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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
