At Mezcalito Oaxacan Cuisine in Rocklin, the mole takes two days and nearly two dozen ingredients to complete. The recipe reads like a catalog of the Mexican state of Oaxaca’s agricultural bounty: plantains, green apples and raisins; warm spices and half a dozen kinds of chiles; a liberal dose of sparsely-sweetened chocolate.

Dutchman’s Stroopwafels may be the first business to cook on a bicycle in Sacramento, but local entrepreneurs have been finding creative ways to combine the area’s twin passions for cuisine and cycles for decades.

Sacramento’s effort to expand mobile food codes is part of a statewide push to legitimize California’s long tradition of sidewalk vending.

While a cottage food career comes with plenty of challenges, Karla McNeil-Rueda has leveraged it as an opportunity to create her own vision of success.