Found Treasure: Kitchen Table Cultures Bone Broth (and Survival Tips)

December 13, 2024 – Here’s a New Year’s resolution: Make yourself harder to kill.

Use the mantra all you want, but avoid putting it on a bumper sticker or a T-shirt. 

Because the pop-and-mom behind Kitchen Table Cultures and its bone broths, Andrew Renard and Michelle Carter, is in the process of patenting the motto.

“Our broth is not just good to cook with,” says Andrew Renard. “It’s healing!”

The life-affirming axiom emerges from a low-and-slow practice of simmering beef bones for two days. 

The longer formula: seek out mineral-rich spring water from the Diablo Mountain range, bones from grass-fed cows at Monterey and San Benito County ranches like Corral de Tierra, Lonely Bull, Morris Grass-fed and Paicines Ranch, then give them the full 48 hours to bubble, adding a splash of raw, organic apple cider vinegar to break down tissues and proteins.

The resulting liquid reaches depths I’ve only experienced with great ramen, only deeper, with a nutty-like richness and collagen finish that means no chapstick needed for a while. 

I said, “Oh man” out loud. 

The Renards don’t traffic in online sales, which fits in their overall philosophy of working directly with product, ranchers and consumers.

They do set up shop at four consecutive certified farmers markets sprinkled around the bay: Carmel-by-the-Sea Thursdays, Monterey’s Del Monte Center Fridays, Aptos’ Cabrillo College Saturdays and Mid-Carmel Valley Sundays.

Renard arrives ready to sample guests on his beef broth, chicken broth and beet kvass fermentation—and to share the gut-health gospel. 

“We love the community we’re building around this revolution,” he says, “kicking down the narrative on the Big Food-Big Pharma system that wants to keep us fat, sick and depressed, with a pill on the other end to fix it.” 

Fun fact: This Friday newsletter is still relatively young. 

But—humble brag—despite that adolescence, both this Found Treasures column and its sister series by Laura Ness, Grape Escapes, have earned Best Magazine Column honors from the S.F. Press Club in back-to-back years. 

My tradition of taking this space to celebrate highlights from each print issue is younger still, and similarly rewarding as the weekly meditations.

I found Kitchen Table Cultures smack dab in the middle of the Edible Marketplace on p. 65, surrounded by similarly thoughtful and crafted products and services like Carmel Berry Company and Bees Knees Bakery (which also sets up at Carmel’s Farmers Market).

So here appear a few potent survival lessons from the winter print issue of Edible Monterey Bay out now, inspired by KTC’s slogan:

Eat more lion’s mane.

Lion’s mane beneficial powers prove legion. Consistent use decreases anxiety and depression, increases cognitive function, aids digestion, accelerates nerve recovery, supports cardiovascular health and boosts immunity.  

And it’s fantastic with a simple pan sauté and Old Bay seasoning, with a sweet and subtle crab-like flavor and texture.   

That was a major takeaway from the winter issue’s enterprise piece “Peak Beneficial Mushroom Is Here (and We’re Going Higher).”

Paul Stamets, who anchors the tale along with his old early adopter comrades at Far West Fungi, combines it with microdoses of psilocybin for maximum neural benefit.

Santa Cruz author Paula Grainger builds a chowder around lion’s mane, as part of her brand new cookbook/survival manual Nature’s Apothecary.

At Carmel’s Thursday market, Kitchen Table set up next to upstart medicinal mushroom outfit Mooncap Medicinals, and offered drops of MM’s tinctures in KTC broths, along with a sprinkle of salt from Blossom’s Farm Herb Salt.

The beneficial mushroom movement is spreading like mycelium.

Develop multiple powers.

Lion’s mane works as a reminder that, while one superpower is nice, multiple superpowers are nicer still. 

So it goes with a number of key EMB contributors. With the zing!-level recipe for hot orange marmalade, one of seven recipes in the issue, Edible’s graphic designer and production coordinator Tracy Smith reveals a talent for drawing out flavor too. 

Analuisa Bejar, meanwhile, remains my idol because she can write eloquently and informatively—as she does with In “Chocolate, All the World Loves a Trendy Cup,” photographed vividly by cover artist Patrick Tregenza, himself a talented drummer and experienced sailor—and she can cook expertly. (While we’re here, I stopped by her Sunny Bakery Cafe in Carmel Valley on Sunday and her brioche BLT, veggie breakfast burrito and lush lox bagel wow’d the fam all over again.) 

Jamie Collins lives a similar multidimensional skill set, tending a chef-fave farm, running the business around it, playing adventure mom and writing insightful profiles of seasonal ingredients as she does with “Cone Heads: A Chef’s Secret Comes to the Farmers Market.”

Leave your bubble.

If you can travel beyond your bubble—and don’t take it with you when you do—exploration provides illumination. That relates to a theme in this issue editor-publisher Deborah Luhrman flags in her opening notes, honoring traditional foods from other parts of the world, and farmworkers who make the area’s agriculture possible.

“Let’s show appreciation for immigrants who bring culinary diversity to our region,” she writes, touching on four stories that reflect that: French cheeses in Carmel Valley, Japanese sake in Hollister, Italian feasts in Monterey and Mexican hot chocolate in every kitchen that tries out Mexico City transplant Bejar’s recipes for south-of-the-border-style almond cookies and hot chocolate. 

(BTW, that also primed my eyes to catch an ad on p. 10 for MRY Regional Airport, now winging direct to tasty spots like Denver, Dallas and worldly eats capital Seattle.)

Plan ahead.

Living in the moment has infinite merit. That doesn’t exclude arranging something to look forward to. 

One of my favorite exercises in paging through each Edible is laundry listing places to visit in the coming weeks and months. 

From this issue I have The Covey, Gayle’s Bakery & Rosticceria, Jones & Bones, Margins Wine Cubby, Hook & Line, The Spotted Duck, Laílí and East Lake Village in Watsonville for starters. 

Stay alert.

It’s easy to be seduced by the feast-for-the-retinas that is the born-in-2024 promotional feature Winter Table (p. 28), a cornucopia of curated seasonal sundries. 

But don’t let the imagery distract from the reveals. 

In this installment, those include churro-flavored kettle corn from What’s Popp’n Popcorn, who was also at Thursday’s Carmel Farmers Market, and lion’s mane mushrooms (!!!) from Lake Family Forest Farms in Carmel Valley. 

Embrace self-care.

One of the best ways to prevent death is getting better at living. 

Cue the cascading wellness ideas that come with each issue, beyond gut-healthy, eco-mindful and well-sourced food and drink (and Ness, who by way of stories like “Strong Silent Types,” simply makes us better at understanding and enjoying wine, a self-kindness gift itself).

I’m looking at you, Refuge Carmel, Santa Cruz Naturopathic Medical Center and Human Minded.

Which brings me back to the wider Edible Monterey Bay community. 

The ostensible mission of the magazine is to “celebrate the local food culture of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties, season by season.” 

Another way to put that would be cultivating engines for good, in sustainable and life-affirming ways that, ultimately, diminish our killability.