Frozen Greens

Last weekend there were no greens for us to buy at the farmers' market because the weather had been so cold. I assumed that meant there would be none for a while because we'd have to wait for the next growing cycle, but that wasn't the case. There were plenty of greens available this past weekend.

It turns out that if you pick greens while they're frozen they turn stringy and slimy, but if you wait for them to thaw without harvesting them, they'll be fine. Last year there were no greens after the long, hard frost in December, but this year the frost didn't last as long so the greens survived.

This is good news. I'll be enjoying the greens in my garden for another while, as well.

A Day on Broadway

Yesterday I worked the Broadway Sunday Farmers' Market for the first time. It's a seasonal market, but it has a longer season than any other seasonal market in town, running from May until late December.

I tried to get into this market earlier this fall, but it didn't work out. Then the manager called me last week and asked if I wanted to give it a try for the last 2 weeks of the season. I have to get a $226 health permit even if I'm only vending for 2 weeks, and technically I should also pay a $50 late fee if I submit the application less than 2 weeks before the event starts. I nearly said no because I couldn't imagine making any money having to pay these fees, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I called the health department and they agreed to at least waive the late fees, and I found myself thinking that not every business decision has to be directly about money. I wanted to get a sense of this market because I've heard good things about it from other vendors. I also figure that at this point in the season if I even break even on something it's worth doing because it creates extra work, and all of my employees want more work.

I loved the market, though I barely broke even. It was a freak show, in the best possible way. Great people watching. It was also very, very cold, at least for Seattle, and I do love the whole winter farmers' market phenomenon. I love the fact that there are enough of us vendors crazy and committed enough to get out there are create a market, even when it's hard to be outside. And I love the rapport that develops between the customers and the vendors. We're all so grateful to each other. They're grateful that we continue to show up even though our sales are obviously slow and it's hard to stand outside on that kind of day, and we're grateful to them for coming and shopping even though they have so much more to choose from this time of year at the supermarket.

I want to figure out a way to do this market next year. They need prepared food, and I feel I'll do well there. I'm already committed to doing 3 other markets on Sundays. My business has never done 4 markets in a day, not even for special events, and I don't want to buy another vehicle, although I am willing to buy some extra equipment. I'm going to see what I can do to figure out a way. I've got some ideas.

Making Soil

This is my friends' farm in upstate New York, about an hour west of Albany, where I spent some time last week. They have about 80 acres, and they're growing food on a few of them, and hay on 50 more. There's also woods, a house, a barn, and areas for goats and fowl.

The soil there is tired. They knew that when they bought the place, and they've got a long term plan for making it better. They're thinking in terms of 20 years, and they started 7 years ago. They're using hay as fertilizer, among other things. They grow 50 acres of hay, and it's still barely enough to nourish 2 acres of tired ground. But it's a long term plan.

I asked why the soil was so depleted, and they said it was from long term, intensive use. The farmers I know in Washington state are working plots that have been farmed for at most 150 years. This land in upstate New York has been farmed for at least 300 years.

I read recently about a period in the history of upstate New York, lasting up until about 1840, when practically all of the farmland in some areas was owned by a small number of wealthy families who had inherited a virtually feudal arrangement from their Dutch ancestors. Tenants paid exorbitant rent and were expected to perform additional duties for the landlord, such as working in their fields. It was nearly impossible for the average farming family to get far enough ahead to buy land.

I wondered if this history had something to do with the land's exhaustion. Later in the week I visited family in southern Vermont, which has a considerably more vibrant agricultural landscape. Vermont doesn't have the same history of feudal sharecropping, so the land isn't as tired.

When my friends first bought their farm, they thought that at some point they might grow food and sell it. As they've gotten settled and worked through several growing seasons they've become convinced that farming for a living doesn't make sense for them financially. They're growing food mainly to meet their own needs, and they're building the soil.

I'm can't imagine that this long term approach to building the soil is actually going to make sense financially, either. But that's a problem with the financial calculus rather than with the process of building the soil.

How the Other Half Thinks

I get Google Alerts on topics related to sustainability and local food. Recently they sent me a link to this fascinating piece from a blog called "Free Republic". The post is called "No Cranberries in Texas? No Lobster in Colorado? Blame the Locavores." Apparently the local foods community is trying to rob the rest of the world of the right to choose what to eat. Make sure to check out the comments, where the right wing crowd ponder the absurdity of eating locally. No wonder it's so hard to pass a health care bill.

Squash and Bulgur Patties

• 
  Here's a holiday recipe that I like very much. I made these patties and served them with collard greens sauteed in olive oil with garlic, shallots, and salt. Simple, simple. This recipe makes 6 servings.

4 cups peeled, cubed butternut squash

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup medium bulgur

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 shallots, minced

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

2/3 teaspoon salt, or more to taste

1/2 cup crumbed feta cheese (optional)

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

Steam the squash for 20-30 minutes, until it's soft enough to mash.

Meanwhile, boil the water and boil it over the bulgur in a bowl.

Heat the olive oil in a medium-size skillet. Add the shallots, onions, herbs, and salt. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the onions are soft and transluscent.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. When the squash is ready, mash it well, then mix it with the other ingredients. Let the mixture cool in the refrigerator for about an hour to firm it up a bit.

Shape the mixture into patties with your hands. Coat each patty with bread crumbs. Arrange the patties on a baking sheet, and bake them for about 20 minutes.

Wholesaling

My first business, many years ago, was a wholesale company. I would make prepared lunch food and deliver it to grocery stores, coops, and university cafeterias. At its peak, my business serviced 50 or 60 stores in the Seattle area. But the product had a short shelf life and, I suppose, a limited appeal, and most stores accepted it as a guaranteed sale, in other words, we credited them for anything that didn't sell by its pull date.

My second business--a meal delivery service--was, in many ways, an answer to many of the things that didn't work about the first business. I figured that, if I was going to make a lot of small deliveries, I might as well deal directly with the actual customers, and charge retail. That was a much happier business; I sold it about 5 years ago, and my current business is even happier.

This year, as we headed into the off season, I started looking for every possible way to generate more business. I want to provide more work for my staff, and I'm getting too old to keep saving money over the summer and then spending it all over the winter. (When I expressed this to my mother she responded, "That's called maturity.")

So I started thinking about wholesaling again, but I didn't want to get into the old routine of spending several days a week driving all over town doing deliveries. My shop is right near Madison Market, which is the current incarnation of the old Central Coop, one of my favorite accounts back in the day. I got to thinking that, rather than producing as much as I could of a limited number of items, I'd like to try a different model, and produce a range of items exclusively for one store. I want to build relationships with the staff and the customers, learn what they need, and produce it.

I'm starting with seitan, a "meat substitute" made from wheat gluten. At the risk of being immodest, I make the best seitan around-much better than the chewy, overpriced items that most natural foods stores carry. We made a sandwich with seitan at my little restaurant; people tell me regularly that it's the thing they missed most when we closed.

So I'm wholesaling seitan to Madison Market now. When I brought samples, the buyer practically accepted it on the spot. We're not selling a ton of it, but I'm going to give it time, do demos, and nurture the venture.

Staff Meeting

At the end of the market season I had a staff meeting. It's been many years since I had a staff meeting, but it felt like the thing to do. The agenda was simple: I wanted to discuss what we'd done well this past summer, and what we could do better.

I enjoyed hearing their feedback. I'm not sure I learned much that I didn't already know, but I felt that it was good for them to be heard. I think I'll do it more often now, like maybe once a year.

Dialogue

I received an email a few days ago from someone who had bought my book "The Accidental Vegan," and was deeply disturbed that my introduction focused on the dietary and environmental reasons for choosing a vegan diet, but didn't mention anything about animal rights.

My first thought was that I shouldn't even engage because it probably wouldn't be productive; my second thought was that if I couldn't at least make an effort to dialogue then I'm not who I want to think I am. So I sent a polite email explaining that my book is targeted towards people who know they should eat more plant-based foods but are ambivalent about making the change and, while I believe factory farming is horrific and should be outlawed, I do think it's possible to raise animals for meat without being cruel to them. She politely responded that there's no possible justification for murdering an animal simply to justify a taste for a particular food. Here's a link to the review she posted on Amazon.

The experience has gotten me thinking about why I don't think it's wrong to eat animals, provided they haven't been badly treaten in the process (and I am fully aware of the argument that killing animals for food, any way it's done, constitutes treating the animal badly.) I do think that meat eating has played a fundamental role in our history and culture. I know that war has played a fundamental role in our history and culture as well, but my gut tells me that war is wrong while my gut doesn't tell me the same thing about eating meat (no pun intended.)

Although vegetarian activists point to the length of our intestines-- similar to that of herbivores--as evidence that we haven't evolved to eat meat, there have been periods in our evolutionary history when an increase in our meat consumption corresponded with profound developments in our brains and our cultures. Homo habilis, who walked the earth roughly two million years ago, was the first of our ancestors to eat meat on a regular basis--mostly small animals and scavenged carcasses--and this change in diet corresponded to the first significant increase in the size of our brains. I wouldn't venture a cause and effect relationship, but I'm intrigued by the correlation. Then, about fifty thousand years ago, humans developed the skills and technologies to begin hunting large mammals, and this development led to the earliest sophisticated art, clothing, and constructed shelter.

I understand that some people think that killing animals for food represents a lack of respect for life, but I feel that a real respect for life involves seeing life as it really is, and embracing it anyway. Death is part of life. One day last year I was walking down the street when I saw a vegan friend of mine walking towards me. She gestured for me to be quiet, and pointed to a spot right near us where a crow was dismantling a smaller bird. When I reached her she whispered, "He just took out the eyes!" I was blown away by the fact that, as a vegan, she was still awed and fascinated by the sight of this animal being killed for food, and I told her so.

Here's a link to a terrific post by Bob at Stonybrook Farm, in which he poignantly, sensitively describes taking one of his favorite lambs to the slaughterhouse.

The woman who sent me the email will never convince me that all meat eating is murder, just as I will never convince her that it's possible for a farmer to care about their animals and still kill them for meat. But, at the very least, it's important for us to be civil to each other.

Dialogue anyone?

Back in Ballard

This past Sunday I started working the Ballard Farmers' Market again, after doing the Mercer Island Market all summer. Mercer Island is a great little market, but there's no market like Ballard.

I've been vending in Ballard even before it was even located in Ballard. The market started in Fremont, as a row of farmers at the Sunday market there. But the Fremont market outgrew its space, and in 2001 the farmers moved west, where they started off in a bank parking lot on the site that is now the Ballard library. Late in 2002 we moved to our current hom on Ballard Avenue.

Ballard was this town's original year-round farmers' market, and none of the other year-round markets even come close to it in sales and vitality, in fact, Ballard in the winter is still better than almost any other market in the middle of the summer.

It's good to be back.

Veggie ID 101

One of the things that I particularly enjoy about my work is being able to come across a bag or box of veggies, and know right away who grew them. This bag was waiting for me at the kitchen when I came in the other day: someone had traded for it at a market. From the particular selection of veggies, the shape of the delicatas, and the look of the garlic, I guessed it came from Willie Greens.

Sneeze Guards

Lately health inspectors have been telling me to put my salsa in squeeze bottles, rather than in a container with a spoon. I assume that's because of all the concern about the H1N1 virus. I can't put my salsa in squeeze bottles because it's chunky. I used squeeze bottles when I first started, many years ago, but I stopped after watching a lady squeeze too hard and spurt salsa on a beautiful dress. Besides, it would be a nightmare for the kitchen crew to get the salsa into the squeeze bottles.

So I came up with a solution: I made sneeze guards by cutting spoon-size notches out of the salsa container lids. I saw a health inspector on Saturday and she seemed perfectly happy with this strategy. But it doesn't seem to be working for the customers. Every time I use these lids, I look over after an hour or two, and see that someone has removed them. You just can't get as much salsa out of the container with a sneeze guard in the way.

Gardening Retrospective

Summer is over, and my humble garden is descending into chaos. Actually, it's been getting progressively more chaotic since early summer when I got too busy to keep up, right around the same time that I got a rather sobering water bill.

So I'm asking myself whether it was worth it, and whether I'll do it again next year. I didn't get a ton of food from my endeavor, in fact, the dollar value of the food I got was probably less than what I spent.

And the food I grew didn't taste particularly good, especially compared to the stuff I was bringing home from the markets. But that's not being fair to myself: I'm comparing my amateur fumbling to the work of some talented, dedicated professionals.

The thing I enjoyed most about having a garden was having a range of stuff right there, whenever I wanted it. Especially the herbs: mint and dill, some basil and a couple of varieties of parsley managed to survive, and I enjoyed them thoroughly. And there are still plenty of greens, and even an occasional tomato.

And just as I'm thinking about pulling the plug on the whole endeavor, I'm finding some wonderful surprises. An artichoke plant that I thought was long dead has suddenly resurrected itself, looking quite happy. The sorrel that I'd given up on is thriving, and I'm seeing some glimmers of hope where I thought all was lost: tiny heads of cabbage and cauliflower, and even a single, baby habanero.

I think it's the surprises, really, that make me feel that it'll be worth doing again next year. I'll plant fewer tomatoes, so I'll use less water. I'll probably plant mostly greens, because they seem to be the hardiest. But I'm not quite ready to give up yet.

Tristram Stuart's "Waste"

My first full time job was at a natural foods store in Virginia, where I was in charge of the refrigerated section. I regularly banged heads with the manager, who insisted that I order more product in order to keep the shelf looking full, while I was inclined to order less so there would be less waste.

I thought of that as I read through Tristram Stuart's new book, "Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal," which includes detailed and sobering statistics about global food waste, which runs to more than half of all the food produced in the world. I'd heard this statistic before--there was a UN report earlier this year--but it was illuminating to get such extensive detail about how and why this waste occurs, and its moral, environmental, and financial repercussions .

Now that I own my own food business, I am slightly more sympathetic to the position of my long ago manager, who insisted that I keep the shelves fully stocked despite the resulting waste. You really do lose more money by not having enough product on hand to meet demand than you do by wasting some of what you have available. It makes me crazy to run out of food at a market and know I could have sold more. My own solution has been to develop a business where most of the extra food can be used at other events (although there is still more waste than I would like) and also to base my menu largely on perfectly good ingredients that other businesses might have wasted, like the vegetables that I buy at the end of the day at the farmers' market.

Stuart argues repeatedly that one of the reasons grocery stores waste so much is because their systems for tracking inventory are inadequate or they simply don't give the endeavor enough effort. While that may occur some of the time, in my experience a far more daunting problem is the fact that customer demand is consistently inconsistent. It can correlate with the weather, the time of year, time of day, time of the week, and time of the month, but after a point it just is what it is, and I don't think there will ever be a way to accurately predict it, especially with the prevailing expectation of unlimited consumer choice.

Don't Know Much About Wine

I'll be the first to admit that I don't understand wine the way I'd like to. The main thing I look for when tasting wine is complexity, or a flavor that emerges over time. But the descriptions I read don't make much sense to me, and I'm not confident that I could pick out a truly fine wine from among a bunch of imitators.

After watching the Pigs and Pinot competition on Top Chef the other night, I felt curious and wanted to try a Pinot Noir with the fresh perspective the show had given me. I tend to buy Merlots, mainly because I figure that if I stick with one type of wine, I'll be better able to tune in to nuances. I'm not sure if it works, but it's what I do.

I chose one from Oregon. It was one of the cheaper ones on the shelf, but I wasn't feeling particularly extravagant. I decided to open it while I was cooking dinner because I was making tomato sauce, and it's always nice to put a little in the sauce (and a little in my glass.) I reached for the corkscrew and was surprised to discover that the bottle had a screw top.

My first reaction was, "This is going to be lousy wine." My second reaction was that I wanted to try to taste it as objectively as possible. I remember reading in Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating about an experiment where researchers served one group of diners a wine with a label that said it was from California, and then served the same wine to another group with a label saying it was from Minnesota. Not only did the table drinking the "Minnesota" vintage give their wine a lower rating, but they rated their entire meal more critically than the California group, who received exactly the same meal.

I think about that study regularly in my own business. I know that people's preconceptions about how food should be served affect their perception of its taste, but I like to challenge these presumptions, even though it probably costs me sales. I'd rather use my equipment until it's falling apart than replace it as soon as it starts to look shabby. This is a sustainability issue, one that has far-reaching consequences: one of the reasons our food costs more than it needs to--one of the reasons we waste so much food--is because we're so invested in appearances.

So I tried to taste the wine as if someone had just poured it into my glass, as if I had no idea it had come with a screw top. At first I thought it tasted one dimensional, then I detected some complexity. I kept second guessing myself.

So I tried to do an actual blind experiment. When my sweetie came home I told her I got a bottle of wine because I'd felt like I wanted to re-experience Pinot, and I poured her a glass. She said she thought Pinots tasted watery in general, and this one was no exception. When I told her about the screw top she said she didn't have an issue with screw tops: she didn't think cork was necessarily the best substance to close wine bottles anyway. (She's a scientist.)

Did I learn anything? I'm not sure.

Mercer Island Retrospective

This picture shows one of the vendor meetings that the Mercer Island market manager would hold most Sunday mornings, fifteen to twenty minutes before the start of the market. I really liked the idea, and it certainly helped to keep us current on what we needed to know, like special promotions, though the logistics were sometimes tricky. (If you look really closely you can see some vendors clutching their cash boxes.)

This Sunday was the last market of the year, and I'm actually kind of sorry to see this one go, although I won't miss the wind, which got a lot worse with the beginning of fall. Like Queen Anne, Mercer Island is an independently run market with a terrific, motivated team of volunteers. I suspect it's no coincidence that both markets stayed strong until the end of the season, rather than petering out like some of the others.

I was skeptical about picking up this market, which just started in August 2008. The manager called me repeatedly last year, telling me how great it was going to be, and how well I would do there. (She doesn't eat dairy, and really wanted to be able to eat my vegan cheese sauce on a weekly basis.) Everyone hypes their own market, so I figured that was what was going on, but then I started hearing from vendors that they just couldn't keep their tables stocked fully enough to meet the demand. So I decided I'd figure out a way to do it, even though it was on Sunday, the same day as Ballard, which is by far my busiest market.

According to everyone involved, this year wasn't nearly as successful as last year, although that seems to have been the case at almost every market. Judy, who runs the Ballard Market, has a theory that every market sucks during its second year. Be that as it may, it was still one of my better markets, and I'll be happy to do it again next year.

Number of Farmers' Markets Grows 13%

The USDA announced last week that the number of farmers' markets in the country grew more than 13% this year, from 4685 markets to 5274 currently. The same week the Seattle Weekly printed an article about declining sales at Seattle farmers' markets, while acknowledging that sales are up in the state overall.

I've heard market administrators say that they think part of the problem here is that there are too many markets, so they cannibalize one another. But it's strange to be to hear this kind of talk when farmers' market sales only account for about 2% of what we spend on food, and this way of eating has the potential to generate so much positive change in our communities, for our collective health, and for our quality of life in general.

It's certainly been a rough year for farmers' market sales. My own sales are definitely down, though not quite as much as some of the vendors featured in the article. The recession is definitely to blame, and I wouldn't entirely deny that the sheer number of markets could be impacting sales at some individual markets. But I'd like to see this as an opportunity, rather than a burden. It's exciting that so many neighborhoods want their own markets, and if we haven't figured out how to make this work with such a rich variety of markets to choose from, then this is as good a time as any to learn.

There have been quite a few industries in recent years that have struggled to survive in a changing business environment, from video rentals, to daily newspapers, to film developing. In each of these instances, the success stories are the enterprises that adapt, and come up with smarter business models. I think the farmers' market community could very well be experiencing something similar, and I'd love to see us come out of it with an updated approach, one that can reach a broader community.

Loading Out After Dark

This time of year it's practically dark by 7PM, when most of the weekday markets end, and it's completely dark by the time we load our equipment into our vehicles. Some vendors bring lights to help them through the last hour. I think it's a great idea, but I've never yet managed to do it.

The crowds thin out earlier, too. This is particularly hard for my business, because most of my sales are dinner sales, and those are precisely the people who are less inclined to show up after dark.

I appreciate the markets that end in late September and early October. As for the others, well, they just make me even more grateful that the season is nearly over.

Leaving Ballard

This morning I did a final walk-through and returned my keys to the place in Ballard where I had a tiny restaurant from November 2004 until December 2008. I have reason to believe I'll get back most of my security deposit, though you never know until the check arrives.

I spent most of last week cleaning and finding homes for the equipment. Two of the sinks went to Magnolia, and the third sink, the griddle and the stove are headed for Morocco. I moved the reach-in over to my kitchen on Capital Hill where it's going to come in handy next summer, and the walk-in has been disassembled and the panels are also sitting in my current kitchen until I find someone who wants to buy them.

My restaurant experience there was valuable, though it didn't turn out the way I expected. I had great systems, great margins, fair prices, and very tasty food, but I just never managed to get many customers in the door. I think part of the problem was that a vegetarian place needs to be a destination place, and that building was just too small to justify a trip from across town, no matter how good the food. I'm also not much of a networker, and that made it hard to build up much of a clientele. And my employees who did the best job doing market prep were the wrong people to be running the store, and after a point the markets just became more important.

I have no regrets about the venture, though. It was instrumental in helping me pay off a heavy debt load, which has dramatically improved the quality of my life. And it taught me that I'm probably not cut out to be a restauranteur, which was an important lesson to learn.

It really did feel good to hand back those keys and drive away...

Harvest Farm Tour 2009

This past Saturday we set up the booth at Ames Creek Farm, as part of the 2009 Harvest Farm Tour. The farm was bought by the PCC Farmland Trust a few years ago, and it's farmed by Full Circle Farm, Growing Things, and the Children's Garden, our neighbor in the photo.

On some level it wasn't a great day. We sold a lot less food than we did the other 2 times we've participated in the tour, although we certainly didn't lose money. PCC Cooks was giving away samples-tasty, generous samples--and it's hard to compete with free food. And the health inspector got under my skin. He didn't really find anything wrong, but he stayed much longer than it's appropriate for a health inspector to stay.

Still, I'm really glad I did this event, and I'd be more than happy to do it again next year. I'm so glad to be part of this community, and there's nothing quite like setting up shop in an open field, with farmland in the background.

The Beginning of the End

1. Friday was the last day of the season at the Madrona Farmers' Market, the first of my markets to end. Wallingford, Queen Anne, and Phinney end this week, and Magnolia and Mercer Island will be done after next week. Lake City, as usual, will drag on until the end of the month, long after the customers are gone.
   

I'm not nearly as tired as I usually am this time of year. Maybe it's because most weeks this summer I only worked at 3 markets, rather than the 5 markets a week I did last year and the year before. It might also be because we closed the store, which was draining my energy. I'm going to something fun this Friday, my first free day when I'm used to having a market. Like...maybe I'll catch up on my bookkeeping.

The Kid and the Cookbook

At the Queen Anne Farmers' Market the other week an elderly woman wanted to buy a copy of my cookbook. She handed me a credit card and I explained that I couldn't process a credit card in the booth. She said, "Okay, run it as a debit then." I sadly told her that I couldn't do that either.

Credit and debit card transactions just take too much time, and those minutes are better spent serving and preparing food. But I was sad that I couldn't sell her the book, and she was disappointed that she couldn't buy it.

There was a boy in line behind her. I'd guess he was about 11 years old. He bought a lemonade, paid me with a twenty dollar bill, and then said, "I'll buy that book for her." I asked if he knew her and he said he didn't. I told him to go quickly and find her.

She came up to me this past Thursday and asked if I had a son, because a boy had found her and given her a copy of the cookbook the previous week. I said I had no idea who he was, but he'd made my day.

Surplus

Lately we've been bringing so much produce back from the farmers' markets that we're having trouble going through it all. We tried to put the brakes on a few weeks ago, telling the farmers' that we could only spend a certain amount, but most of them are just giving us the same volume and charging less for it. I'm guessing that the reason they've been having so much left over at the end of the day is the same reason we've been having trouble going through it all: folks just aren't buying as much as they used to. It's forced us to improve our systems for rotating and keeping track of stock. So far we've wasted very little, and I want to keep it that way. Stepping back for a moment, I realize that too much great food is truly a wonderful problem to have.

Kids' Quesadillas

There's been a lot of talk lately, not least from Slow Food USA and the first lady, about improving the quality of the food that our schools are serving to kids. Based on my own experience selling food at farmers' markets, I can't help feeling a bit skeptical. It seems to me that the reason so many places--including schools--serve crap to kids is because kids like eating crap.

My business offers a two-dollar item called the kids' quesadilla: a little white tortilla folded and grilled with melted cheese. We sell nearly 300 of them a week. We tried making them in the tomato tortillas that we use for the veggie quesadillas, but the kids wanted the white tortillas. I don't enjoy making them: they take longer than the veggie quesadillas because the veggies aren't there to help the cheese melt, and I just don't feel like I'm serving quality food when I make them. But the demand is strong so we make them anyway.

Still, I'm not convinced by the argument I keep hearing that if you offer kids better food, they'll learn to tell the difference. I offer plenty of great food, but they consistently choose the crap.

And yet I can't help thinking that school lunches may be the ideal place to start changing the way kids eat, especially for the current generation who have experienced mainstream school lunches. These meals are just so unequivocally awful that kids may even choose healthy food as an alternative.

New Fruit 5770

I've only recently grown aware of the tradition of trying a new fruit on Rosh Hashanah, but the idea deeply appeals to me. It's also fairly easy for me to find new fruits, because I don't tend to eat much fruit to start with. So this week I picked up a bag of pluots from Tiny's, and I've been enjoying one every day.

A pluot is a cross between a plum and an apricot. Apparently there are multiple varieties to choose from. I'm glad I tried them, though I doubt I'll eat them on a regular basis. But maybe that's the point: branching out a bit without doing anything terribly radical.

Tilth Harvest Fair 2009

1. Last Saturday was the Tilth Harvest Fair, my favorite event of the year. It was our 10th year vending there and I was struck--yet again--by what a perfect fit it is for my business. The customers are passionate about vegetables and delightfully down to earth (so to speak.)

Last year we set a company record for highest sales ever on a single day. We ran out of product and were working to capacity almost the entire time. This year we broke last year's record by about 2%, but we had leftover food at the end of the day, and we could have served more food during the time we had, but for some reason we couldn't seem to take orders fast enough. (We had a long line in front all day, and food ready and waiting around the side.)

It was strange to have our most successful day ever, and still feel a bit disappointed. On the bright side, it was also an indication of just how much we've learned and grown during the intervening year.

(The photo is from the Tilth website. Thanks guys!)

Norman Borlaug

1. Norman Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution," died this past weekend, spurring quite a bit of discussion about the pros and cons of his life's work, which helped to dramatically increase agricultural productivity, especially in developing nations.

Critics of his work contend that the crop varieties and agricultural techniques that he helped to develop have ultimately done as much harm as good, leading to an over-reliance on petroleum-based fertilizers and an undo emphasis on feeding the world's burgeoning population rather than controlling it through effective family planning.

To me he seems brilliant, influential, and tragic. He apparently agreed with his critics about the importance of population control, but he also saw the dire necessity of feeding the hungry, and he had the knowledge and creativity to do so. Perhaps it was inevitable that the extraordinarily productive seed stocks he developed for humanitarian purposes would eventually be overused by profit-driven multinational companies with no concern for the well-being of indigenous peoples, but his goal was to avert famine, and he was extraordinarily successful in that endeavor.

Cooking Meat

I learned to cook in natural foods stores and vegetarian restaurants, so I never learned much about cooking meat, although I do eat it from time to time. I eat meat because it's a basic part of so many culinary traditions and such an important part of who we are as gastronomical animals. I say this even though I've written and published 2 vegan cookbooks, and I strongly believe that our survival as a species could very well depend on our changing our diets to include less meat.

Lately I've been growing convinced that the best way to encourage people to incorporate more plant foods into their diets isn't necessarily to lobby in favor of a strictly vegetarian diet. I've come to this conclusion after many years of operating a farmers' market booth offering vegetarian food, and interacting with countless customers who are unwilling to even give my food a chance because it doesn't happen to have any meat in it.

I've been thinking recently that I'm ready to shift my emphasis a bit, and perhaps take on some new projects that include meat in sensible, sustainable ways. So I've been experimenting and cooking lunch for my staff. I'm starting with ground beef, because it's so easy to work with, and soon I'll work my way up to pre-cut pieces like stew meat, and eventually to larger cuts. I'm finding that it's much easier to achieve fuller flavors than with the vegetarian ingredients I'm used to using. One of my employees compared my recent experience to learning ride ride a bike without training wheels.

A Very Rainy Day

My very first farmers' market was Fremont 1997, before the market outgrew the available space and the farmers' set up shop in Ballard. When I woke up on the morning I was supposed to start it was raining hard, so I called and said I couldn't make it.

I was thinking about that yesterday, as I stood outside shivering in the pouring rain on Mercer Island. These days I wouldn't dream of missing a market simply because of lousy weather (although we did miss one day in Ballard last year when we couldn't get the van in motion because of the ice and snow.)

I've come to see attendance on foul weather days as a way of expressing my commitment to the cause. In order for any market to succeed, customers need to know that they can count on it being there when it's supposed to be there, regardless of the weather, and that long term investment is more important than making a profit on any given day.

Restaurant Dreams

This is the last month of my five-year lease on my old shop in Ballard. I moved out of there 7 months ago, into a bigger kitchen which isn't open to the public, and my buddies from Green Go moved into the old spot to give a shot at their restaurant dreams.

For a variety of reasons the venture didn't work out for them, so I'm paying rent there again this month and trying to sell off my equipment. The ideal scenario would be to sell it to someone who wants to take over the space, and there seem to be no shortage of people who want it.

Yesterday at the Queen Anne market someone approached me and asked for the landlord's phone number, and there was another inquiry on my answering machine when I got back to my shop. There are three empty storefronts just down the block with "for lease" signs in the windows, and this place doesn't even have a sign and folks are clamoring for it.

It's a charming building, and it's next to impossible to find a spot that's already been set up as a restaurant, unless you buy a business and a lease from the previous owner. (A sink costs $600, but the plumbling you need to install that sink costs $6000, and you can't take it with you.) But it's a difficult spot because it's so small, it's off the beaten path, and the landlords are often reluctant to meet the minimal obligations contained in a commercial lease.

Still, I'm convinced that things could work out there for the right person. That would have to be someone with experience and realistic expectations, who knows how to keep things simple.

Wild Asparagus

This is my friend Miriam with a wild asparagus plant that was growing on the spectacular piece of land that her family owns between Leavenworth and Cashmere. I was fortunate to spend a little time up there this week.

We did a bit of exploring, and she showed me several rows of wild asparagus on the upper part of the property, where the original homestead used to be. As far as we could figure out, it's been growing there without any human assistance for at least sixty years, reseeding itself. By now it's probably developed its own special strain, perfectly adapted to its tiny, unique microclimate.

Fresh Coriander

Local Roots Farm has been selling fresh coriander, which fascinates me. It's basically bolted cilantro, or cilantro that has gone to seed, but the seeds aren't yet dry. I knew that cilantro was the leaf of the coriander plant whose seeds are used in Indian cooking, but I never tasted the connection between the leaf and the spice until I tried one of these seeds, which tasted a little like both. At last I understand.

Why I Love the Madrona Farmers' Market

Out of the dozen markets where my business vends, Madrona is my favorite (though I also enjoy Queen Anne and Ballard very, very much.) I realized the other day why I Madrona is so special to me.

I've been growing convinced lately that our best bet for making sustainable food into an accessible, affordable option for a wide range of people will be to embrace where we are at this moment in time, that is, with one foot in the industrial system and the other foot in the world of better food. In other words, we're going to get more mileage by thoughtfully choosing which sustainable items we can afford, and which we can't afford not to choose, than by emulating celebrity chefs and folks on quixotic quests to eat nothing but local food for a year.

I can't think of a more apt expression of this idea than a farmers' market in the parking lot of a grocery outlet.

Conflicting Information

Researchers at Kansas State University released the results of a study this week which found that cattle fed on organic feed don't have significantly lower levels of e coli in their systems than cattle fed on "conventional" diets.

This information seemed to me to be at odds with a fact I'd read years ago in a New York Times editorial by Nina Planck, which stated that if cattle are fed grass--rather than corn--for just the last 5 days of their lives, the incidence of e coli diminishes one thousand fold.

Faced with these 2 conflicting pieces of information, I took a closer look. It seems that the Kansas researchers studied cattle eating organic feed, but the articles I found didn't specify that they were eating grass. If the dangerous, modern e coli bug thrives in the unnaturally acidic environment created in the cow's stomach from eating a diet of grain, rather than grass, it would probably be present whether or not the grain they were fed was organic.

I'm certainly reading between the lines here and making assumptions. It would be easy to conclude that you can't trust anything you read because so many studies are funded by companies with agendas and profit motives. But I think these studies do provide valuable information, you just have to take a closer look and get past the hype.

A Learning Organization

One day last week I came to the kitchen and found that all the buckets of veggies that had gone to the markets the previous day but hadn't been sold had been marked with notes indicating which market they should be used for the following day.

We always tag the ones that have already gone out and come back, because they've been out of the fridge and should be used first. This new innovation ensures that the buckets that go out the following day will be spread evenly between the various markets instead of all going to one event. This lessens the risk that they'll go unused a second day.

I always find it exciting when we find a way to improve one of our systems. I find it especially exciting when the idea comes from someone other than myself.

Lazarus Week

Local Roots had this wonderful sign last week at the Madrona Market. Apparently some of the crops they'd given up on weren't quite dead yet...

Food for Thought

A farmer offered me this pearl the other day: Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not using it in a fruit salad.

Mike's Quesadilla

Mike McGinn bought a quesadilla from me at the Ballard Market this past Sunday. I'm embarassed to say that I hadn't been paying much attention to the mayoral race, but he did seem like a nice guy, and I ended up voting for him. I do tend to be partial to candidates I see campaigning at farmers' markets. I figure they're after my demographic.

Unemployment in Ballard

For the past month or so I've been offering a 50% discount at all the markets where I vend for anyone who says they're unemployed. At most markets 2 or 3 people avail themselves of the opportunity, but the number is somewhat higher at Lake City.

Yesterday I was at the Ballard Market for the first time in months. (I've been at Mercer Island on Sundays.) I didn't specifically count, but I'd guess that at least 20 people asked for the discount.

There was one group of well dressed people in their early 20's, who all ordered lunch and asked for the discount and, for the first time, I felt taken advantage of. It didn't help that they couldn't quite grasp the concept of standing in line and waiting for their turn.

My father, who is a charitable guy (hi Stanley!) says that if someone puts themselves in the position of asking for help, it isn't his place to judge whether or not they need it. I kept reminding myself of this after seeing this group, with their sense of entitlement.

Corn Conundrum

This week I had two customers ask me within a day of each other whether I use organic corn in my tamales. I don't, and it's safe to assume these days that most inorganic corn is genetically modified. I'm surprised that people don't ask more often, in fact, I can't remember anyone asking for years.

I started making and selling tamales 12 years ago, before genetically modified foods were on our collective radar screen. From time to time I experiment with organic products that are sold and labelled as "masa," but the tamales have never turned out right. Either the flour is too finely ground, or it doesn't set in the same way as the stuff I've always used. I'd happily pay more for organic masa that makes great tamales, but I haven't been able to find any.

I did an internet search recently looking for organic masa, and found some heroic stories of people grinding their own organic corn. That's not an option for my company.

I buy my masa in 50 lb. bags from a Mexican distributor in White Center. I haven't discussed this issue with them because I don't feel that it's my place to tell them what kind of corn they should use.

I'm certainly disturbed by the way genetically modified foods have infiltrated the food supply, but I don't vet every food I eat to make sure it doesn't contain them. Once you start thinking about it, every industrial product that contains corn or soy probably has genetically modified ingredients. Mainstream meat and dairy products come from animals that have probably been eating genetically modified foods. An organic farmer overheard one of the exchanges I had with a customer about the issue, and she pointed out that the compostable cups that everyone thinks are so great probably come from genetically modified crops as well.

Making a product and selling it to the public involves a different level of responsibility than choosing what to put in my own body. I've been in denial about the fact that this product is not consistent with my values, and I've been able to continue in this mode because so few people have taken me to task about it.

So after hearing from the second customer I did what I always do when I face a moral dilemma in the course of running my business: I discussed it openly with my employees. They weren't even aware of the issue, so it was an opportunity to explain. Now I'm writing this post, because I want to be open about it. I'll keep looking for a better product. But I probably won't stop making tamales and selling them, even if I don't find a better alternative. There are so many things about the food system that aren't the way I want them to be. We each pick our battles and struggle with our own contradictions.

Xixi No Banho

Water has been very much on my mind lately with the recent dry spell. My water bill was up $100 after a month of gardening. I'd been standing outside with the hose and waving it around, so now I'm taking a more targeted approach with the watering can.

I've come across a few interesting tidbits lately about reducing water use. PETA is travelling around with a campaign of nude beauties showering in public to call attention to their claim that the amount of water that goes into producing one pound of beef is the same amount that is used for six months of showers.

The multinational snack food conglomerate Kraft announced this week that they've implemented water saving measures over the past few years that have enabled them to save 3 billion gallons of water. That's 21 percent of their water use, which means they still used 15 billion gallons, but that's another story.

I was particularly taken by a Brazilian campaign to encourage folks to pee in the shower. It's sanitary, and it saves water! Check out this educational clip. Spread the word!

Salsa Season

Unfortunately internet smell-o-vision has not yet been invented (as far as I know,) but if it had, this picture would be accompanied by my favorite smell in the world: the aroma of roasting chiles.

This past Sunday my crew got back from the Ballard Market with a big bag of super-ripe heirloom tomatoes from a farmer who likes to trade me tomatoes for salsa. I roasted them, along with some locally grown chiles, and the smells and tastes filled me with joy. It struck me that this was collaboration at its finest: her skills went into producing the tastiest possible tomatoes, and mine went into transforming them (at the risk of being immodest) into a very fine salsa.

Julie and Julia

1. I see maybe two or three films a year at the movie theater, but I rushed right out to see this one. Meryl was magnificent as Julia, but that was already obvious from the opening seconds of the TV trailer.
   
   As for the rest of the movie: it seems a little too easy to heap criticism on a character based on a real person who, if the story has any factual basis, is deeply insecure and sensitive to criticism. I haven't read Julie Powell's book, but I was particularly bored and irritated by her trials and tribulations as she struggles with a daunting, artificial self-imposed regimen. I had the same difficulty with the books "Plenty," and "Animal, Vegetable and Miracle." I understand having a project or a focus, but I just can't get terribly excited about the travails of someone who has imposed unreasonable constraints on themselves. Why wasn't it enough to simply cook every recipe in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," or even almost every recipe? Why did she need to kill herself to get it done in one short year?

Aside from any differences in the quality of the acting, I think that was the reason the Julia scenes were so much more alive for me than the Julie sequences. Julia's struggle was organic, and the grace with which she faced it was genuine and engaging.

Zucchini Moratorium

My kitchen staff has instructed me not to bring any more zucchini back from the markets (at least for now.) But I can't help myself. Farmers I like, who I've been working with for a very long time, keep bringing me beautiful zucchini. So I'm trying to at least be very selective about who I'm buying it from. On the bright side, we're developing some better systems for dating incoming produce and keeping track of stock.

My purchasing strategy has always been to buy what's available, trust that it will somehow be enough, and trust that we're somehow going to go through it all. My philosophy is certainly being challenged here, but I'm trying to stick with it as much as possible. One farmer told me that, with the weather being so dry, there isn't going to be a whole lot of zucchini in a week or two. We'll see.

The Beet Haters

I meet them nearly every day at the markets. Perfectly normal seeming people who can't stand the sight (or taste) of a beet. Even the president put his foot down and refused to allow them in the White House garden.

What is it about this harmless vegetable that incites such strong emotions? (To be fair, I have to mention that there are at least as many people who are positively thrilled to see them cooking on the grill.)

Personally, I can't imagine hating a vegetable so much that I'd refuse to let it be planted in my garden, especially if I wasn't even relying on that garden for sustenance. I do find zucchini insipid, but I'll eat it if it's put in front of me, I'd just rather be eating something else.

Speaking of Chocolate...

I was shopping at Central Market the other day and was excited to find someone sampling this brand of chocolate that I'd seen on the shelf and nearly bought on several occasions. I'd hesitated because it was pricey, because it contained vanilla (sometimes a bad sign) and because it was organic: I haven't liked much of the organic chocolate I've tried. (Vivani is a noteworthy exception.)

I tried the 70% bar and it was tasty. It was also pretty gritty, but I got the sense that the grittiness was deliberate, so I asked about it. It turns out they grind the chocolate using traditional grinding stones, so it doesn't get as smooth as chocolate processed with modern equipment.

It was interesting to stumble across this demo so soon after reading "The Chocolate Connoisseur". In that book Chloe Doutre-Roussel talks about enjoying traditional Mexican chocolate because it reminded her of the stuff she grew up with, even though she thought that most of it wasn't particularly good. I gathered from Taza's website that the company had been founded in 2006, after the book was published, and I think their chocolate falls into an entirely different category. Like Claudio Corallo, it seems that the proprietors have gone back to the fundamental building blocks in order to develop something new, yet fiercely true to the ideal of drawing out the essence of the bean. I think (hope) that Chloe would approve.

The Chocolate Connoisseur

1. This week I read through this lovely little book by Chloe Doutre-Roussel, who I've heard referred to on various occasions as the world's foremost expert on chocolate. She eats a pound a day--only the good stuff--but saves the early morning hours for tasting new, unfamiliar varieties, so she can do so before her taste buds have been clouded by other flavors.

As something of a culinary populist, I had to get past the word "connoisseur" in the title. I'm probably not going to change my chocolate tasting habits and follow the procedures outlined in the book, but I have to admit that I was pleased to learn that she highly recommends my all time favorite variety, Michel Cluizel's Mangaro.

Despite whatever ambivalence I may have had about the idea of learning to be an "expert," as someone who dearly loves chocolate, I found it delightful to read through several hundred pages written by someone who's dedicated her life to this wonderful food.

The Hottest Day Ever

I did the Columbia City Market in yesterday's record-breaking heat. Not surprisingly, there was almost nobody there except the vendors. The Wallingford Market closed an hour early, after the staff polled the vendors. The Columbia City staff started polling as well, but they got halfway through and two-thirds of the vendors wanted to stay, so we toughed it out.

Speaking of Beautiful...

This was my veggie mix yesterday. It had red and gold beets, green and purple cabbage, zucchini, patty pans, chard, kale, and onions. All local stuff. It's that time of year again.

Street- Level View

Yesterday I was walking back to my booth at the Madrona Market after parking my car off-site, and I found this beautiful.

A Passed Opportunity

I got a call yesterday from someone offering me a two-month position as personal chef to a well known actor who is a vegan, and who is going to be in Seattle filming a movie. I turned it down, mainly because I don't see how I could do that and run my business at the same time, and I've put everything I have into my business. My staff understands; my sweetie and step-daughter were shocked that I wouldn't take advantage of the opportunity. So I'm second-guessing myself a bit, but in my heart I feel like I did the right thing. Besides, feeding rich people just isn't my work. My work is trying to make good food affordable and available to a much wider range of people.

Unemployment Discount

My business has launched a new promotion at our farmers' market booths: we're offering half off any menu item to folks who are unemployed. We're not asking for proof; all you have to do is ask.

We've been pleased with the response. At most markets we've had two or three people taking advantage of the offer, but at Lake City the number was closer to ten. This made sense because our sales at Lake City have been down more dramatically than at any other market.

I'm hoping to give some unemployed folks a reason to go to the farmers' market. We seem to be caught in a conundrum where so many people are short on cash because the current economic model is unsustainable, yet the alternative--for better or for worse--often asks us to spend extra.

It's true that you can find plenty of fairly priced food at the farmers' market (including my own products) if you know where to look. There are also a variety of food stamp benefits that can be used at market stalls. And a number of studies recently have found that produce at local markets is actually cheaper on average than items of comparable quality at neighborhood groceries. But if you have little or no money to spare you'll undoubtedly find yourself making difficult choices during a market outing.

Personally I think that the short-term solution, the best way to navigate the current economic and culinary climate, is for us to make peace with the idea of a hybrid, transitional food system. It's too expensive and time consuming for most of us to fuss over every ingredient in every food that we put into our bodies. At the same time it's very important for every one of us to be thinking about what we're eating and why. We all have our own biases and emphases, and we all choose our own particular lines to draw (or not.)

Perhaps a special discount for unemployed folks is a roundabout way of communicating this message. It's not a sexy message, or the kind of message that inspires evangelism. But I hope some elements of it will gradually filter out and be heard.

An Edible History of Humanity

I'm always excited to see a new book about the role of food in history. It's a fertile and fascinating topic that has been largely unexplored until relatively recently.

There are so many ways to approach this subject, so many insights and stories waiting to be woven together. Tom Standage's "An Edible History of Humanity" did, in fact, introduce me to some episodes that I haven't seen addressed in any other history of humans and food, such as the role that food provisioning has played in different wars, and the devastating famines in the Soviet Union and China during the mid twentieth century, brought about largely by the respective governments' policies aimed at convincing the rest of the world that they actually had a surplus of grain.

But Standage devotes a considerable amount of space to praising the "green revolution," the development and widespread use of nitrogen-based fertilizer and the use of hybrid seed varieties that have dramatically increased agricultural productivity during the past century, while relying disproportionately on nonrenewable energy sources and wrecking longstanding traditions in many parts of the world.

He makes the fascinating point that industrialization has almost always followed on the heels of a period of accelerated agricultural activity: in order to develop an economy where most people work at endeavors other than farming, a society first needs to figure out a way to feed more bodies with fewer people actually working the land.

Although he acknowledges that there have been drawbacks to the industrial agricultural practices that have gone hand in hand with modernization, and he assures the reader that organic agriculture will have to play a role in the next green revolution, his biases are clear simply by virtue of the amount of space he devotes to marvelling at the amazing productivity of modern agricultural technology. As someone who questions the virtues of unfettered industrialization, I was less than convinced, though I still thought it was a pretty good read.