The Western world tends to celebrate New Year’s with liquid treats. However, the Lunar New Year is approaching, and that requires traditional New Year’s candy. When my wife told me of the candy tradition, I asked her to get some from the Oriental market to sample. None of the chocolate or peppermint nonsense, I tried kumquat, banana, coconut-durian, and sweet beans. The beans, while traditional, are not exactly candy. They are beans.

Moylan’s Brewery and Restaurant is in Novato, just off the freeway less than an hour north pf San Francisco. My excuse for not having stopped there before is that it blends into the confusion of a large shopping center. We happened upon it around Christmastime. Who could resist bangers and mash with a tasty pomegranate wheat ale? No one I know.

Persimmons have many virtues. Persimmon trees are lovely, with dark green foliage a plentiful fruit worn like orange Christmas tree ornaments. The fruit is sweet and delicious, and there are only a few small seeds up near the stem. The problem with persimmons is that they only can be eaten when they are absolutely dead ripe. Otherwise the astringent flesh threatens to screw your face into a permanent pucker. A ripe astringent persimmon is not merely soft, it is a bag of jelly. And not just a partial bag of jelly, with some firmness near the stem. A ripe persimmon is 100% squishy.

The sign in the market pointed out that only the skin of the black watermelon was black, and that it was red inside. Good point. Last summer, black watermelons were in the news when a coveted densuke melon, grown only in Hokkaido at the northern tip of Japan, sold for the equivalent of $6100. Mine was 49 cents a pound, making it about $5, but I have some suspicion it differed in other ways as well.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated in China and East Asia in the middle of the eighth lunar month. That is usually the full moon in late September or early October on the Western calendar. This year it is October 3. A moon cake is necessary for a proper celebration. Asian Markets are well stocked for the occasion. The preparation of a moon cake is elaborate, so they are not usually made at home.

The Food Network’s Chopped has a reasonable premise. Great chefs do not need recipes to work with good ingredients. We amateurs in the audience can learn from how the pros handle the ingredients. That’s the premise of the successful “Iron Chef America” program, and it works in that show. … The problem with Chopped is that it artificially overconstrained in a way that diminishes the culinary craft in favor of unrelated skills. How about adding a hungry dog to the kitchen or having only two burners on the stove? That might be fun, but it would have nothing to do with good cooking.

A simple plan: pick up a few basic ingredients at some market near the park and drive up to a picnic spot. I hope you have done the same thing. The point of this post is to encourage this particular delight. I had in mind bread, salami, cheese and olives, great low-fuss stuff. No chaffing dishes required. Good fortune helped make a good thing better.

I once asked my young nieces, who had recently moved to California, what their favorite foods were. Once said “pizza.” The other said “artichokes.” Clever girl. I still do not understand why there is no nationwide chain of artichoke restaurants. We recently revisited Castroville, the heart of artichoke culture in the US, as part of a regular program of reacquaintace with the vegetable.

Cherry season is a highpoint of the food year. In the U.S., it is mainly June and July, although seasons are not as strict as they used to be. Markets are dominated by dark red Bing cherries and, less commonly, red-tinged creamy yellow Rainier cherries. Royal Ann cherries are similar to Rainier, in fact some people claim they are indistinguishable. Royal Ann cherries are made into maraschino cherries. Yes, yellow cherries are the starting point for the glowing red entries in fruit cocktails and exotic drinks.

70% of California’s Oysters come from Humboldt Bay on the north coast, about a hundred miles from the Oregon border. The Arcata Bay Oyster Festival (Arcata Bay is the north end of Humboldt Bay) was held last weekend, and attending reminded me that I have not said enough about oysters. Famous chef James Beard said his two favorite foods were raw apples and raw oysters. There is much to be said.