Food is an expression of the place where you are. Bearing that in mind, last week my long-time friend and Deep Springs classmate Kevin West and I headed to the Eastern Sierra (Deep Springs country) to cook several memorable meals in the iconic town of Lone Pine, in Inyo County’s southern Owens Valley, for a visionary group of creative folks called The Metabolic Studio (“at the intersection of art and philanthropy”). These dynamic Angelenos, well aware of the upcoming 2013 centenary of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s diversion of water from the Owens River via the Los Angeles Aqueduct (remember the movie Chinatown?), are taking a keen, artistic-philanthropic interest in the Owens Valley region and its promising agricultural and culinary future, as the valley’s water is gradually restored. Today, a visitor to the Owens Valley sees mostly desert and a few cattle ranches among towering mountainscapes, but with a little poking around, he or she might find an apple farm, a sprawling vegetable garden in someone’s backyard, wild watercress growing in a pond, nettles near a stream, herds of elk, or piñons in the lower mountain elevations.
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The seasons dovetail rather broadly here in coastal California—we continue to have summer days sporadically throughout the fall; distinctively fall-like days persist through winter; much of last summer was resolutely springlike…. But now, finally, the temperatures have dropped, the leaves have fallen, the rainstorms have begun, the days are short, the sun comes in at an angle, and alas, viruses spread among us. I know our “winters” here can barely be compared to W*I*N*T*E*R*S at higher elevations and latitudes, but still, they are wintry enough to require coats and jackets and such, and (most important) to summon a visceral craving for delicious, hot, homemade soup. 
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