Reawakening

I own a business that makes the same food week after week, month after month, and year after year. The ingredients change seasonally, but the menu basically stays the same. So it's a big deal when we introduce a new menu item.



This past fall we started selling beef tamales. We'd been selling only vegetarian tamales for years, in fact, our entire menu had been completely vegetarian until we introduced a beef chili in an effort to limit competition at the Jubilee Farm pumpkin patch event. (They were talking about bringing in a burger vendor for the omnivores.) The chili was really tasty, but it was more work than we'd anticipated and it just didn't sell well.

The beef tamales however, were an instant hit. Once we introduced them at all of our markets, we quickly began selling more of them than of both of the vegetarian varieties combined. There were a couple of pissed off vegans, but not nearly as many as we'd expected. Ironic as it may sound, I felt like it was a step in the right direction as far as my big picture objective of encouraging folks to eat less meat. There's an ounce of beef in a beef tamale. If someone chooses to eat one along with a big pile of locally grown vegetables on the side instead of eating a burger or a hot dog, I feel like I'm making a difference.

We began buying our meat from Crown S Ranch, in Winthrop. My household has been enjoying their fine products for years, and they gave us a great deal on some overstocked meat that had been shaped into hamburger patties. We did some mutually beneficial cross marketing.

I drove out to visit the farm in late October. As the author of two vegan cookbooks, I wanted to be able to tell customers that I'd visited the farm that was raising the animals that went into my tamales, and I felt good about using their products.

It was a magical place. Jennifer and Louis, the owners, are both engineers and they've designed a wealth of technologies and systems --some simple, some complex--to make the most of natural cycles and synergies, and raise tasty, healthy animals. At one point Jennifer was showing me around and explaining some of the systems, and she stopped in mid-sentence, gestured at a nearby cow, and said, "Let's move away a bit. I'm talking too loud, and I'm stressing her out."

By the end of the visit, we'd brainstormed all kinds of ways we could collaborate. To start with, I agreed to make tamales using their beef and pork, for them to sell in their farm store and distribute to their wholesale accounts. They'd provide the meat, and I'd charge them a wholesale price that didn't include marking up the most expensive ingredient.

She ordered more than 700 tamales, and I made them and froze them for a pick-up in a couple of weeks. A week later, she sent me an email regarding a much smaller batch of tamales I'd brought to the farm store when I visited. Customers were asking whether I was using GMO corn and she was curious about the answer.

The GMO issue has always been a tricky one for me. On the one hand, I want good, clean food as much as the next person. On the other hand, I have a great working relationship with the Mexican distributor who suppliers my masa and corn husks, and their products make wonderful tamales. I could get a non-GMO masa from the behemoth natural foods distributor, but I have to drive far to get it, and they don't treat me like they value my business. I'm also not as happy with the way the tamales come out when I use that masa.

And yet Jennifer's email was so friendly and non-judgemental that I found myself revisiting the issue. I researched prices, tried thinking outside the box, and made a sample batch. I found myself liking them more.

But I still had more than 700 tamales in the freezer made with the GMO corn. I offered her an out. I'd been using this masa for many years, and I knew I'd be able to sell these tamales. If she wanted to wait until I could use all non-GMO ingredients, that wasn't a problem for me: I'd simply pay for the meat that she'd provided.


She bought them anyway, saying that she'd just treat them as a transitional batch. In the meantime, I went ahead placed an order with the behemoth natural foods distributor for quite a bit of the non-GMO masa. I've even found parchment paper "corn husks" that have the look and feel of the real thing.

Once I got started, I began revisiting all of my other ingredients as well. I've always been comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction, and I believe that incremental change can be as effective as all-or-nothing dogmatism. I use plenty of clean, local, organic ingredients, but I also use GMO masa and cheap, industrial cheese. I've never set out to provide an absolutely wholesome product. Instead, I've aimed to create a reasonably wholesome product that's a great value.

For the most part, the few customers who have called me out about these inferior ingredients over the years have seemed smug and self-righteous, and that kind of attitude makes me want to dig in more than it makes me want to change. But Jennifer's attitude about the tamales was sensible and easygoing, and it really got me thinking.

Media Storm

There's been quite the media storm lately about food safety at Seattle farmers' markets. The PI ran an article citing a report that the health department found 252 violations in 265 routine inspections this year, including 189 that were considered critical. National sites such as Barfblog and Epicurious promptly ran articles parroting the same information.

As a long time farmers' market vendor, I've experienced hundreds of on site health inspections. Some have involved red "critical" violations. Once I hadn't prepared a bleach bucket, though I did have bleach, water, and a container for bleach water on hand. Several times I've been cited for having handwashing water that was a few degrees cooler than the 100 degrees that the health department requires.

The most common violation found on my company's health inspection reports lately involves a regulation called the four hour rule. The health department allows you to hold potentially hazardous foods in the danger zone (40 degrees F to 140 degrees F) for up to four hours as long as you discard them at the end of this time. In order to use this rule and be in full compliance, you must write down the time that you took the product in question out of your cooler, as well as the time (four hours later) that you plan to discard it.

Most of the markets where my business vends are only four hours long. If we take our cheese out of the cooler at the beginning of the market and discard it at the end of the market, we are complying with the spirit of this rule. But if the health department shows up and we haven't written down that we took the cheese out at, say, 10AM when the market started, they write it down as a red, critical violation.

I'm not downplaying the importance of genuine food safety, especially at farmers' markets. Food should be kept sufficiently cold or hot, surfaces should be kept clean, and folks handling food should never have bare hand contact with ready to eat foods. In addition, food should be handled conscientiously at every stage in the process, from the time we purchase ingredients, to the time we prepare it in our kitchen, to the time we serve it at the markets. But lumping together this failure to record the time we took the cheese out of the cooler with genuinely serious violations like failure to wash hands after using the bathroom does a disservice to vendors, customers, market administrators, and even health inspectors.

Although there have been articles in recent years claiming that health regulation at farmers' markets is particularly lax, farmers' market booths are actually more meticulously regulated than any other food service establishment I've ever known. Market administrators enter into an agreement with the health department requiring them to provide proxy inspections of booths handling potentially hazardous foods on every single market day.

This is the equivalent of having a restaurant inspected every single day that it is open to the public. (Most restaurants are inspected only once or twice a year.) The inspections certainly aren't as thorough as the ones the health department performs. For example, a market manager probably wouldn't notice if my hand washing water was a few degrees cooler than it should be. But the market managers rightfully take this responsibility very seriously, because all of our livelihoods and reputations depend on not making the public sick.

So why the media hype? I think it stems partly from the fact that farmers' market booths are so out in the open and transparent. You rarely see a restaurant kitchen as exposed as a market booth, and this leaves market vendors open to a higher level of scrutiny and judgement. If the cook at your favorite restaurant drops your food on the floor, he can pick it up and plate it and you'll never know. (Ever hear of the three second rule?) That could never happen at a farmers' market because someone would inevitably see and report the incident to a market manager, resulting in an earnest talk about how the reputations of all vendors are on the line when a single vendor puts customers at risk.

It also doesn't help that many smug, self satisfied market patrons play down the importance of food safety at farmers' markets, claiming that farmers' market food is inherently safer than mainstream industrial food. Artisan food producers do tend to care more about the food they produce, there is some evidence that grassfed beef does tend to have lower levels of e coli than factory farmed beef, and a foodborne illness from a farmers' market product is much easier to trace and address than one caused by a huge outfit that distributes product in many states, under multiple brand names. But that's no reason to be complacent, and food mishandled by small producers is just as likely to make you sick as food mishandled by industrial behemoths.

Last weekend a reporter from KUOW showed up at the Ballard Farmers' Market with a health inspector who works closely with local farmers' markets. The inspector performed a couple of inspections, including one of my booth, explaining about the regulations and checking temperatures and handwashing stations. As far as I know, the story hasn't aired yet, but it struck me as an effort to show another side of the story, about the hard work that we actually do put into keeping our booths and our product safe.

I'm assuming the reporter felt okay about what she saw and heard, because she swung back around after the interview and bought a quesadilla.

Food Knowledge

I've been teaching cooking classes regularly lately, and I keep bumping up against a paradox: people come to cooking classes to learn something they didn't previously know, from someone who has culinary skill and experience. Yet I'm convinced that most of my students know more than they think they know, and my objective is to help them build enough confidence to experiment, and to draw on their existing knowledge.

Food knowledge belongs to all of us. Folks were choosing foods, and preparing and eating them long before anyone ever wrote a cookbook or started a cooking school. Even people who don't really cook nearly always manage to feed themselves day to day, and folks who sign up for cooking classes most likely have at least a bare minimum of curiosity and familiarity with foods, knives, and cutting boards.

The way I see it, if you prepare a meal that tastes reasonably good, and you don't cut or burn yourself and nobody gets sick, you've done something right. Some of my favorite meals are incredibly simple, and incredibly tasty. The other night I sauteed some lovely peppers with garlic and olive oil, tossed it with fresh pasta, and ate it with grated cheese, and it was one of the best things I'd ever tasted. Sure, it helped to start with good ingredients, but sometimes I feel that, as a cooking instructor, the most important thing I can do is give students permission to keep it simple.

There's no glory in this, and I really don't dazzle anyone. Once a student wrote on a feedback form that I didn't have enough of a "backstory." But I like to think that when folks leave my cooking classes, they'll actually go home and cook. And that's what it's all about.

This Summer

In a way it's hard to believe that summer is almost over, especially here in Seattle where it only got going in earnest a few weeks ago. I turned 50 this summer, and I started feeling tired right afterwards. I think I mostly just gave myself permission to feel tired, after more than 20 years of pushing myself through the long days and small, everyday crises involved in running a small business on a shoestring.

So I've been pushing myself less this summer, working to define my role in the business. I do the purchasing, because it involves keeping track of so many details and prices. I keep an eye on the big picture, and I figure out ways to communicate big picture insights to the crew. I try to keep them motivated, challenged and engaged. And I crank out quesadillas during the busiest times: special events, the Ballard Market, and the dinner rush at Columbia City.

Because of the terrible weather earlier this summer, the farmers' markets got a slow start this year. There was hardly anything except greens available until nearly July. We didn't really see chiles or corn until nearly the middle of August. There were plenty of cold, damp and dreary market days, when produce wouldn't have sold even if it was available. Things have picked up for the farmers the past few weeks, but for much of the summer they largely seemed stressed and broke.

As a prepared food vendor, I've actually benefited in some way from their struggles. Spring tends to be the busiest time of year for my business, at least when the weather cooperates. Folks are excited that the markets are starting up, but there isn't that much to buy so they buy dinner. Once the heirloom tomatoes and the flats of berries show up, customers have a lot less money leftover for discretionary purchases like prepared food.

I'm thrilled that my business has done well this summer, but I'm also fully aware that farmers' markets are about farmers, and something is very wrong when the farmers are struggling and the quesadilla vendor is thriving. I try to give back every way I can, by buying ingredients from my market neighbors and prioritizing their needs when they're hungry.

I also like to think that maybe the farmers benefitted in a roundabout way from my spring sales: customers who came to the market early in the season and didn't find much produce to buy may have enjoyed the dinner they bought at one of the prepared food stands and felt like the excursion wasn't a total loss, so they kept up the habit of coming to the market until the selection became more bountiful.

Hot Sauce

This time of year, I tend to be up to my elbows in tomatoes and chiles. It's a wonderful problem to have: What am I going to do with all these beautiful ingredients?

Here's a new hot sauce recipe that I've been making the past few weeks. I can't get enough of it. I eat it with chips, with tamales, on fried eggs. I find myself planning my meals looking for opportunities to use it.

Hot Sauce (makes 2 cups)

2 ripe happy tomatoes
6 serrano chiles
1/2 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Arrange the tomatoes on a baking sheet. Rub the serrano chiles with olive oil and arrange them on the baking sheet as well.

Roast the tomatoes and chiles for about 40 minutes, until the tomatoes are a bit droopy and the serranos start to brown.

When the tomatoes and chiles are cool enough to handle, remove the cores from the tomatoes and the stems from the serranos. Puree the tomatoes and chiles in a blender until the mixture is smooth. Add the vinegar and salt, and puree a minute longer.

Choice

There's a scene in the movie Shakespeare in Love in which a character wanders through a marketplace where a waiter for an outdoor eating venue is reciting daily specials. I've heard that moviemakers making historical films employ historians as fact checkers, but in this case someone wasn't doing his job. The practice of giving diners a choice of what to eat actually evolved hundreds of years after Shakespeare's time, in Paris around the time of the French Revolution.

Innkeepers had sold meals to hungry, paying guests for millenia, but choices were limited to what that innkeeper happened to be offering on that particular day. Eating establishments in Paris before modern restaurants came into vogue were usually locations where a proprietor served the same thing to all of his guests, at designated times rather than whenever they happened to wander in the door.

The tradition of a "restaurant," where diners come on their own schedules and order off of a list of choices, caught on in Paris around the same time that the Industrial Revolution was getting into gear across the channel in England. Rural homesteaders forced off their land began moving to the cities, taking jobs in factories, and working for wages. They became the earliest modern consumers, spending their hard-earned income on afforable luxuries that helped them unwind after long, grueling work days.

Today we take for granted the act of visiting a store and choosing from hundreds or thousands of options. We craft identities based on whether we choose organic or exotic food products, or whether we're partial to high end chocolate. We tend to think of ourselves as individuals first, and then members of a tribe, country, or community and, for better or worse, much of our identity as individuals is tied up in what we buy and how we eat.

As a business owner, I struggle with this. Vending at farmers' markets, my livelihood depends on feeding as many customers as possible as quickly as possible. The more choices you offer, the longer it takes folks to make up their minds. Limiting the number of options also cuts way down on waste. I'm aware that I sometimes lose customers because I don't offer the option of choosing different types of tortillas or different types of cheese, but this business model mostly works for me so I stick with it.

As I was serving this month's Humble Feast Dinner, it occurred to me that this type of dining event is actually more like the pre-industrial common table than a modern restaurant setup. There's a buffet with multiple courses, but they're the same offerings for everyone, and we serve at a set time. This month we came up with a novel approach: we set up a taco bar. Rice, beans, beef, seitan, salsa, hot sauce, cheese, marinated cabbage, pickled carrots and jalapenos. I doubt any two tacos were the same.

Social Media

I often find pictures of my hands and my quesadillas on market shoppers' blogs when I idly surf the internet, procrastinating from more urgent tasks. I've even found recipes and calorie counts. Or I'll learn on Twitter that a seasonal vegetable has finally shown up at the farmers' market. Sometimes I'll find the answer to a perplexing question like how to cook cardoons by typing into a search engine.

Today it's easier than ever to access basic culinary information over the internet. But this trend of blogs, websites, and social media is really just the most recent chapter in a story about food and communication technologies that goes back at least as far as the invention of writing.

The earliest written recipes were inscribed on ancient Babylonian tablets. They contain instructions for preparing different types of broths and meats. Cooks and scribes set down this information at a time when it was new and exciting to store learning in a format that could be deciphered by anyone with access to the code. These cooks and scribes must have belonged to the cultural elite, those who knew how to read and write.

The English sociologist Jack Goody wrote a great book called Cooking, Cuisine, and Class, in which he ruminated on the differences between cultures that have a haute cuisine, or a more complex and varied eating style for the upper classes, versus cultures where ordinary folk and their richer compatriots eat basically the same foods, only the wealthy eat more of them. He concluded that cultures with haute cuisines tend to have written traditions while cultures with simpler food systems are more likely to communicate general and culinary knowledge orally.

Ancient Babylonian had perhaps the earliest haute cuisine, that is, it included a body of knowledge that was the province of sophisticated professionals. The ability to preserve information in writing to share with fellow experts and future generations gave the craft of cooking a platform and a reference point, a medium to store and accumulate nuggets of knowledge.

Down the line, the invention of the printing press eventually turned cookbooks into household items. Naturally, the first cookbooks were written by rich folks for rich folks, but eventually more cookbooks were written, and they became more widely available. By the time a few centuries had passed, a typical housewife could get her hands on a basic cookbook geared specifically for a typical household.

Despite the staggering amount of information that we now have available about food via the internet, we really don't have any idea of how this technology will ultimately affect the way we cook. On the one hand, we're able to watch videos about simple things like how to peel a carrot, while we can also learn obscure arts such as how to make tempeh or recreate medieval trenchers.

At its worst, this vast storehouse of food knowledge has the potential to be confusing and unduly complicated, discouraging would-be cooks seeking simple, accessible information. At its best, it can be a powerful tool for healthier, happier eating. Time will tell where it's all heading. In the meantime, I'm going to go peck around for some ideas on how to use those donut peaches I just picked up at the market.

It's a Book!

It's called Cavemen, Monks and Slow Food: A History of Eating Well, and it's about our ever changing relationship with the food we eat. I was talking to someone at some point during the writing process, and she said that she'd never been particularly interested in history because it was all about wars. I disagreed. Personally, I grew interested in history when I realized that it was actually all about food.

We first became human when changes to our teeth and legs enabled us to hunt, gather and eat a more interesting diet than our simian ancestors had enjoyed. Civilization and farming evolved hand in hand, and more recently the industrial and technological revolutions both hinged on having an ample food supply.

As a farmers' market vendor, I was especially fascinated to learn about the many important social and political developments that occurred when small-scale agriculture managed to thrive. Ancient Greek democracy emerged among independent olive and grape growers, and the bleak years of medieval feudalism drew to a close when enterprising farmers began clearing and claiming marginal land, and striking out on their own.

But there are already plenty of terrific food history books out there telling you how we came to eat what we eat. I was more interested in exploring how we came to enjoy the foods that we prefer, and how longstanding attitudes and feelings about food tie into today's issues and debates, such as organic foods, local eating, vegetarianism, and whether foodies are inevitably snobbish.

Copies are available on Amazon, and I'm working hard to get it into bookstores and libraries. In the meantime, I'll be blogging more regularly about the long view. Thanks for listening.

Dilly Beans!

We expanded our Humble Feast dinners this month, adding a second location at the Salmon Bay Eagles' Lodge, and moving the Capital Hill event to the larger, lovely Montlake Community Center. The new venues present challenges and opportunities, and I especially enjoyed making the same meal 2 weeks in a row, and being able to learn and fine tune the recipes.

By popular demand, here's the recipe for the Dilly Beans that we made this month. It actually comes from my Local Bounty cookbook, and it's basically a pickled green bean, only it's eaten fresh rather than canned.

Dilly Beans (makes 4 servings)

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, cut in rings
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill
1/2 cup white or red wine vinegar
1/2 cup water
1 lb. green beans, rinsed and trimmed

Heat the olive oil in a medium-size saucepan. Add the onion, garlic, salt and dill. Cook for about 5 minutes, until the onion is soft and transluscent. Add the vinegar and water, and bring the mixture to a boil.

Add the green beans. Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring often so all of the green beans come into contact with the liquid.

Serve chilled, or at room temperature.

Bare Hand Contact with Ready-to-Eat Food

Anyone who works in the food service industry these days is all too familiar with the regulation that requires food service workers to avoid bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food. Many years ago, when I started my first business, we were told to minimize bare hand contact with ready-to-eat food; now we're told to avoid it altogether.

It's okay to touch the food you're preparing if it will be cooked in between the time you touch it and the time it will be served to a customer. For example, you can use bare hands to chop onions that will be cooked as part of a tomato sauce. It's not okay to touch food with bare hands after it's been cooked, or to touch food that isn't going to be cooked at all, such as salad.

You can avoid bare hand contact with ready to eat food by wearing gloves, or by handling food with utensils such as tongs, or materials such as bakery paper, those tissue paper squares that servers use when handling pastries.

Patty Pan's menu processes don't involve any bare hand contact with ready to eat food, unless we accidentally touch an item after it has been cooked, for example in the process of transferring it from the grill to the plate. Still, we cook in a public setting where customers can see every move we make. Folks reprimand us regularly if we're not wearing gloves, even though we're touching food that's going to be fully cooked, such as cheese and tortillas.

We've started wearing gloves and using tongs when we handle cheese, because the perception is at least as important as the reality. A health inspector once told me that she'd received a complaint call from a customer who saw me touching vegetables as I transferred them from the bucket to the grill. She responded, "There's no health code violation there. If you don't like it, don't eat there. But FYI, I eat there."

Things get more complicated when there's only one person working in the booth. Unless you put on a new pair of gloves for every single order, you'll probably at some point touch money and then touch food. Granted, it's food that's going to be cooked rather than ready-to-eat food, but it's still potentially dicey. Using tongs to handle the cheese alleviates some of the problem, but it's more awkward to use tongs for the tortillas.

At the Lake City market last week, a customer reprimanded my employee who was alone in the booth, telling him that he shouldn't be wearing gloves when taking money, and then touching food with those same gloves. He told her that he didn't technically have to wear gloves because he wasn't handling any ready to eat food; he was only wearing them because he was allergic to wheat, and he had a reaction when he touched the tortillas.

The customer complained to the market manager, and she and I had a chat about it. I felt that his reasoning was possibly sound, but he should have treated the customer's complaint more seriously. I called the customer and apologized, and I also worked the market myself this week, to evaluate the situation and do some damage control.

I was careful to use gloves whenever I handled cheese, and I even experimented a bit with using tongs to handle the tortillas. Coincidentally, the health inspector showed up. She told me right away that a customer had approached her on the way to the booth, and complained that I was handling tortillas after handling money. Apparently the same customer who had complained last week had been lurking and observing.

The health inspector told me she'd told the customer that she was familiar with my operation, and it was okay for me to touch the tortillas because they would be cooked before I served the quesadillas. I told her that I always wondered about the propriety of handling food after handling money, even if that food was going to be cooked. She responded that folks always worry about the germs on money because it passes through so many hands, but money is actually made out of a type of paper that barely harbors germs. I hadn't known this, but was relieved to hear it.

Apparently the customer had been observing a number of vendors, and had a long list of complaints. Both the health inspector and the market manager felt that she was out of line, but I think the situation goes deeper than just one out of control customers.

Folks place their trust in us when we handle their food, and it's our responsibility to take their seriously. At the same time, perceptions about food safety can be quite subjective. Customers reprimand my male employees more than they reprimand female employees doing the same things and, as the business owner, they reprimand me least of all. They also reprimand my teenage employees more often than they reprimand the adults. Touching cheese with bare hands has been an ongoing source of friction but, until this week, nobody ever had a problem with us touching tortillas with bare hands.

We'll keep trying to do the best we can to comply with health department regulations, and to keep our customers safe. But we also need to take customer perceptions seriously, even when they seem silly because, for better or for worse, they're the ones buying the food and spreading the word.

Farm to Fork Dinner and Halibut-Potato Patties

I catered a lovely dinner last night at Whispering Winds Farm in Stanwood. It was my very first farm dinner, as well as a first for the hosts, Charlene and Doug. We were all quite pleased, and we all felt that we'd learned some valuable lessons to make the event even more successful next time.

It was clear to Charlene and Doug that they should have held the event later in the season, with more produce to choose from, and we shouldn't have committed to a specific menu months ago, when we had no idea how fickle the weather would be. I learned that I should have brought many more bowls, more utensils, and a larger griddle.

Most of the recipes came from my friend Debra's wonderful collection, The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook. We were going to make Romanesco with Northwest Berry Vinegar, and Charlene planted romanesco specifically for the occasion, but the weather didn't cooperate. We used broccoli instead, from Willie Greens Farm, which was a great stand in. We also made a salad with a variety of gorgeous lettuces from Let Us Farm, and Carrots with Fennel Seeds and Hazelnuts, using a mix of yellow and orange carrots from various farms.

For the protein, we made Halibut and Potato Patties (my recipe, developed for the occasion) using some spectacular halibut from Wilson Fish, along with potatoes from Alvarez Farms, and herbs from Whispering Winds.

Here's the recipe, scaled down for home use:

1 lb. filleted halibut
olive oil, salt, and pepper

1 lb. yellow or red potatoes, cut into bite-size pieces
handful of chopped, fresh parsley
handful of chopped, fresh chives
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Brush the halibut with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and bake for about 20 minute, until it's flaky in the middle.

Meanwhile, boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes, until they're very soft.

Drain the potatoes, and mash them. Crumble the halibut. Mixed the crumbled halibut with the mashed potatoes, and add the parsley, chives, olive oil, salt and pepper. Shape the mixture into patties, and brown them for a few minutes on each size in s skillet or on a griddle. Alternately, arrange the patties on a baking sheet, brush them with oil, and bake them at 375 degrees until they just start to brown.

For the yogurt sauce:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup whole milk yogurt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil gently in a medium-size saucepan. Add the garlic and cook for about a minute, until you can smell it. Mix the sauteed garlic with the remaining ingredients. Serve the yogurt sauce spooned on top of the halibut patties.

Humble Feast Update (and Braised Baby Turnip Recipe)

These are servings of strawberry shortcake stacked on the espresso machine at the defunct Patty Pan Cafe during this past Monday's Humble Feast dinner. We were at close to capacity for both seatings and a bit tight on counter space as well, which is why we were stacking the strawberry shortcakes on the espresso machine.

After some rough spring months where ingredients were hard to come by, Monday's dinner finally felt bountiful. We bartered for many of the ingredients, and even made some additions to the menu simply in order to use some of the items that we acquired during the course of our market adventures. This was my original vision, and it was exciting to see it coming to fruition.

Next month we're expanding to two dinners: the Ballard Eagles' Lodge on Monday July 18th, and the Mountlake Community Center on Monday July 25th. It'll be the same menu for both events. I'm thinking Mediterranean food because we should be getting into tomato and cucumber season by then.

Here's a recipe for braised baby turnips from Monday's dinner:

Braised Baby Turnips (makes 4 servings)

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 spring onions, finely sliced

1 fennel bulb, finely chopped

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

1 teaspoon salt

1 pound baby turnips, trimmed and quartered (Save the greens for another recipe.)

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1/2 cup orange juice

Black pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a medium-size saucepan. Add the onions, fennel, garlic and salt, and cook for about 5 minutes on medium-low heat, stirring often, until the onion is soft and transluscent.

Add the turnips, balsamic vinegar, and orange juice. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then lower the heat, cover the pan, and cook for about 10 minutes on low heat, until the turnips are tender.

Grill Xpress

After three and a half years and 521 blog posts, I'm now going to write my first restaurant review. The reason I've never written about a restaurant before is that, as a sometimes restauranteur, I'm not a big fan of this culture of grassroots criticism and digital Marxism, where anyone who has had a restaurant experience that didn't meet expectations can go online and spew vitriol.

Most restaurant reviews assume that restaurants should exist, first and foremost, to meet the needs of their customers. I'm fully aware that no restaurant can stay in business long unless it meets its customers' needs, but restaurants also fundamentally exist to express the vision of their proprietors, and to provide these hardworking folks with a livelihood. No single eating establishment can please everyone. Restaurants that survive are able to find a critical mass of customers' who appreciate their offerings enough to support them over time.

The process of setting up a restaurant involves making difficult choices. Most likely you won't be able to do everything just the way you originally envisioned because even basic building blocks like ventilation and plumbing can cost tens of thousands of dollars. You'll find a space that seems like it can work, and you'll most likely sign an extended lease before you figure out how all of the pieces are going to fit together because if you wait until you work out all of the details, someone else will jump at the opportunity if it's a space worth having.

There's a little Mediterranean place in a strip mall by my house where I often go for takeout, especially after very long market days. It has a definite strip mall feeling, with flourescent lights and strip mall tables. But the food has heart and the proprietor clearly works very, very hard.

I actually wasn't thrilled with the food the first time I ate there. I ordered falafel, and the garlic didn't taste right and there was far too much of it. But it was an interesting sandwich, one that had clearly been conceptualized by someone who was paying attention to detail. And there were so many other things on the menu that I wanted to try.

I regularly order the tabouli, which always comes with far more parsley than bulgur. I appreciate that. I also get a lentils and rice dish that's subtly flavored with cinnamon, and topped with chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as a tahini sauce. It fills me up and makes me happy. I also order the hummus and the foul medamas, a rich fava bean dip. They all come with pita that's been warmed and tucked in ziplocs.

The spot is open long hours, and the owner has been there personally every single time I've been there. Of all the fast food places close to home that I frequent, it's the only one where I haven't ever shown up ten minutes before closing, tired and hungry, only to discover that it's closed early. I've been there on days when it's snowing and sleeting, and Easter Sunday and Superbowl Sunday, when business is clearly very, very slow.

As a sometimes restauranteur, I fully understand the impulse to close early when you haven't seen a customer for hours. I'm grateful for this guy's dependability, and he's earned my profound respect. It's a tough business, and he does a great job.

Loading Out

The process of loading out at the end of a market day is a bit like I would imagine the dismantling of a gypsy caravan, but members of a caravan tend to all be headed in the same direction while market vendors are headed to different places. If you're all headed out together, then one slow link in the chain delays the entire process. But if you're each headed your own way, then it's everyone for themselves.

Some vendors rush to get their vehicles at the earliest possible moment. Technically you're supposed to break everything down before you get your van so each vehicle spends as little time as possible on the street and things move along relatively smoothly. But few people follow the rules. At one market there's a line of vehicles waiting to come in as soon as the market ends. One guy consistently falls asleep in his truck while he's waiting, so someone has to gently nudge him awake when it's time to move.

We all tend to be friendlier and more patient on busy days than on slow ones. After a rainy day you feel soggy and poor, and you just want to go home. After a busy day you feel affluent and magnanimous, and it just doesn't matter as much if your day is 15 minutes longer.

I've seen vendors get into fights during the process of loading out. Someone sneaks into a spot that someone else has staked out. Everyone's tired, and it gets ugly. I tend to take my time packing up my stuff, to stay out of the fray and be able to pull my vehicle up right next to the booth.

Phinney Farmers' Market 2011

I'm pleased to report that the Phinney Farmers' Market is much improved this year, at least during the three weeks that it's been up and running.

This year the market moved from the lower parking lot at the Phinney Neighborhood Center to the upper parking lot. The new location is much more visible from the street, which is always good for business. The old location was "L" shaped, with prepared food vendors like myself tucked in the corner that bent away from most of the other vendors. At the new location we're integrated much more gracefully with the rest of the market. We're even next to the music, which always helps. Folks linger to listen and while they're there, they buy food.

Another important change has been the fact that they now allow dogs. At some point in the past, the administration had made the decision to make this a dog-free market. Some dog owners stopped coming specifically because they disapproved of the decision while others simply found it inconvenient to leave their dogs home during a Friday evening jaunt.

I'm always surprised at the good behavior of most of the dogs I see at farmers' markets. But I remind myself that I'm seeing a preselected sample: bad dogs don't get to come to the market. One farmer friend has a theory that days when you see a lot of big dogs at the market tend to correlate with high sales, while days when you see a lot of small dogs tend to correlate with lower sales. I'm not sure how you could objectively verify that theory, but it does intrigue me.

The Wallingford Market's New Location

This month the Wallingford Farmers' Market moved from its old home at the Wallingford Center to a new home at the Good Shepherd Center. I'm usually slinging quesadillas at the Columbia City Market on Wednesday afternoons, but I managed to sneak away last week to peek at the new venue.

It feels expansive and pastoral. This is a welcome change after the space the market occupied in the Wallingford Center parking lot was cut practically in half last season. That felt stressful and cramped. It's also wonderful to stand on grass rather than asphalt. You feel a lot less beaten up at the end of the day when you stand on a softer surface.

The challenge at the new location is to let people know that there's a market going on, even though it's hidden from view. The old location was right off of a main drag. The advantage of the new location is that it's a pleasant place to linger. It's also the home of Seattle Tilth, ground zero for urban agriculture, and I can't think of a better setting for a farmers' market.

There's a chef's only market between 3 and 3:30, for the purpose of allowing the pros to get in and out quickly. That's a worthy idea, though it doesn't make much sense for those of us who are selling finished products rather than primary ingredients. Fortunately, the rule isn't strictly enforced and the first half hour at an afternoon market tends to be the slowest time of day for my operation anyway. In any case, our sales so far have blown last year out of the water, so I'm certainly not complaining about this minor inconvenience.

Zola's "Belly of Paris"

I knew I was going to enjoy this book from the very first page, as Zola describes the wagons pulling into the Les Halles market one morning during the mid 1800s. Vendors are paying for stall space, quibbling over placement, and getting in each other's way. One of my favorite things about my own market experience is the connection I feel to the countless farmers and vendors who have parked their wares in public places since the very beginning of civilization.

My attention began to wander during one of the early scenes as the protagonist Florent takes off to explore the market with his new friend Claude, who is based on the painter Paul Cezanne. Through a long, drawn out section, Claude repeatedly exclaims about the colors of the light on the vegetables as the sun rises over the market. Though the account probably should have been about half as long, it did call to mind the folks with cameras who I see daily at Seattle markets, angling to catch the produce in the best possible light.

Later in the book, I grasped what Zola was trying to accomplish in that too long section, as he waxes poetic describing cheeses and fruits:

"There, next to the one-pound stacks of butter, a gigantic Cantal was spread on leaves of white beet, as though split by blows from an axe; then came a golden Chesire cheese, a Gruyere like a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot, some Dutch cheese suggesting decapitated heads smeared in dried blood...a parmesan adding its aromatic tang to the thick, dull smell of the others."

And:

"The cherries, arranged in rows, were like the lips of Chinese girls drawn into a tight smile: the Montmerencies suggesting the fleshy lips of fat women; the English ones, much longer and more serious; the common black ones, which looked as if they had been bruised by kisses; the bigaroons, speckled with pink and white, which seemed to be smiling with a mixture of merriment and anger."

Like Claude the painter, Zola was painting his market with words. He clearly knew the venue as intimately as any modern day vendor, describing the subterranean caverns dense with livestock and the vats of culturing milk, the vendor rivalries and the neighborhood gossip who showed up late each day trying to get something for nothing. I know each of these characters, or at least modern day versions of them.

Zola's genius as a writer lies in his profound understanding of working people. He manages to paint them with an eye that is at once sympathetic and critical. I can't think of a more fitting subject for his talents than a bustling market with its day to day dramas. This is certainly a gloomy book, focusing on the dark side of interpersonal relationships. And yet the story unfolds amidst the heart and soul of one of the most vibrant food cultures the world has ever known. If only for that reason, I found it strangely uplifting.

Goodbye Meadowbrook

The Meadowbrook Farmers' Market announced this week that it had cancelled its 2011 season. There simply weren't enough vendors to make it happen this year. I have to admit, I was one of the vendors who hadn't planned to return.

I'd always thought of the Meadowbrook Market as a beautiful experiment. The managers were enthusiastic and committed, and it was perhaps the only market in the city that had a completely secure location because it was held in the parking lot of the school that founded it. Other local markets such as Ballard and Queen Anne have to apply for street use permits year after year, while markets hosted at venues such as the University Heights Center or the Phinney Neighborhood Center also need to renegotiate the terms of their locations every year.

The Meadowbrook market grew out of a tight Waldorf School community. The very first day in 2009 was amazing; in fact, one vendor I spoke to recently said that it was the best day he'd ever had at any market. But it tanked pretty fast. I've heard folks speculate that the problem was a location off the beaten path and, in retrospect, I think it may have been the only market I've ever seen that was located on a side street rather than a main drag (except maybe the first few years of the Queen Anne Market.) In any case, I think it's possible that the school's community could have supported the market, but school season is fall, winter and spring, while market season is summer.

I'm sure that folks are going to read all kinds of assumptions and conclusions into the Meadowbrook Market's cancellation this year: they'll say it was one too many markets in the city or that the lousy economy killed it. New markets succeed and fail for many reasons, and every market and every season is unique. Personally, I hope folks will continue to start new markets, bringing new ideas and new vendors into the mix. There's still so much potential, and so many ideas we haven't even tried.

Roasted Veggie "Pate"

I made this wonderful roasted vegetable spread for the Humble Feast dinner the other night. I'd listed it on the menu as "Roasted Vegetable Pate" because I've been trying to come up with more pretentious names for my menu items. Folks seem to respond to that.

In any case, I'd had this vision on roasting some veggies and pureeing them, along with some homemade bread. When I scouted around at the market last Sunday, though, the only veggies I could find worth roasting were yams, parsnips, leeks and shallots. The leeks and shallots would add depth, but the yams and parsnips were both sweet so I wanted something to balance them. I thought of sorrel, than wonderful, tart spring green.

It's a humble pate, and a very tasty one.

2 parsnips, cut in chunks
2 small yams, or 1 medium-size yam, peeled and cut in chunks
3 shallots, peeled and cut in half
1 leek, cleaned and cut in 2-inch lengths
1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch of black pepper
1 tablespoon miso
4 sorrel leaves

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Toss the parsnips, yams, shallots and leeks with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread them on a baking sheet and roast them for about 40 minutes, until the yams and parsnips are soft.

When the veggies are cool enough to handle, puree them along with the miso and sorrel leaves. Serve with crackers or wonderful bread.

Opening Day at Georgetown 2011

Saturday was opening day at the Georgetown Farmers' Market. It was an overcast day, which wouldn't have been particularly noteworthy except that it followed the best stretch of weather we'd had all year. Three sunny days in a row! And we finally hit 70 degrees! After that teaser it seemed that nobody was particularly excited about being outdoors on a typical chilly gray day. Still, Patty Pan was lucky to be the only prepared food vendor there, at least on opening day so our sales were off the charts, at least compared with most of last year.

Georgetown is an interesting market. Some market purists argue that it's not actually a farmers' market at all because there are as many flea market vendors as farmers. But I'm not a purist and I think that the more different kinds of farmers' markets we see, the more options there will be for farm fresh food.

This market has everything going for it except customers. Georgetown is an increasingly trendy neighborhood with few grocery stores. The market has a great venue, with old brick, train tracks and a defunct brewery in the background. There's also plenty of space, in fact, there's enough space to configure the stalls so that every vendor has a corner, at least at this point in the season. Corner stalls allow vendors twice as much selling frontage, so they're usually in high demand and you often have to have seniority or an amazing product to get one.

So we'll just have to wait an see whether the Georgetown market will realize its potential. It may just depend on whether we can all stick it out long enough.

Making Work

These days I often base my decision to vend at a new market on the fact that every vending opportunity creates work, and people need work. My business has built an infrastructure over the years, and it's often not difficult for us to pick up new markets and make use of unused parts of that infrastructure by preparing a little extra food at the kitchen we're already leasing, and using a van and some equipment on days when they would otherwise sit ide. Even if we just break even, we're seeing what can come of this opportunity and we're making work.

There have been raging debates the past few years about whether new markets "cannibalize" existing markets, siphoning their market share and their clientele. The way I see it, they do and they don't. There's certainly the potential for someone who wants great tomatoes to stop at one market rather than another because it's more convenient. There's also potential for someone who wants great tomatoes to buy them rather than not buy them on a particular day because there's a convenient market nearby that hadn't been there a year earlier.

We're picking up a brand new market this year at Willis Tucker Park, in Snohomish. It's on Friday afternoons, so traffic is going to be hell, but I'm excited. Friday markets tend to be challenging. They're not like other weekday markets, where folks come on their way home from work and probably don't have anything else to do that evening. They're also unlike weekend markets, which tend to be more leisurely because folks often go there as a day-off activity. This new market is in a busy park with a swimming pool. I'm hoping it'll have some of the qualities that make weekday markets succeed as well as qualities that make weekend markets work.

We'll see. In any case, I'm be making work for my staff.

Swords Into Ploughshares

I got to thinking the other day about a weird irony: the birth of the modern industrial fertilizer industry parallels the famous line from the Book of Isaiah about beating swords into ploughshares, symbolizing a transition to a time of peace and harmony.

After World War II, there was a surplus of nitrogen that had been used for making bombs, and industrious entrepreneurs repurposed the material into a product that could improve farm yields. Like the image of beating swords into ploughshares, they switched a military product to an agricultural use.

But beating swords into ploughshares was supposed to be a beautiful thing, and the birth of industrial agriculture which came about because of the widespread use of chemical fertilizer has led to inferior food, widespread damage to wildlife habitat and the centralization of the global food system.

I guess we'd be better off if we'd just never created the weapons in the first place.

Trash

Being a market vendor has given me a new perspective on trash. The health department requires that all food vendors keep a lined trash can in their booths, and that's a reasonable request because we need to have a place to put the waste that we generate. The market managers require that we take our trash away from the market when we leave, and that's a reasonable request because there are a lot of vendors generating a lot of trash, and someone has to haul it away.

As a prepared food vendor, my business generates more trash than most other booths because of the "disposable" plates and forks that we use. Some of the stuff is compostable, but we're still left with the issue of who has to haul away the compost. Prepared food vendors pay higher fees because of the waste we generate, but I still try to be mindful of it. The market puts out trash cans to collect customer trash, but space is still limited.

I often see customers confused about what to do with their trash. Market trash cans are available, but they're often 20 or 30 feet away. I try to keep the trash can in my booth out of customers' reach to limit the amount of trash I have to haul back to my kitchen with me, but several times a day someone will try to reach over the stove to get to the trash. I pay a lot of money in liability insurance, and it upsets me when people get too close to the stoves. I've seen people duck under the bright read "caution" tape that I use to keep customers away from the stoves, and come into the booth to put things in the trash can. Sometimes people just try to hand me their trash while I'm cooking.

I never thought so much about trash until I started doing this work. Although it makes me ornery when someone tries to hand me trash, I might have done the same before my vending days. I suppose this assumption of convenience is part of the same mind set that allows us to use "disposable" plates and forks in the first place. I don't have a good answer, but I do have some good questions.

Savoy Greens

This past Sunday Full Circle Farm was selling Savoy cabbage greens, tied in neat bunches. They looked kind of like collards, but their leaves were wrinkly like Lacinato kale (also known as Dino kale, black kale and Italian kale.)

When I asked about them, the guy said, "Yeah, they're going out into the fields and looking for anything they can possibly sell."

It's been a rough spring here in the Northwest. Granted, we haven't had to deal with anything like fatal, historic tornado outbreaks, but we have had our coldest April on record and there's not a lot of local produce available.

I'm convinced that an important part of the process of ending food insecurity involves making friends with parts of edible plants that we typically shun. I've been known to go around asking farmers to save me the broccoli and cauliflower leaves that they typically trim and discard. These leaves are perfectly edible: they're just a little tougher than collards, and a little sweeter. I pay the farmers for these greens: not as much as they'd get selling their produce retail, but certainly more than they'd get if they tossed them on the compost pile. I use them in the veggie mix I serve, introducing them back into the food chain.

I cooked up a bunch of these savoy cabbage greens for lunch yesterday, along with a chopped leek, a few spears of asparagus, some leftover quinoa and a bit of fancy vinegar. The greens were a little tough, but if I'd been more patient and less hungry I could have cooked them just a few minutes longer. All in all, it was a tasty, convenient use of something that would otherwise have ended up on the compost pile.

There and Back

I closed the cafe last week. As we started making preparations for the markets, it became clear that it would be difficult to keep staffing it and supplying it with our regular summer routine in gear. To make it work I would have had to hire a stranger, and if I hired a stranger I would have had to count the money every day.

It was a difficult location. Some people make restaurants and coffeeshops work at difficult locations, in fact, there's a successful restaurant right across the street. But a place that works in a difficult location either has to be a destination place or it has to really connect with its neighborhood. I really just wanted to have a place that was convenient for us to run and convenient for customers to support, but it didn't happen that way on either end.

I learned that I'm not cut out for the coffee business. There's an appalling amount of waste in the coffee business. You have to pull shots and throw them away at the beginning of each day to make sure the grinder setting is right for the atmospheric conditions. The coffee coming out of the grinder flies all over the place. The machine is set up to pull two shots at a time, so if someone orders a single shot you just throw away the extra one. Everything about the process has to be perfect, from the size of the grind to the timing and the temperature, and sometimes shots don't come out right and you can't even identify the reason. But if the shot isn't perfect you have to throw it away because this is a coffee kind of town.

My employees who had worked in the coffee industry for a long time took this in stride. I've basically built my farmers' market business around strategies for reducing waste, so I was horrified. We used organic, fair trade coffee but I couldn't help thinking about all the coffeeshops wasting all that coffee that was produced at terrible human and environmental costs.

We did have an opportunity to launch the Humble Feast dinners at the cafe location, and we're going to keep doing them there for now and eventually move them to community centers around town. I've wanted to do these dinners for years, and I'm thrilled to have gotten the endeavor off the ground. Maybe that was the deeper reason why I attempted this quixotic venture.

I keep hearing people expressing their condolences but I've actually felt so much lighter since I closed the place. Today is opening day at the Columbia City Market. This is the nature of business. You try things. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. You brush yourself off and you move on.

Chai

At the cafe we make our own chai. It's easy, in fact, it's so easy that it puzzles me that so many coffeeshop owners buy chai in aseptic containers at the wholesale grocer. Chai makes me think of the medieval spice trade, with aromatic caravans and precious cargo. It's a drink that's both exciting and comforting, spicy and soothing.

All of the ingredients in chai contribute to the fragrant mix, but some of these spices are quite pricey while others cost much less. I always try to create recipes that get the most flavor for the least cost, so I tend to use more of the less expensive ingredients and less of pricier stuff.

Here's my recipe. This makes enough for 5 or six cups, but if you're going to make it, it's worth making enough to share.

2 quarts water
1/2 cup shredded ginger (no need to peel)
8 cinnamon sticks
2 tablespoons whole cloves
2 tablespoons whole decorticated cardamon
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
5 black tea bags, paper tags removed
1/2 cup sugar

Add all of the ingredients except the sugar to the water, and bring to a boil. Cook on medium low heat for about a minute, then turn off the heat and add the sugar. Strain and serve, along with the milk or milk substitute of your choice.

Adjust the quantities of any of the ingredients to suit your taste. The pepper and the ginger make it spicier, and you may prefer it sweeter or less caffeinated.

Enjoy!

Turnips and Rutabagas (Oh my!)

What's the difference between a turnip and a rutabaga? It's a question that has stumped folks for generations. They're both fleshy winter root vegetables, and they're often used together. I picked the particular specimens in the above picture to highlight the difference, but it's not always so obvious. (By the way, the one on the left is a turnip and the one on the right is a rutabaga.)

I'll start with the obvious. Rutabagas have thicker skins. You want to peel them more often than turnips, although you can get away with not peeling them, especially if they're on the small side. Rutabagas tend to be sweeter and turnips can be a bit bitter, although sometimes you find turnips that are every bit as sweet as rutabagas. Turnips have white flesh that gets almost translucent when you cook them, while rutabaga flesh is yellower. Turnips are ancient vegetables, while rutabagas were first bred as recently as the 18th century by crossing turnips and cabbages. So turnips and rutabagas are cousins.

The sweet, hairy Gilfeather turnip was bred by a native of southern Vermont who zealously trimmed the roots off his creations before he sold them so nobody else could propagate them. The variety has made it into Slow Food's venerable Ark of Taste, and the town of Wardsboro Vermont holds a Gilfeather Turnip Festival each year. As with most agricultural varieties, somebody else eventually managed to get their hands on some seeds, and now you find Gilfeathers everywhere from New York's Green Markets to Seattle farmers' markets. Only they're called "Gilfeather rutabagas" everywhere except in their home state.

I love the word "rutabaga." Sometimes I cook them at the markets just so that I can say it over and over when people ask what's in the veggie mix.

Humble Feast

On February 28 we'll be holding our first ever Humble Feast buffet dinner at the cafe. Here's the menu:

Chicken Stew with Dumplings

Lentil Shepherd's Pie

Braised Winter Greens

Maple Roasted Butternut Squash

Apple Strudel

We're going to hold the event monthly, on the last Monday of each month. Cost is $12 per person, or $10 if you prepay.

I chose the name "Humble Feast" to set the event apart from those expensive gala local foods dinners that cost $75 a head. Eating locally should be an affordable, day to day option even if it costs more than processed food. There are so many terrific meals that don't have to bust your budget, and you don't have to be a celebrity chef to prepare them.

We're taking reservations at cafe@pattypangrill.com. Looking forward to seeing y'all there.

Book Miles

I'm thrilled to have just signed on to print some actual copies of Cavemen, Monks and Slow Food: A History of Eating Well on the Espresso book machine at Third Place Books, one of my all time favorite bookstores.

Here's how it works: they do design and layout for a very fair fee, and then they print copies of the book on demand. There's no minimum order, in fact, there isn't even a price break for ordering in quantity because they'd rather maintain an ongoing working relationship than have you order too many books and then never come back. I love this kind of business model.

I've published two books with conventional publishers. One is in Tennessee, and they have the books printed in Canada. The other is in California, and they have them printed in China. When I order copies of either book, they also have to be shipped from the publisher in Tennessee or California to my doorstep in Seattle.

This press is six miles from my house. It's part of a commons where I can also shop for books, visit the library and get a cup of coffee while I pick up my books. As someone who is passionate about building local economies, I find this pretty exciting.

The Hybrid, Transitional Food System

I went to hear Mark Winne speak last night. He's a hero of mine, having done more than anyone I know of to bring good good to underserved communities. He spoke of two food systems: the organic, local, progressive food system which makes up roughly ten percent of our food economy, and the industrialized food system behind the other ninety percent. It got me thinking again of my own version of food justice, and the most effective way to approach the divide.

Between the two extremes of local, artisan foods and mass produced garbage there's a spectrum of shades of gray that provide reasonably healthy, sustainable, affordable options. I'm talking about most of the items in a conventional grocery store that only have one or two ingredients, all of them pronounceable. Beans, grains, vegetables, and the better meat and dairy products all fall into this category. It's great to get organic beans and grains, but even when they're not organic they're still much better for you than a Big Mac.

It saddens me that these options are so often overlooked in discussions of good food, healthy eating and food justice. You don't have to use premium ingredients in order to cook from scratch and make meals that are better for you in every way than fast food and frozen dinners. So much of the media attention is taken up profiling folks who make extreme gestures like trying to eat only local foods or not entering a grocery store for a year.

My own food heroes are the folks who quietly and sensibly operate in this middle ground, building a hybrid, transitional food system.

Winter in Ballard

I'm continually amazed by the Ballard Farmers' Market over the winter. It continues to amaze me even though I've been vending there for 8 winters. These guys in the photo are queued up to buy salmon right as the market is opening. (Note the guy in the shorts. It's January!)

For my business this market peaked during the 2008 summer season, as far as summers go, but each winter is still better than the winter before. In fact, a typical winter day at this market is still better than a typical summer day at any other event.

I wish they could clone the magic here and import it to other neighborhoods, like Phinney Ridge. But then it wouldn't be nearly as magical.

A Website!

After many years of living off the grid, so to speak, my company now has a website. I'd put it off for a variety of reasons, not least because most developers seemed to want to sell me more than I actually needed.

I finally decided to work with Becky Dobbins after seeing the wonderful site she did for my friends at Farm Girl CSA. I love their site because its content and its design are so nicely in balance. It's not ostentatiously fancy, and it really does convey the essence of the gals' operation.

My major challenge in working with a designer to build a site was to bring together my business and my writing. I wanted the site to promote both endeavors in such a way that someone could come to it being interested in either one, and either find what they wanted easily, or become curious enough to explore farther. I also wanted a format that I could update myself, to tinker with the text and also change the menu as needed.

I love the result. I'm also looking it as a work in progress, because my various endeavors are also works in progress. A lot has changed even during the few short months that we have been working on the site, including opening the cafe and e-publishing Cavemen, Monks and Slow Food: A History of Eating Well. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

Veggie Prep 101

Veggie Prep 101 is the name is the class I'm currently teaching through PCC. It's an unfortunate name, and I say that even though I named it. It sounds formal and academic, although the focus of the class is really just to get folks to relax and trust their instincts. I'm not there to teach them professional knife skills or the right and wrong way to cut an onion. I've been cooking professionally for more than 20 years, and I can't say that I know professional knife skills or the "right" way to cut an onion.

People were prepping vegetables and cooking fabulous meals long before anyone wrote a cookbook or started a cooking school. With few exceptions (like apple seeds and rhubarb leaves) the fruits and vegetables that we find in stores and grow in our gardens are not going to make us sick, so prepping them is just a matter of getting to know them, and also getting to know our our own tastes and preferences.

Personally, I like to push the envelope and try to use as much of the stems and peels as possible. Kale stems are too tough for me, but collard stems have great texture if you cook them through. So much of what we choose to leave on or take off has more to do with convention than with palatability.

More than anything, I want to use the class as a way to show my wonder at the vegetable kingdom. We prep vegetables, pass them around, sniff them, discuss the evolutionary continuum (think Savoy cabbage and Lacinato kale, or beet greens and chard,) and finally eat them. It's a good time.

Jubilee Beef Chili

When I first spoke to the folks about Jubilee Farm about vending at their fall pumpkin patch event, they asked if I could sell burgers, in addition to my regular menu. I was reluctant. I'd watched my dear friends from Green Go Food struggle with the economics of making and selling a sustainable burger, and had come to the conclusion that the term "sustainable burger" is an oxymoron.

Sure, you can make a great burger with great beef, great condiments and a great bun. But, at its core, a burger is a cheap, everyday food whose main ingredient is beef, and that's just not sustainable. According to Mark Bittman, the average person on the planet eats 3 ounces of meat a day. If you make a 6 ounce burger, you're using twice as much as the planetary average in a single meal. That's not sustainable, whatever kind of meat you use.

I suggested chili instead. I love chili, and you can use all good ingredients and still make an affordable, cost effective product. I use lots of chiles in my chili. Mostly mild, and a couple of hot. They give it most of its flavor, and if you use all hot ones your chili will get too hot too fast, and you won't be able to enjoy as much of that wonderful chile flavor.

I also use beans in my chili: local, organic beans from Alvarez Farms. They cost more than the ones in the grocery store, but not that much more. My neighbor at the Ballard Market, the guy who sells Zane and Zack hot sauce, comes from Texas. He scoffed when he heard I put beans in my chili, but he still eats the stuff all day.

We're using beef from Jubilee Farm. They didn't charge us anything for the wonderful, lucrative vending experience we had there, and I wanted to give something back so I bought a quarter of a cow, in one-pound packages. We'll run out of it in a few weeks, and then we'll figure out another sustainable option.

So here's the recipe. It makes four to six servings, depending on how hungry you are and what else you're serving.

2 tablespoons canola or grapeseed oil
1/2 pound ground beef
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons chili powder, mild or hot
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 medium sized onion
1 cup chopped anaheim, poblano or pasilla chiles
1 jalapeno, serrano or habanero chile (optional)
1 can (28 ounce size) crushed tomatoes, or 3-4 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
2 cups black beans, red beans or a combination

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the beef, salt and spices and cook on medium high heat for about five minutes, until it's nicely browned.

Add the onions and chiles and cook for about 5 minutes longer, until the onions are transluscent. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring often, until they're heated through. If you're using fresh tomatoes, cook them until they start to break down and the mixture becomes soupy. Add the beans, lower the heat, and cook for at least half an hour. It can cook for hours, and the longer you cook it, the tastier it'll be.