Overstaffed

A farmer friend of mine said, "My place looks great. That worries me. It means I'm overstaffed."

Foodies: The Book

1. Okay, it's definitely not a conventional page turner, but I was fascinated by this rather academic analysis of sociological trends at play in today's world of food aficionados.

The book's subtitle is "Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape", and it describes the tension between our egalitarian inclination to enjoy all types of foods, from burgers to truffles, and our relentless pursuit of authentic and exotic foods. These two tendencies play off of each other in complex and perplexing ways, like relentless pursuit of high quality simple staples and appreciation for cheap street food that you can only experience with an expensive plane ticket.

Johnston and Baumann also point out contradictions and blind spots such as the emphasis on eco friendly foods but overall lack of awareness regarding social justice issues in the food industry, and the shared conviction that we can purchase our way towards a more just and sustainable foodscape.

I would have liked to see more discussion of one of my pet topics--attitudes towards meat consumption--which happens to provide fertile illustrations of many of the book's main ideas. Sustainable meat has been eagerly embraced by the foodie community, with good reason. But there's been very little reflection over the fact that its price is too high for most people to enjoy it regularly and even if it could become a mainstream staple, it still wouldn't be sustainable for everyone to eat a lot of it every day.

I doubt that a book like this will do much to raise awareness within foodie communities about these issues. Still, I'm glad someone is thinking about them.

Renegade Vendor

1. 
   There's been a renegade food vendor selling pink lemonade and corn on the cob in the park right across from the Columbia City Market the past two weeks. Apparently they applied to the market and were turned down, but they decided they were going to come anyway.

After their appearance the first week a few of us called the health department only to find out that the health code makes a special dispensation for corn on the cob, so they don't need oversight by an organization like the farmers' market, as required for other food vendors. The health inspector suggested that we call the parks department, but apparently they're covered there too, with a permit that allows them to set up in public parks.

Yesterday the market folks had Billy's Farm move their big, colorful box truck to a spot that blocked the line of sight from the market to the corn vendor. In response, the corn vendor called parking enforcement, so the market folks had to move the truck.

I don't want them there, but I've been wondering why they have less of a right to be there than the ice cream truck or the guy selling African baskets.

Georgetown Carnival

"It's like a carnival," a farmer friend excitedly told me last weekend about the brand new Georgetown Market. (I wasn't able to be there personally on opening day because I was at the Bastyr Herb and Food Fair.)

I found it ironic that she described the event's vibrant atmosphere using exactly the same word that some farmers' market managers use disparagingly to describe events that don't focus sufficiently on farmers.

The Georgetown Market feels a lot like Fremont 1995, before the event split and the farmers' moved west to Ballard. There are crafts and flea market stuff as well as farmers and prepared food. There's even a guy selling Vermont maple syrup, which seems to defy the local focus, except that he divides his time between Washington and Vermont and actually does make the syrup himself. He's in the craft section rather than the farmer section, which is an interesting way of integrating this unusual compromise.

Rebekah Denn wrote an interesting piece in this month's Seattle Magazine exploring the question of whether Seattle has too many farmers' markets. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that I've always regarded farmers' markets as an ancient phenomenon in the sense of people gathering in public spaces for commerce, but they're actually quite modern in the sense of providing a venue with a strict focus on farmers, as a way to foster local, small scale agriculture. If that really is the point of a farmers' market, then perhaps these "carnivals" are getting in the way and creating debilitating competition.

On the other hand, farmers' markets are many things to many people. They're public gathering places as well as places where local economies can thrive. Food happens to be the ideal product for this type of event because local food is the freshest food, so locally food producers can offer great value on the best food around. But a great market has to give customers more than just food as an excuse to come down week after week. Even the farmers-only markets recognize this when they offer live music and chef demos.

The Georgetown market has room for 100 vendors, There are about 50 vendors there now, so there is considerable room for growth. It's got a unique setting, with railroad cars and a defunct brick brewery as a backdrop. Last week was crazy busy. This week was considerably less busy, but that's not unusual at a new market that holds a big opening. I'm looking forward to watching it evolve.

Food Stamp Foodies

I've been reading lately about controversy swirling around food savvy food stamp recipients spending their food stamp dollars at establishments that focus on quality food, like farmers' markets and Whole Foods. A recent article in Salon.com, titled Hipsters on Food Stamps, has generated a flood of responses from outraged foodies defending their right to buy sustainably produced food products, even with government subsidies. (Many aptly point out that the industrial food system is heavily subsidized as well.)

But the discussion, like so many other others, seems like an unfortunate collection of one dimensional, knee jerk reactions. The Salon.com article uses phrases like "a local, free-range chicken in every Le Creuset pot" and makes reference to "organic salmon". (What is that anyway? If you could control everything going into a salmon's diet it would be a farmed salmon, and no self respecting foodie would want to eat it anyway.)

Although the line often grows blurry, there is a real difference between fussy gourmet food products and honestly produced staples. Both are available at farmers' markets and at Whole Foods, and both tend to cost more than the highly processed industrial foods that are killing and sickening so many people. But there is a real difference between expensive food as a pretentious status symbol, and quality products that happen to cost more than the garbage on the shelves of the typical American supermarket. Fancy food may be a luxury, but good food is a necessity.

Covenant

I read weather reports obsessively. When I don't like what one says, I check another. Yesterday morning I checked at least four and they all said the same thing: a major storm would be moving in during the afternoon.

I gave my Columbia City crew the day off, figuring I could handle things myself and cut my losses. By 1 in the afternoon, however, it was still sunny and 70 degrees, and I was starting to second guess myself.

Sure enough at about 1:15 the sky got very dark very fast, and on my way to the market it started raining. By 2 o'clock there were gusts of wind strong enough to lift the tent off the ground, even with 25 pound weights on each leg.

If this had kept up consistently all afternoon, it would have been among the worst market weather days I'd experienced in more than 12 years of vending. Fortunately it was only intermittent bursts of crazy wind and heavy, sideways rain.

As soon as the market ended, a spectacular rainbow made an appearance. I like the biblical take on rainbows, seeing them as signs that everything is going to be okay. It's going to be a great season. But on any given day, anything can happen.

Update: Beware of Leafy Greens

I wrote recently that the health department is in the process of designating leafy greens as potentially hazardous food. That means they would have to be held at 41 degrees Fahrenheit or colder, seriously complicating things for farmers' market vendors like myself.

I've been reading up on the issue, and I've learned that they're mostly concerned with leafy greens that have been cut rather than leaves that are intact such as heads of cabbage or romaine, or bunches of chard. There's some clarification about exactly what they mean by "cut". Apparently the first cut, detaching the leaf from the plant, doesn't count. One person I spoke to also thought that the regulation would only apply to greens that have been repeatedly cut in multiple facilities but I haven't found anything to support this.

The health inspector I've been talking to sent links to the FDA recommendations to local health departments, and the proposed Washington state changes based on these recommendations. The FDA recommendations use the phrase "ready to eat" multiple times, while the propsed Washington state changes do not. This is important.

Let's put aside for a moment the very important consideration that industrial farms handle their produce in ways that are much more likely to widely spread pathogens than the scale and methods used by small, local farms. A salad mix or cole slaw mix with cut greens that will not be cooked before you eat them is much more likely to make someone sick than a braising mix, which is meant to be cooked. The process of cooking kills pathogens. That's why we're instructed to handle raw chicken with all manner of precautions while cooked chicken is generally regarded as safe.

I've never been someone inclined to get involved in the process of agitating for change. Under "politics" on my Facebook profile I wrote "complacent radical", meaning that I'm very much in favor of dramatic change, but I see my own potential to affect change mainly in terms of just living in ways that are consistent with my ideals. But this new regulation about cut leafy greens is a concrete issue that could have serious consequences, and its really just a matter of sloppy wording.

I sent in a comment form (there's a link for "Issue Submittal Form" in the Washington state document) and I've been contacting market managers and vendors about the issue. I've been encouraged by the fact that several market managers had already learned about it by the time I approached them because an email I sent has been making the rounds.

One market manager said that she'd like to see farmers' market vendors classified as exempt from these kinds of regulations because their production processes are so different from the mainstream industrial paradigm behind most of the difficulties. That's a beautiful thought, but I have a hard time imagining it actually happening. But in the meantime, this matters.