December 18, 2018 – Renowned Santa Cruz graphic artist and sign painter Stephen Hosmer is releasing his vegetable ABC series as a large-format cookbook, just in time for holiday gift giving. Working in collaboration with his daughter Ashley Malia Hosmer—a professional chef—the father/daughter duo created the cookbook so families could experience good, healthy food together, while teaching the alphabet to young ones.
“Now that my kids and their friends are having their own kids, I see that they care a great deal about what they feed their children,” says Steve. “They may even care more than we did during the health food revolution of the 1970s.”
There are 26 recipes in the book, each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet. Some are straightforward like the “F” recipe for Fennel and Yukon Gold Smashed Potatoes.
“I just love fennel,” says Steve. “The way it looks and smells and the way it is transformed from the field to the store and to the finished dish.”
Finding suitable vegetables for other letters of the alphabet—like Q, V and X—was a bit of a stretch. For V he chose Valenciano pumpkin and the recipe Ashley came up with is Valenciano Macaroni and Cheese (see recipe below), which is prepared and stuffed back into the pumpkin shell—a sure kid pleaser.
“The recipes in this book should be looked at as a rough guideline, not an exact road-map. Feel free to improvise,” writes Ashley in the foreword. To go with the “B is for Beet” page, Ashley created the Seabright Beet Salad, named for the Santa Cruz neighborhood where the family lives.
Steve began creating his vegetable ABC series three years ago. Each letter and vegetable is painted in bright primary colors on a 24″ by 36″ aluminum panel, using traditional sign painter tools and techniques. The entire series was on display last fall in a show at Artisans Gallery in downtown Santa Cruz. His style was inspired by the classic 1920s-era animal alphabet primer by Charles Buckles Falls, which uses woodcut block printing.
Hosmer is a self-taught graphic artist and painted his first sign in 1979. His distinctive work can be seen all over Santa Cruz, hanging on places such as Lulu Carpenter’s coffee house, Pour Taproom and the Surfing Museum at Lighthouse Point. He’s just beginning work on a new ABC series based on fruits, instead of vegetables.
Ashley is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Academy in San Francisco and worked as a chef at the Shadowbrook Restaurant in Capitola and at Princeville Hotel in Kauai. Currently she is Culinary Team Chef at Whole Foods in Santa Cruz.
The “Hosmer Vegetable ABC Cookbook” is available through Stokes Signs, on its facebook page or by stopping by the shop at 303 Potrero St. Suite 9 in Santa Cruz beginning on Saturday, December 22.
About the author
Deborah Luhrman is publisher and editor of Edible Monterey Bay. A lifelong journalist, she has reported from around the globe, but now prefers covering our flourishing local food scene and growing her own vegetables in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
