An Epiphany

The past few months have been very, very slow at my storefront and I've been blaming it on the lousy economy, but a few days ago I realized that there may have been something else going on as well.

Our front window was broken about two months ago, and when I replaced the glass I didn't bother repainting the lettering that had been there. It had said "Quick, Healthy, Vegetarian," but the word "vegetarian" had been spread across two panes to say, "Veget arian," with the "Veget" part on the pane that was smashed. Now it just says, "Arian Food."

We like to joke that maybe that will bring in skinheads who can't spell, but the fact of the matter is that the truncated word just gives the impression that the place isn't cared for. I read one time that when New York City officials decided to get serious about fighting crime on the subways they diligently cleaned off all of the graffiti, and every time a car was spray painted they wouldn't let it back into service until it had been repainted. Cleaning the cars was a way to communicate that they were cared for and subway crime really did go down.

I've decided to go ahead and repaint the front window even though I won't be staying in the storefront longer than another year. As soon as I made that decision we had two of the best days we'd had there in months, even though the window hasn't been repainted yet. That may have been a coincidence, but somehow I don't think so.

Braised Carrots with Cranberries

And here's a third Thanksgiving recipe from my cookbook, Local Bounty.

Braised Carrots with Cranberries

Yield: 4 servings

Here's a sweet and sour holiday dish with a deep, mellow flavor. You can use the extra braising liquid as a sauce for any kind of grain or potatoes.

2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sliced carrots
1/2 cup cranberries

1. Heat the oil gently in a medium-size saucepan. Add the garlic and cook on low heat for about a minute. Add the orange juice, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, and salt.

2. Bring the mixture to a boil. Add the carrots and cranberries. Cover the pan, lower the heat, and simmer for about 15 minutes or until the carrots are soft.

Gold Beets with Leeks and Chives

Here's another one from my book "Local Bounty." According to Kim O'Donnel of A Mighty Appetite, there are a disproportionate number of beet lovers in the Pacific Northwest. I still encounter quite a few beet haters, but they're a minority, and I'm doing what I can to convert them.

1 pound gold beets

water to cover

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium-size leek, cleaned and chopped

2 to 3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon saltblack pepper to taste

1/4 cup chopped chives

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1. Cover the beets with water in a medium-size saucepan and bring them to a boil. Cook on medium heat for 45 minutes to an hour, until you can rub off the skins with your fingers. (To test one, fish it out of the pot with a pair of tongs and run it under cold water for a minute until it’s cool enough to handle.)

2. While the beets are cooking, heat the oil in a small saucepan. Add the leek, garlic, salt and pepper. Cook on medium-low heat for about 5 minutes, until the leek is soft. Turn off the heat and add the chives or parsley and the balsamic vinegar.

3. Cut the beets into bite-size pieces and toss them with the leek and chive mixture. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Delicata Succotash

Succotash is the ultimate American food, based on a traditional Native American recipe that could include almost anything, but almost always had beans and corn. People who grew up eating succotash are often surprised by mine because it doesn't include lima beans or meat. You could say it's untraditional because it's different from the dish we're used to eating with that name, but traditional in the sense that it draws on the dish's long term roots.

You probably won't be able to find locally grown tomatoes most places this time of year, but you should be able to find local squash, leeks and garlic.

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium-size delicata squash, peeled, halved, seeded, and cut into small bite-size pieces
1 leek, cut lengthwise, cleaned, and chopped
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup green beans, cut in bite-size pieces
2 ripe, medium-size tomatoes, cut in bite-size pieces
2 cups cooked or canned white beans
1 cup fresh corn
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil or parsley, or a mixture of the two.

1. Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the squash, leek, garlic and salt. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring often, for about 10 minutes or until the squash is fork-tender. You can add a few tablespoons of water if the squash starts to stick.

2. Add the green beans and tomatoes. Continue cooking on medium-high heat, stirring often, for another 5 to 10 minutes, until the tomatoes start to break down and the green beans grow soft.

3. Add the remaining ingredients and heat them through.

Thanksgiving, the Ultimate Local Food Holiday

1. I'll be talking about local foods and vegan holiday recipes on KUOW (FM 94.9) on Wednesday between 2 and 3, so the next few days I'll be posting Thanksgiving recipes from my cookbook "Local Bounty," so they can link to them.

Thanksgiving, more than any other holiday, is a celebration of local food. According to the story we've all heard many times, the Pilgrims had trouble raising enough food to feed themselves so the Native Americans helped them out and taught them to grow some indigenous crops, which got them through those early tough times. Many of the foods that we're used to having on our Thanksgiving tables are American foods: pumpkins, potatoes, wild rice, green beans, cranberries, and, of course, turkey. (I know I'm posting vegan recipes, but the turkey does help to illustrate my point.)

Indigenous foods aren't necessarily local foods, especially in this day and age. Carrots, apples and Brussels sprouts originated in other parts of the world but can be grown close to home. Blueberries are indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, but when they're out of season and we want them "fresh," we buy them grown in Chile. But without splitting hairs, I do think that buying locally grown food is very much in the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, whether or not those foods are indigenous to the locale that we call home.

The Pilgrims achieved food security by learning to use the foods they found in their immediate environment. It wasn't sustainable for them to live on familiar foods shipped from England, and the seeds they brought with them didn't take well to the new soil, at least initially. Today we're faced with a sustainability issue as well, though our short term survival isn't necessarily at stake. But eating local foods does improve our long term food security, at the same time that it expands our culinary horizons, just as it did for the Pilgrims.

Tough Times

Things are looking bad for the restaurant industry, in fact, some of the leading indicators are at their lowest levels on record. But the trend doesn't seem to be affecting everyone equally: I was listening to a couple of chefs talking about Thanksgiving recipes on the radio the other day, and when the announcer asked how their restaurants were doing, both said their sales were actually up a bit compared to the same period a year ago.

My own storefront has been incredibly slow, in fact, this has probably been the slowest period we've had since we opened 4 years ago. I'm not sure it's entirely because of the economy, though. I have just one more year left on my lease, and I've mostly decided that after the next year I'll set up a new kitchen closer to where I live, and just do markets because that's my main business anyway. It's always been my experience that when my energy goes out of something people pick up on that on a subliminal level, so that may be contributing to the slow sales as well. I am committed to keeping the store open for the remaining year, though, if only to provide work for my wonderful employees. It's tough keeping good people when all you can offer them is seasonal work.

The Ballard Farmers' Market, on the other hand, has been doing well enough to carry the rest of the business. It may be because I've finally seen the light and realized that it's worth having two people in the booth most of the day even during the slow season, or maybe because the market is open an hour longer this winter, or maybe it's just that it's a great market that keeps growing in spite of obstacles.

One trend that I have been noticing is that I'm selling more half size quesadillas, and fewer full size ones. A half costs $4, and a whole costs $6, so when I sell two halves I actually make more money for the same amount of ingredients. Many people are also splitting full quesadillas, which means that two people are able to eat lunch at my booth for $3 each. Maybe I'm having a good fall at the market simply because I'm offering some very affordable options.

In any case, I think that it's important in this day and age for a business--like a stock portfolio--to be as diversified as possible. That way if some aspects aren't going well, others have the potential to pick up some of the slack.

Brussels Sprouts!

I was never force fed Brussels sprouts as a child so I didn't have any first hand negative associations with them. But some of our widespread cultural prejudice must have rubbed off on me because I found myself one day last winter challenging myself to learn to like them.

I was successful without too much effort. They're wonderful tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper, and roasted for 20-30 minutes. I've also been simply cutting them up and tossing them in without whatever other vegetables I'm cooking.

I'd seen them at markets and in the grocery store sold on stems as "Brussels sprout trees," but I only recently learned that the tree part is actually the center of the plant, with big leaves growing around the sprouts. I tasted a leaf, and it tasted a lot like collard greens.

Closing the Food Gap

Last week I read Mark Winne's "Closing the Food Gap," which is about strategies for making good food more widely available, especially for lower income folks. Winne has some impressive experience working in inner city urban neighborhoods addressing food security issues, and he can be credited with starting the wonderful Farmers' Market Nutrition Program, which provides food stamps specifically for farmers' market purchases.

I picked up the book last week partly because I had been thinking about the issue, after posting a piece on the Eat Well Guide's Green Fork Blog talking about the ways that spending money at the farmers' market can be a better investment than investing in the stock market. I received a somewhat scathing comment from someone who had read my piece as just another instance of that upper income cluelessness that makes the Slow Food movement inaccessible to so many people who really care about good food.

It was sobering to read this, because I've always gone to great lengths to keep my own prices low. I joined Slow Food last year--the only organization I ever joined-- but I let my membership lapse because I wanted more policy and less food porn. I've lived on a near subsistence income for most of my adult life, though I've been lucky to have a family safety net as well as a food business that could feed me sometimes. I think about the cost of food all the time because my livelihood depends on shrewd purchasing.

Winne's book covers everything from food banks, to community gardens, to the lack of good supermarkets in inner city neighborhoods, to farmers' markets and CSA programs that address the needs of low income shoppers. He calls for both policy changes and grassroots efforts. My only quarrel with his position was that there was too much of an emphasis on fresh produce and virtually no mention of legumes and whole grains, which are the most cost effective way to prepare healthy food on a budget, as long as you supplement them with some fresh vegetables. Even at Whole Foods, with recent price increases you can get a pound of bulk brown rice, lentils, barley, or almost any kind of bean for under $2 a pound. And that pound turns into more than two pounds when you cook it.

Of course you're still left with the question of how to get to Whole Foods when you don't have a car, and where to find enough time to cook beans and grains from scratch when you're working two jobs. Winne repeatedly brings up the fact that folks who live in urban "food deserts," or communities without decent grocery stores, end up spending more money on worse food because they only have access to convenience stores. I found myself thinking, "If someone is paying more already, why not pay more for something of better quality?"

But it doesn't work that way. I read a book a while back called "Cottage Economy," written by a nineteenth century English reformer named William Cobbett. He complained about the poor spending their money in pubs when they could brew their own beer much more cheaply: all they had to do was invest in 80 quart copper brewing kettles, the cost of which could be easily recouped from all the money not spent at the pub.

The situation is so complex, and it's way too easy to come up with theoretical solutions that are completely impractical. But it's better to have a list of good questions than a couple of inadequate answers.

Wheat!

Nash's Farm has been selling bags of wheat berries at the markets the past couple of weeks. They're going for $1.50 a pound, which seems insanely cheap to me for a food that so many people use, but so few people grow locally.

I recently read "Plenty," an account of a year of local eating by a Vancouver couple, which devoted quite a bit of space to their quest for local wheat. For most of the year the only wheat they found had been stored for months in someone's barn, and they had to pick through it and separate the wheat berries from the rat turds before they could use it.

So I was excited to see these on Nash's table. I asked why so few farmers grow wheat in this area and they said you need a drier climate, which they have because they're based in Sequim. They're doing some field trials along with Washington State University to determine which varieties will grow best in this area. I also got the impression that it's not really worth growing wheat unless you do it on a fairly large scale.

I've been cooking the wheat berries like rice and eating them with beans and vegetables. The folks at Nash will be sending some over to a friend's restaurant to be ground into flour. I hope some of that makes its way to the markets, as well.

A Violin and a Hoola Hoop

I was very impressed by this young performer who I saw at the Ballard Market yesterday. She was standing on a large rubber ball, playing a violin, and swinging a hoola hoop all at the same time. There's some juggling equipment on the ground in the background, but I wasn't able to stick around long enough to see how that fit into the act.

By the way, I didn't notice any farmers missing, and most of the folks I asked hadn't experienced any serious flooding, although Eric from Prana Farms said he lost some squash that was already picked when water made its way into the storage pit.

Eat Local for Thanksgiving

The Consumers Union is partnering with the Eat Well Guide in a program to encourage folks to incorporate local foods into their Thanksgiving dinners. CU is collecting and posting recipes, and EWG has a directory of farmers' markets and other places where you can find local foods.

Puget Sound Fresh is promoting the same general idea, asking folks to take a pledge promising that they will have at least one local food item on their holiday tables. One local food really doesn't sound like much, but I think this kind of approach has a lot in common with the 100 Mile Diet program, where people pledge to eat all local food for a period of time. They're really just ways to get us thinking about where our food comes from, and anything that moves people in that direction seems like a good idea to me.

Waiting for Word on Flooding

The flooding the past couple of days has been all over the news,but I haven't heard anything yet about what concerns me most: the plight of local farmers. The agricultural land closest to Seattle is largely on flood plains near Carnation and Fall City, by the Tolt and Snoqualmie rivers. Farmers whose fields flood lose whatever crops are in the ground because regulatory agencies rightly forbid selling food that could have been contaminated with manure from neighboring farms, or even heavy metals from nearby industry. This is an especially big problem for organic farms, which run the risk of losing their organic certification if their land is contaminated by toxins in the water.

Flooding has especially been an issue the past couple of years as more markets stay open all winter and more farmers extend their growing season into the fall and winter flood season. We'll have to wait for the weekend to see how folks fared, but I'm betting there will be fewer farmers at the markets, and plenty of stories.

A Visit to Nash's Farm

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Nash's Organic Farm, in Sequim. They grow 50-60% of the produce my company uses. I went with Dylan, Heidi and Cypress from Green Go, and as we were leaving Heidi said, "Every time I visit a farm, I feel like it's the best farm I've ever seen."

I was thinking about that comment today, realizing how many of the farms in this area are unique and exciting in very different ways. Kia, one of the managers at Nash, was generous enough to spend most of the afternoon showing us around. I don't think she'd planned to spend quite that much time, but it was obvious that we were extremely interested, and there was so much to see.

Nash Huber started the farm more than thirty years ago squatting pieces of land in the area and growing crops organically on them. Eight years ago he was able to lease a big chunk of the Delta Farm through the PCC Farmland Trust, and that land now has pigs, chickens, turkeys, kale, cabbage and Brussels sprouts, among other things.

The fact that Kia spent so much time showing us around really brought home for me the fact that so many local organic farms are more than just places to grow food. They're places where ideas incubate, and laboratories for experimenting with techniques and seed varieties. Their work is important because they provide us with good food, and also because they're keeping alive a way of life that's in danger of becoming extinct, taking a very old endeavor and making it new again.

American Gleaning

After mentioning last week that I'd never come across agricultural gleaning in the good ol' U S of A, I learned today of a gleaning program practically in my own back yard. An Americorp volunteer working in Sequim started the "Good for the Gettin'" gleaning project this summer, organizing volunteers to pick through the fields for useful food after the crops are harvested. Volunteers are allowed to bring home some of the food they gather, and the rest goes to local food banks. It's a modern manifestation of an ancient idea, which is every bit as relevant now as it was during biblical times.

Willie Greens CSA

This is my Willie Greens CSA box, which I've been getting every week for the past month or so. I get a complimentary box because they use my store as the Ballard drop off point. I look forward to it every week. This week there were leeks, apples, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, brussels sprouts, and their exquisite salad mix.

They start their CSA is the fall because they're really busy with the markets over the summers. The first couple of years I found it challenging to use everything in the box each week, but lately I've been doing a pretty good job of it.

Rolling Fire Pizza

This is the mighty, portable pizza oven used by Rolling Fire Pizza, the cornerstone of the food court adjacent to the U District market. (In the courtyard by the community center-you have to look for it.)

They make the best pizza I've had in Seattle. It's wood-fired but has a thicker crust than most other wood-fired pizzas, so it's closer to the stuff I grew up on in the pizza Mecca of Brooklyn. Did I mentioned that almost all of the ingredients are organic?

Plenty

This week I enjoyed "Plenty", Alisa Smith and JB Mackinnon's account of eating locally for a year. I think the only reason I didn't read it when it first came out was because Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" came out at around the same time, and I try not to read books with similar themes too closely together.

It did take me a while to warm up to this one, maybe because it's the third book I've read over the past few years about a year of eating locally. (The other one was Gary Paul Nabhan's "Coming Home to Eat.") Even though I keep picking up these books, part of me has a problem with the idea of setting out on a self-imposed odyssey, and then writing about its hardships.

It's not that I have anything against eating locally-I'm all about eating locally. It just doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing. We're fortunate to be able to get olive oil, salt, chocolate and coffee from other places. The real problem with our food system is that we're shipping items like potatoes and lettuce, which grow nearly everywhere. Still, the heroic all-or-nothing thing makes a better story. Never mind that every one of these books--and every strictly local diet I've ever heard of--includes a list of caveats.

As someone who spends a lot of time around local foods, I found some of the couple's revelations early in the book kind of tedious, like when they discover the wonders of their local farmers' market. But eventually I realized that this was a very different book from the other two I had read. In "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle," Kingsolver deliberately moves her family across the country to a place where they can grow their own food. She already knows how to garden, can vegetables, and even make cheese. Gary Paul Nabhan is a ethno-botanist, so he has connections that help him find local foods. But these guys just decided it would be cool to try this out, plunged in, and learned as they went along.

I most enjoyed what the book taught me about the Pacific Northwest, which is my bioregion as well. It painted a rich picture of this landscape's bounty, and also gave me a strong sense of how much has been lost.

The Gleaners and I

Earlier this week I watched The Gleaners and I, a French documentary by Agnes Varda about the agricultural tradition of gleaning, or picking over a field after the harvest and salvaging the useful food that remains. The film poignantly made the connection between this age-old practice and dumpster diving, the modern act of picking through the trash of supermarkets and restaurants for useful food that is thrown away.

As I watched I kept thinking about the fact that I never hear anything about American gleaning, though it must occur. I do have friends who dumpster dive, but I've never heard of people going through fields after a harvest, like the folks portrayed in the film.

Many French growers have specific parameters for allowing and restricting gleaning, and there are laws on the books for regulating the practice as well. The modern legislation is built on medieval tradition, which is built on ancient, biblical custom. From what I understand about European agriculture since medieval times, large tracts were controlled by the nobility and military elite. The typical farming family entered into a feudal arrangement with the landowner. Even after feudalism ended, vestiges of it kept most small-scale farmers from prospering.

Unlike Europe, where there has historically been a shortage of land--at least for the average farmer--America came into its own as a place of abundance. When the west was being settled the government offered parcels of 160 acres to folks who were able to improve them. Holdings of that size were inconceivable for a typical European farm. Perhaps this sheer abundance made this country a place where we don't often hear about rural gleaning.

Many of the people who Varda spoke to weren't gleaning because they were destitute, but rather out of a genuine respect for food, and the belief that it is too precious too be wasted. I wish we had more of that kind of respect in this country.

Alter Eco Chocolate

1. I found myself at Whole Foods the other day jonesing for a chocolate bar so I went and checked out their chocolate section, which I've mostly found disappointing the past year or so, since they stopped carrying some of the higher end varieties and focused instead on the fair trade and organic stuff. I have nothing against fair trade, organic chocolate--really I don't--but the varieties I like the most just don't fall in these categories. Besides, I find it hard to believe that you can make a truly fabulous artisan product with exploited labor and cut rate beans. Maybe I'm deluding myself, but I like to think that I can taste the difference, and I don't need a marketing label to tell me what to choose.

I noticed this line of chocolates made by Alter Eco, and I was intrigued because I'd bought some of their green tea a few weeks ago and thought it was really tasty. I got the one with almonds because it was the darkest variety on the shelf, and I was quite pleased with it. I was also impressed that this company has been able to market both good tea and good chocolate. It made me want to try their other products. I checked out their website and learned that they're French, which may help to explain their high standards.

Speaking of chocolate: the Mars company announced today that they're working with the governments of 14 African nations to develop a plan for sustainable cocoa farming on the continent. That's great news as far as the ongoing quest to take sustainable food mainstream. At the risk of sounding like a chocolate snob, though, it does validate my feeling that there's more to great chocolate than a fair trade label (although I'll bet that we'll start to see some higher quality chocolate from the Mars company.) I wonder if they'll be processing their sustainably raised cocoa with sugar from genetically modified sugar beets.

The U District Food Court

I stopped by the U District Market this past Saturday to check out the food court, where I've had a booth since May, though I haven't been there personally because I've been working at Magnolia instead.

The food court is run by the University Heights Center, the community center that rents space to the market. The market itself won't allow prepared food vendors who sell hot, ready to eat food except duriing the winter months, when they let us in because they have extra space and, besides, we're a draw.

But during the summer and fall we set up in a courtyard right near the building, which isn't visible from the market itself because there are two large vendor trucks blocking the view. We've had a hard time getting shoppers up there to eat, most probably because they can't see us. I've been taking a long term approach, figuring that it's just a matter of time before a critical mass of people figure out that we're there, but it's been frustrating. Not a complete loss, but a venue with a lot of potential that isn't living up to its potential, at least not yet.