Clarence Clemons aka “The Big Man,” who was a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, playing the tenor saxophone. They met at a Bruce show. Glen Hansard is the frontman for influential Irish band The Frames but made his name in the movies, as the busking male lead in the movie Once (won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly”) Solo effort outside of The Swell Season is quieter.
Artist: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones
Album: Foreverly
Release Date: Nov. 25
Songs: “Lightning Express,” “Rockin' Alone (In An Old Rockin' Chair)”
This duo met at the Grammys, and it was Billie Joe’s wife who suggested they collaborate. This is a 12-song collection inspired by "Songs Our Daddy Taught Us", an album of traditional Americana songs reinterpreted, recorded, and released by The Everly Brothers in 1958. The album was recorded in New York in nine days. These are what you call “porch songs,” with titles like "I'm Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail" and "Rockin' Alone (In An Old Rockin' Chair)."
New farm-to-fork restaurant hopes to put Fresno on the foodie map
If you eat at a gourmet restaurant in LA or the Bay Area, there's a good chance your meal with include some high-end produce from the Central Valley. But ironically, even though small farms near Fresno nourish the state's farm-to-fork movement, few restaurants there serve food grown nearby.
The California Report's Sasha Khokha takes us to a new spot trying to put Fresno on the foodie map.
Drive down Highway 99, and you can’t miss one of the great contradictions of the Central Valley: miles of farmland where so much healthy produce is grown, and the barrage of tall neon signs beckoning drivers to fast food restaurants.
And so, a year and a half ago, when chef Tara Hamilton decided to hoist up a tall sign that said “Organic Fresno” along the side of the freeway, she knew she was making a statement.
“We have the grand privilege of living in the food basket of the world, and we should have the most amazing food culture in the world,” says Hamilton.
But Fresno struggles with chronic poverty and obesity. It’s the kind of place where people camp out for hours when a new chain fast food restaurant opens up. Not really the kind of town where people queue up for homemade probiotic kefir and non-GMO raw vegan chickpea pate. But Hamilton, an organic raisin farmer who moved to Fresno from Toronto, is up for the challenge.
“Our mission is Nutrition Access. In two words, that’s what it is: nutrition access. We feel that you have the right to nutritionally dense food,” says Hamilton.
Hamilton was born in India and raised in Canada. Her father was a Sikh priest, and her mother used to cook free meals for hundreds of templegoers.
“Food is a very intimate act, but we don’t see it that way,” says Hamilton, sitting in a booth at the restaurant. “My mom trained me to view it that way. We take food into our bodies three times a day. Where did it come from? Who grew it? Do you know? And if you don’t know, why are you putting it into your body? Really, it’s that personal.”
So Hamilton goes to great lengths to explain to customers just where each ingredient comes from. Each laminated tabletop features the story of a local organic farm that supplies the restaurant. On weekend nights, she even dons a microphone headset and makes a presentation about each course.
Hamilton’s six kids all hang out at the restaurant, the older ones helping to cook and serve the food. The rest of the staff is mainly volunteer.
Local food activist Rachel Carpenter is juicing watermelons, rinds and all. She’s decided that volunteering at Hamilton’s restaurant is the best way to change Fresno’s food culture.
“The disparity here is just ridiculous. Being the No. 1 agricultural county in the whole United states, then we’ve got pockets that rival the Katrina flood basin,” says Carpenter, over the whir of the juicing machine. “What she’s doing here is very affordable, especially when you talk about organic foods.”
$10 for a vegetarian lunch entrée, soup, and salad. $12.50 if it’s got meat. And if people can’t afford that, Hamilton has a pay what-you-can policy for some menu items.
“Natural food, which is what organic food is, should be available to everybody,” she says. “I really think that you should have to pay a premium to have chemicals sprayed on your food.”
But she’s having a tough time drawing locals. Some of them question the restaurant’s location: an easy stop off the freeway, but sandwiched between cheap motels in an area known for the sex trade.
But Hamilton has decided to put a positive spin on that, too.
“OK, there’s prostitution, and it’s not maybe a trade that I agree with, but does prostitution have any link to food?” she sighs. “Yeah, it does, I mean they created one of the most famous pasta dishes that there is, pasta putanesca, in the style of a prostitute, where you can use canned ingredients, like olives and capers, and create a delicious sauce. Why talk about what we don’t like, why not focus on food?”
So she’s decided to feature pasta putanesca on the menu. And snap an iPhone picture of any johns who pull into her driveway.
Organic Fresno’s pulling out all the stops to attract local customers to the neighborhood. They host weekly cooking classes featuring Fresno-grown ingredients – like the valley shake, a dense and surprisingly sweet blend of almonds and raisins. There’s also a valley almond-raisin pie.
And part of the restaurant will soon be a market to buy organic produce and other local products.
But still, 80 percent of Organic Fresno’s customers are out-of-towners: people heading to Yosemite, Southern California, or the Bay Area who want an alternative to chain restaurants. People like Steven Aardal, who pulled in on a trip up the 99 from Orange County with his wife and son.
“We said we refuse to have food that’s not wholesome, not good for us,” says Aardal. “We’re driving in the car for seven hours.”
They googled “organic food” as they were driving, and found the restaurant got lots of five-star Yelp reviews.
The restaurant is trying to attract tourists and locals alike with a weekend dinner theater. Chef Tara Hamilton writes the scripts and acts in the plays. Right now it’s a whodunit about who started the wildfires in Yosemite.
LAUSD's locavore plan healthy for kids and business
For the last year or so,LA Unified School District has been buying at least five percent of its produce from small farms, many of them located within 200 miles of Los Angeles.
The locavorism means more fruits and veggies on school lunch menus. And that, in turn, means not only healthier students, but also a boom in business for local food product companies. L.A. Times reporter Teresa Watanabe, who wrote about this recently in the LA Times, joins the show to explain.
3 LA top chefs share their favorite recipes for Thanksgiving (photos)
For those of you who are cooking a little more than just meat on Thanksgiving, (and Thanksgivukkah) it's T-minus about 48 hours. Hopefully you've already done some shopping to avoid the last-minute crowds.
We have a Thanksgiving treat for those of you who are still looking for that special dish that will surprise and delight your guests. Over the last couple of days, Take Two traveled all over this great city to find — and sample! — unique Thanksgiving recipes from some of L.A.'s best chefs.
Have your own favorite recipes? Share them in the comments below, on KPCC's Facebook page or on Twitter ("@" mention @KPCC).
Mo-Chica with Ricardo Zarate
Locro de Quinoa (Quinoa Pumpkin Stew)
(recipe forthcoming)
AOC with Suzanne Goin
Sweet potatoes with bacon, spinach, and romesco
4 pounds sweet potatoes, Jewel or Garnet
1⁄3 cup brown sugar
1 cup sherry, reduced to 1⁄2 cup
8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 tablespoon sliced sage leaves
2 teaspoons thyme leaves
3⁄4 pound slab bacon
1⁄2 pound young spinach, cleaned
1⁄2 cup Romesco (see recipe below)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Peel the sweet potatoes, and cut them into 11⁄2-inch cubes. Place them in a large bowl, and toss with the sugar and reduced sherry.
In a medium sauté pan, cook the butter over medium heat for 6 to 8 minutes, until it’s brown and smells nutty. Remove from the heat, and let cool a few minutes. Add the sage and thyme to the butter, and pour it over the sweet potatoes, scraping the pan with a rubber spatula to get all the brown bits. Toss with a large spoon, being careful of the hot butter. Season with 1 tablespoon salt and 1⁄4 teaspoon pepper. Transfer the sweet potatoes to a large roasting pan, and bake in the oven for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until they are caramelized and tender. Stir with a metal spatula every so often, to coat the potatoes evenly with the butter and sugar.
While the potatoes are cooking, slice the bacon lengthwise into 3⁄8-inch- thick slices. Stack them in two piles, then cut the strips crosswise into 3⁄8-inch- thick even-sided rectangles, or lardons. Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the bacon, and cook for about 5 minutes, until it’s tender and lightly crisped. Using a slotted spoon, transfer it to a plate.
When the sweet potatoes are done, remove the pan from the oven and toss in the bacon and spinach. Taste for seasoning, and arrange in a shallow bowl or large platter. Spoon the romesco over and around the sweet potatoes.
Romesco
5 ancho chiles
2 tablespoons raw almonds
2 tablespoons blanched hazelnuts
11⁄4 cups extra-virgin olive oil
1 slice country bread, about 1 inch thick
1⁄3 cup canned tomatoes, San Marzano or Muir Glen
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley
Juice of 1⁄2 lemon (about 1 tablespoon)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Remove and discard the stems and seeds from the chiles, and then soak them in warm water for 15 minutes to soften. Strain the chiles, and pat dry with paper towels.
Meanwhile, spread the nuts on a baking sheet, and toast for 8 to 10 minutes, until they smell nutty and are golden brown.
Heat a large sauté pan over high heat for 2 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil, and wait a minute. Fry the slice of bread on both sides until golden brown. Remove the bread from the pan, and cool. Cut it into 1-inch cubes and set aside.
Return the pan to the stove over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons olive oil and the chiles, and sauté for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes. Season with 1⁄2 teaspoon salt, and cook 2 to 3 minutes, stirring often, until the tomato juices have evaporated and the tomato starts to color slightly. Turn off the heat, and leave the mixture in the pan.
In a food processor, pulse together the toasted nuts, garlic, and fried bread until the bread and nuts are coarsely ground. Add the chile-tomato mixture, and process for 1 minute more.
With the machine running, slowly pour in the remaining 1 cup olive oil, and process until you have a smooth purée. Don’t worry: the romesco will “break,” or separate into solids and oil; this is normal. Add the parsley, and season to taste with lemon juice, pepper and more salt if you like.
The Roof with Eric Greenspan
The Thanks a Latkes
4 sweet potatoes, peeled and grated
1/2 large yellow onion, peeled and grated
4 eggs
1/2 cup flour
salt to taste
1/2 cup chopped green bean casserole
1/2 cup chopped turkey meat
1/4 cup cranberry sauce
1/4 cup sour cream
Combine potatoes and onions in a large colander and drain vigorously. Add to a large mixing bowl with the eggs, flour, salt, casserole, and turkey, and mix vigorously. Form mix into 3 inch patties, and shallow fry in a low pan until crispy on both sides. Remove and season.
Mix the cranberry sauce and sour cream vigorously. Top each latke with the cranberry sour cream. Light candles, spin dreidels, watch football, take off work, give thanks, and best of all, enjoy.
RELATED: Thanksgivukkah: Game-changing potato latkes for your hybrid holiday feast (video)
Judge blocks sale of state bond funds for California bullet train plan
On Monday, a judge in Sacramento blocked the sale of billions of dollars worth of bonds for California's high-speed rail project.
The judge also ordered the rail agency to re-do its funding plan for the project before any state money can be spent from the bonds. These are just the latest obstacles to construction of the railway
For more, we're joined by Tim Sheehan, who has been covering this story for the Fresno Bee.
Holiday Gifting: The best children's books for 2013
This holiday shopping season, you can try to find the latest high tech game console or battle the crowds for that limited edition Furby doll. But if you want to get back to basics, there's nothing better than a good book.
Here to give us her picks for the best new children's books of the season is Mara Alpert, a children's librarian with the Los Angeles Public Library.
Best Books
For Young Kids
"This Little Piggy" by Tim Harrington of art rock group Les Savy Fav
We all know about this little piggy who went to the market, the one who stayed home, ate roast beef and we we we all the way home, but what about the other foot? Well, in this version, the other one, this little piggy went dancing, this little piggy flew planes, this little piggy sold hot dogs, this little piggy loved paints.
And then, once the first foot discovers that the second foot is having so much fun, it decides that it wants to expand its activities. Then, we get little piggies that are playing drums and racing go-karts and this little piggy who was secretly "Super Toe," the world's greatest superhero, faster than a race car, he could blow out birthday candles from a mile away and fly high above the clouds and so on and so forth. This one is just loads of fun because you can use it with really young children.
"Toys Galore" by veteran kids book author Peter Stein, with illustrations by Bob Staake
This one is a celebration of every kind of toy you can imagine, except for things that are not electronic. Basically, if it involves a tablet or a computer or a television, it's not in this book. It's toys that whirl and toys that wiggle, and it's a multicultural cast of really fun, big headed kids. Some are purple, some are green.
It's just celebrating everything and at the very end, the real major celebration is a child's imagination. That's the best toy of all. Actually, play is one of the five activities that help kids get ready to learn how to read. There's five early literacy activities, play happens to be one of them, imaginative play, so this is celebrating that.
"Battle Bunny" by Jon Scieszka and Max Barnett
This one I was a little scare of recommending. Well, it's basically a kid gets one of those worse golden book, ushy-gushy, birthday bunny books, and takes a felt tip marker to it and makes it his own. So now it's battle bunny who is planning to take over the world with his evil plans, and can anybody stop him? Only Alex, who happens to be the birthday boy.
The reason I was a little nervous about suggesting this one is I really hope that we don't get a rash of people deciding to edit books with black felt tip markers and then turning them back to the library because that's kind of a problem. But it's very funny and I hope somebody at least shows a copy of this to President Obama because he's in the book. He's not named, but it's the president. And it's a great picture of the president so I really hope someday he gets to see this one.
For Older Kids
"Bo at Ballard Creek" by Kirkpatrick Hill
It takes place in the late 1920s and it's based on a true story. It reminds a lot people about little house in the big woods, the first little house book, which is basically the story about a very young child. She is 5-years-old, and she was an abandoned child who was basically adopted by two rough and tumble miners. It's the story of her life in this mining village. Now, it's a little rougher than the little house books, there's a little bit of swearing in it and there's good time girls. It's definitely not as innocent, not as sanitized.
If you were reading this to your child, you could decided whether or not you were going to use the swear words. But you could read this to a fairly young child because it's really beautifully written and the illustrations are so charming. That is really where it reminded me the most of the little house books with the Garth Williams illustrations.
"Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library" by Chris Grabenstein
This one reminded me most of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Mr. Lemoncello is a game designer and his parents were immigrants and he basically learned everything from the public library. As an adult, he goes back to his hometown and he builds the most amazing public library you can imagine. It has lots of technology, but it also celebrates books and they invite twelve 12-year-old kids...to have an overnight at the library, but it turns into basically an escape from the library game, where they have to solve mysteries and puzzles and they have to learn how to work together. And it's like the library you wish existed, if you had a gazillion dollars and you could build a public library that could inspire everybody who walked in, whether their interests was in books or new technology, this would be the place.
Non-Fiction
"The Animal Book" by Steve Jenkins:
It's basically his highlight reel, so it takes from many of the books that he has published over the years. And Steve Jenkins does the most gorgeous illustrations, all collage and it's a browsing book. And this one has got everything.
For instance, this page, which is on the section on predators: special weapons and tactics, and it talks about animals you may not have ever heard of. The mantis shrimp who can kick so hard that they have been known to break the glass out of an aquarium. The crucifix toad who stores captured insects on its sticky, mucus-covered skin and regularly sheds its skin by pulling it off over its head like a sweater and then eats it, bugs and all. Lots of stuff to learn, lots of information, but just a wonderful book to browse over.
- "Volcano Rising" by Elizabeth Rusch, illustrations by Susan Swan:
This one actually reads like a story book, but there's plenty of information in it. So the first page, "Kaboom! Most people think volcanoes are either sound asleep or blowing their tops off in fiery, ash-spewing catastrophes. And the illustrations are really amazing. It's like collage and photoshop and found objects. So, it reads like a picture book, but then also as it goes along it gives you information in smaller prints. So it works with younger children, you could read it out loud to them. And then with older kids, there's enough information in here to write a report.
For Parents
"The Read Aloud Handbook" by Jim Trelease:
This book is fabulous because the first half of the book talks about why it's so important to read aloud to your children. And he's got stories and statistics and studies to back it up. And he talks about the countries that have the best literacy rates, what do they do that we don't, but he's talking about the importance of sustained silent reading and just reading in general. And then the whole second half of the book is about recommendations.Really great books to read aloud at all stages of a child's life. He suggest you start reading pretty much when the doctor says you are pregnant and keep reading out loud through college. Just as long as you can get the kids to participate. This is the book I give to all of my friends who are saying they are having their first kid, this is what they get from me because it's such a amazing resource.