Seattle Global Justice Dinner

Last night I attended a fundraising dinner for the Community Alliance for Global Justice. The event paired local food producers like Taylor Shellfish Farms and Mt. Townshend Creamery with local chefs such as Julie Andres of La Medusa and Seth Caswell of Stumbling Goat Bistro. The evening was very, very hot but the food was wonderful and the cause felt urgent and relevant.

The organizers did a great job of making the connection between strong local economies and equitable global food systems. The consolidation of the food production infrastructure in the United States has parallels all over the world, but we're most closely linked with Mexico, whose displaced small-scale farmers often migrate here looking for work.

There's a lot of talk in the local food movement about what it would take to eat an exclusively local diet, and whether this objective is even feasible. Personally, I have no problem eating something produced far from home, as long as there's no reasonable local alternative, and it's been produced by a small-scale operation rather than a globalized behemoth.

A Tough Year for Cherries

This has been a tough year for cherries, because of the cold all spring. According to the Tiny's Organics guy, the final straw was the hot spell in May followed by the frost in June. The cherries thought that summer had come, then they froze.

Tiny's is selling cherries for $10 a pound. I traded for some and they filled me with joy. But cherries are going to be a treat this year, rather than a staple.

Turnip and Sorrel Soup

1. 2 quarts water

1 lb. turnips, trimmed and quartered

4 cloves garlic

1 cup chopped spring onions

2 cups loosely chopped sorrel leaves

2 tablespoons chopped fresh spearmint

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons miso (any kind)

black pepper to taste

Bring the water to a boil in a medium-sized saucepan, then add all the ingredients except the miso. Bring it back to a boil, then lower the heat and cook, uncovered, for about 45 minutes. Strain the veggies and puree them, adding stock as needed.

Add the miso to 1 cup of the strained broth and mix until smooth. Combine this mixture with the remaining broth and the pureed veggies, and reheat if necessary.

Queen Anne's Neighborhood Garden

1. Right outside the Queen Anne Community Center, a few hundred feet from the farmers' market, a community garden is sprouting. There are a series of raised beds lovingly planted with tomatoes, zucchini, and peas, among other things.

Unlike a p-patch, where folks generally pay for gardening space, the Good Neighbor Garden has been financed entirely by donations and volunteer labor. To get involved you can do anything from working to build beds, to pulling out a few weeds if you happen to see them as you walk by.

When harvest time comes around, the produce will be available for anyone who wants some.

Columbia City Market's 10th Anniversary

The Columbia City Farmers' Market celebrated its 10th anniversary yesterday, with a big cake and a chef demo by Julie Andres, of La Medusa restaurant.

Julie is at the market every Wednesday right after it opens, shopping with a red wagon for ingredients for the restaurant's changing Wednesday night market menu. For her demo she made fresh pasta with seasonal vegetables, which happens to be one of my favorite meals.

I've been vending at Columbia City since practically the beginning, and it's changed considerably during that time, growing from a tiny event to one of the biggest markets in the city. It's tapered off some after peaking a few years ago, but it's still steady and always entertaining, and it draws a loyal crowd.

Adolescent Garlic

This year I'm really paying attention to the life cycle of garlic. We've now passed the stage when it looks like green onions, and even the garlic tops, or scapes, are starting to disappear. This week there are mostly small bulbs that look a lot like mature garlic, but the cloves are moist, and the skins are supple and peel off easily.

I tend to use more garlic in any particular dish when the stuff I have on hand is fresh and young. Maybe it's because it seems more innocuous, or maybe it's just because it's so much easier to peel.

Cherry Buddha

Here's an impromptu piece of market art from Molly, who runs the Magnolia market, among others. She's also an art teacher.

The Food at the Margins

Working in food businesses for many years, I've always been struck by how much waste is built into the industry.

Sometimes we waste food because of safety concerns, when items pass their pull dates. But much of what gets pulled is perfectly good food. Nobody can say for sure when a container of milk or a bag of lettuce is going to go bad, any more than they can tell exactly when a piece of fruit will ripen.

Sometimes we waste food because it's cosmetically imperfect, when leaves or labels or damaged, because consumers will inevitably choose the more perfect option.

Sometimes we waste food because it takes a surplus to create an appealing display. Nobody wants to buy the last, sad orange, but when there's a lovely tall pyramid of oranges, everybody wants one. There's more waste when you think in terms of piling food high to create the appearance of bounty than when you try to stock only what you're actually going to sell.

In my own businesses I've always tried to waste very little, and also to make use of the unused surpluses that other companies create. That's both mercenary and moral. At the farmers' markets I've always bought leftover produce cheaply at the end of the day. One farmers told me that he used to think in terms of selling out at the end of the day, so he wouldn't sell much during the last hour because his table would be empty. Once he started stocking up his table even late in the day, knowing that I would buy whatever he had left, his sales increased.

Lately there hasn't been much to spare at the end of most market days. The weather is partly responsible: produce has been coming in slowly this year. There's also an increased demand for market produce as folks grow disillusioned with the mainstream food industry. And the farmers themselves are getting better at using their own surplus, and wasting less.

I'm excited about many of these changes. I'm also learning to look in new places for usable surplus. I've been using broccoli and cauliflower greens, as well as the leaves from turnips and radishes. Nearly every time I approach a farmer to ask about their usable surplus, they suggest something that I didn't even know could be eaten. I'm happy to pay for these greens, which they usually just carry home and throw on the compost pile.

During this time of food shortages, I often find myself wondering how much hardship we could alleviate simply by learning to value our food differently, and wasting less.

The Berry People

Yesterday I saw the first of the berry people at the Magnolia Farmers' Market. There are plenty of farmers who grow some berries along with their seasonal vegetables--they're less of a commitment than tree fruit, and customers like to see some fruit on the table--but these vendors sell only berries. Their season is short, and their sales are high. Every market administrator I know will give them priority if space is tight because their product is so perishable and they draw extra customers to the market.

Hayton Farms sold out of strawberries yesterday before noon. I hope they're at Ballard again today. Then it'll really feel like summer.

Fresh Fava Beans

I've heard that fava beans are the world's oldest bean (or the first one that was cultivated, anyway.) Whether or not that's true, the season for this year's fava beans has come around.

Fresh fava beans are a lot of work, because you have to shell them out of their spongy outer pod, boil them for a few minutes, and then gently shell them again. But they're delicate, tasty and worth the effort, especially because their season is so brief.

I like to use them in salads, especially with Middle Eastern seasonings like parsley, mint and lemon, and with other ancient ingredients, like lentils and barley.

Opening Day at the Queen Anne Farmers' Market

Yesterday was opening day at the Queen Anne Farmers' Market, held in the parking lot of the McClure Middle School, on 1st Ave. West and West Crockett St. I took this picture from inside my booth because I was too busy to get out from behind my table. That's exciting.

The Queen Anne Market is starting its second season, after a neighborhood organization, Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth, decided they wanted one in their own backyard. They partnered with the folks who run the Ballard, Madrona, and Wallingford markets, got a startup grant, and set it all in motion.

My company is now operating at full steam, vending at 8 markets each week. Two ran all winter, another started up at the beginning of May, and the rest opened over the course of the past six weeks. Things feel pretty smooth, and we all seem to be learning and eating well.

My Humble Garden

I've never been much of a gardener, but I really think this could be the year that I manage to grow a little of my own food. I've been picking up vegetable starts at the farmers' markets, mostly in trade, and I have five different varieties of tomatoes, one serrano chile plant, and a couple of basil starts. I put them in the ground earlier this week, and so far I've actually watered them every day.

I also have a wide variety of potted herbs planted in worm compost. Lynn, my plant guru, thinks that's too rich an environment for culinary herbs, and some do seem to be doing better than others. The potted basil plants don't look very happy, but the tarragon, thyme, and rosemary are thriving.

Fresh herbs from the supermarket are overpackaged and expensive and, even though the packages are small, they're usually more than I'm going to use at once, unless I'm catering. The bunches at the farmers' market are bigger and fairly priced, but I still usually end up with leftovers I don't use. I love being able to pick a few leaves off a couple of different plants when I'm preparing dinner. The variety is exciting, and I never waste anything.

My Yearly Artichoke

I usually eat one artichoke a year, and it occurred to me the other day that the season was drawing to a close and I hadn't had one yet.

The sign at the store said "globe artichokes," and this one was particularly round and not the least bit spiky on top, so I thought that was a reference to a specific variety, but it turns out that "globe artichoke" is a generic name for the ones we typically eat.

I steamed it for about 45 minutes, until the leaves towards the center pulled out easily, and I ate it with some seasoned mayo, which I smeared all over the heart once I reached it.

My brother likes to say that eating artichokes is a form of conspicuous consumption because you toss away so much. I say that an artichoke is an experience, starting with the leaves as teasers, then leading in to that sensual heart which tastes that much better because you've had to work so hard for it.

It's really not a lot of food, but when I finish my yearly artichoke, I always feel happily full.

The Tomato Recall, Revisited

The FDA still hasn't identified the precise origin of the tomatoes responsible for the recent 277 reported cases of salmonella saintpaul. But at this point it is looking likely that the contamination is occurring during the growing phase, rather than the processing phase, which would explain why it's been affecting tomatoes over a period of nearly 2 months.

I was struck by the FDA's advised precautions.

"Consumers should not attempt to cook the tomatoes involved in this outbreak in an effort to kill Salmonella. Handling tomatoes contaminated with Salmonella can spread the bacterium to anything the handler touches, including hands, kitchen utensils, cutting boards, sinks, and other foods. Cooking tomatoes in the home will not ensure that Salmonella is eliminated."

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 35% of the supermarket chickens tested in a recent study contained salmonella. You could substitute "chicken" for "tomatoes" in the sentence beginning with "Handling tomatoes," and everything would hold true. And yet we've grown accustomed to taking all kinds of precautions when handling raw chicken, especially chicken raised on factory farms. In fact, store bought chickens come with safe handling instructions on their labels.

So why is the FDA telling us it's unsafe to cook tomatoes? Is it because we're used to eating them raw, so handling them the way we handle chicken would take some kind of cognitive shift? Or is it because the chicken lobby is more powerful than the tomato lobby? We've actually grown accustomed to salmonella in chicken. We practically assume it's there. In fact, according to Marion Nestle, author of Safe Food and Food Politics, the poultry industry has managed to shift the burden of responsibility to consumers, educating them about how to handle and properly cook chicken containing salmonella, rather than taking steps themselves to ensure that their chicken is free from the bug.

Speaking of double standards, the FDA warning also reminds consumers that fresh tomatoes are often used in other foods, like fresh salsa and guacamole. At this point even Marion Nestle's reputable blog says that the contaminated tomatoes were probably grown in Mexico. But Mediterranean foods are as likely as Mexican dishes to use fresh tomatoes, and an Italian restaurant in the US is just as likely as an American Mexican restaurant to use tomatoes grown in Mexico. So why does the warning mention only Mexican foods?

And I haven't even touched on the issue of globalized food systems vs. localized production.

Tamales at the Ballard Farmers Market

The folks selling authentic Mexican food in the grassy lot off the street that hosts the Ballard Farmers' Market are no longer there because of a health permit issue. The market wouldn't let them come in under their permit's umbrella because they're already saturated with food vendors, and it's impossible to get a legitimate stand-alone permit unless you have a fully functioning food truck.

Their absence has been great for my booth. During the few short weeks they were there, they got some great reviews. People come down to the market looking for tamales, and they see mine, and they buy them.

I didn't get to taste the other tamales, but I'm sure they're better than mine. They're Mexican, while I'm a Jewish girl from Brooklyn. (I'm sure their matzo ball soup can't hold a candle to mine.) My tamales are made with olive oil rather than lard, so they're great for people who are vegetarian or just want to eat healthier. They're also fabulous as a starch with a little protein to serve with the side order of seasonal grilled veggies which is our signature item. I'm proud of what I serve, but I don't expect it to satisfy folks who come down to the market looking for authentic tamales.

I wonder whether there's anything ethically suspect about capitalizing on the buzz that some other business has generated. I suppose that it's not completely fair to the customers who are looking for the other tamale booth, but the review says the booth is run by folks from Mexico City, and I'm obviously not from Mexico City.

On some level I also feel that there's some cosmic justice to the fact that I've benefitted from these recent events. I came into the market through legitimate channels, and I've paid my dues there for many years. My sales suffered during the weeks when the unpermitted booth was competing with me. Not to mention, the whole situation was desperately unfair to my friends at Green Go, who abandoned plans to vend in that grassy area after calling the health department and learning that they couldn't get a legitimate permit without the market's consent.

Music and Food

Yesterday the Magnolia Farmers Market moved the music tent over near the food tents and I was thrilled with the change. I had a great day there, although the weather certainly helped.

People linger to listen to music, and they linger to eat food. They smell the food cooking as they pause to listen to the music, and they listen to the music while they're waiting in line for their lunch.

Yesterday's band was a trio called "Blue Raincoat". They played some mellow standards, maybe not what I'd be listening to at home, but with the sunshine and the market crowd, I was very happy to have them there.

Radish and Peppercress Salad

I got some peppercress from Whistling Train Farm at the Columbia City Market earlier this week. Their sign said, "Similar to watercress, but easier for us to grow." You'd never see a sign like that at a mainstream supermarket, where all kinds of vegetables, like iceberg lettuce and roma tomatoes, are way too easy for producers to grow and handle, but that ease certainly isn't a selling point. With farmers' market vendors, though, we want to make their lives as simple as possible because they're heroes, really, fighting to preserve a way of life that benefits all of us.

I was curious about the peppercress, so I picked some up. I decided to try it with radishes, because they're also kind of peppery. Here's what I made:

1 bunch radishes, peeled and sliced

2 tablespoons finely chopped peppercress

1 teaspoon olive oil

1 teaspoon champagne vinegar

salt and black pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together. Makes 2 servings.

Fresh Bamboo Shoots

Rockridge Orchards has been selling fresh bamboo shoots at farmers' markets around town. I'd eaten the canned ones and the ones you see floating in basins of water in Asian groceries, but until yesterday I'd never taken a fresh shoot, peeled it, and worked with its contents.

When I bought them Wade demonstrated how to cut them open, and when I tried it was actually easier than it looked. I tasted some of the deeper center uncooked and it had a great texture. The closer I got towards the tip the harder it became to cut, so I chose to use only the inner parts.

I made a stir fry with snow peas from Alvarez Farms, pea vines from Whistling Train, shallots from Pipitone Orchards, garlic scapes from Willie Greens, and ginger and tofu from the supermarket. Even after I'd cooked them, the bamboo shoots still had that wonderful texture and, not surprisingly, much more life than the canned specimens I used to use.

Garlic Scapes

These are garlic tops, or "scapes," from Willie Greens Farm. They're the upper part of the plant, including the flower, which hasn't yet opened. The earlier in the plant's life cycle you pick them, the better flavor they have, which explains why they're mostly available in late May and early June.

Some farmers sell them in neat, straight bunches. I like the look of a big, unruly basket of curly scapes, although it's more work to cut them up when they come this way. They have a texture like green beans, and a mild, garlicky flavor. I like to toss them in with whatever mixed vegetables I happen to be cooking up at the moment.

Ruminations on the Tomato Recall

There's a new food safety scare sweeping the nation. Tomatoes are the culprit this time, especially Romas, and "round red tomatoes." The FDA has been able to rule out small grape tomatoes, tomatoes on the vine, and tomatoes grown at home, and they're telling consumers that it's safe to eat these varieties.

This is a significant improvement over the warnings that were coming out during the e coli outbreak traced to spinach nearly two years ago, some of which recommended that folks avoid all spinach. But it would have been nice to also see the FDA include farmers' market tomatoes, which obviously haven't been distributed widely enough to sicken people in 17 states.

During the spinach incident, a woman coming into my shop ordered a salad, and after I'd assembled it she asked if it contained spinach. I said it did, but I'd bought the greens directly from a local farm. She refused to eat it, and I didn't offer to refund her money. I felt that if she was so concerned, she should have asked the question before she ordered the food. Besides, there was nothing wrong with the salad I served her. Customer service is a two-way street.

I'm left with a burning question about the tomato outbreak: Why have people been getting sick over a period of nearly two months from a bug that takes 72 hours to affect you and was probably present in a single batch of tomatoes processed in a single place? Tomatoes don't last that long, at least they shouldn't, under any kind of natural conditions. The fact that some company is selling tomatoes that are at least two months old is at least as disturbing to me as the salmonella.

Cherries?

There was a cherry vendor at the Ballard Market last weekend, but this weekend they weren't there. The folks who run another cherry booth had promised they would be at the Madrona Market this past Friday as well, but they stopped by to say they didn't have enough product.

I've seen a few cherries on a couple of tables, but nothing abundant and decisive yet. The wierd, cold weather we've been having has been taking its toll on crops, especially stone fruit. I have yet to hear how yesterday's wind storm affected things.

The Guerrilla Food Court

There's a food court springing up in a grassy lot off the street that holds the Ballard Farmers' Market. The vendors there rent space from the man who owns the property, rather than paying a stall fee to the folks who run the market. These guys are doing a great job and making wonderful food, but I can't help feeling like they shouldn't be there.

Sure, I resent the extra competition, but it's more than that. The rest of us have taken the trouble to go through established channels to be part of this event, and these food vendors haven't. The farmers' market spends plenty of money on marketing and outreach, and they work with the community to build something that meets the needs of neighborhood. These food vendors benefit from the work and investment of the market organizers without giving anything back to them. They also generate trash, which the market has to haul away.

At the same time, I always like to think of contemporary farmers' markets in a historical context. This kind of gathering of merchants and vendors is as old as civilization, and probably played a role in generating the earliest societies. And there must have always been people selling on the fringes of these events, not quite part of them, but somehow contributing to the experience. Like the Grateful Dead parking lot, or the vendors on the street as you make your way into a sporting event.

As much as I don't want them there, I'm open to the possibility that they'll help to make the Ballard Market even better than it already is.

Opening Day at the Magnolia Farmers Market

Here are the helpful volunteers ringing the opening bell on opening day yesterday at the Magnolia Farmers' Market. There was a decent turnout despite the chilly weather and I'm looking forward to a good season there.

There were some new vendors, like Flying Apron Bakery, Trevani Truffles, and Golden Glen Creamery, and old friends like Willie Greens, Alvarez Farm, Kitttas Valley Greenhouse, and Anita's Crepes.

The Magnolia Market is starting its sixth year and I doubt it'll ever be a rock star market like Ballard or Columbia City, but to me there's something sweet about the smaller markets that brings home the essence of the experience. They're not tourist destinations, just neighborhood gathering places offering wholesome fare.

Sugar Peas!

Last night after the Madrona Market I ate a huge salad topped with sugar peas, the first time I've had those sweet treats this season.

Sometimes when I'm shelling peas I find myself going into a daze, standing by the counter, splitting them open and popping them into my mouth. I must be accessing some ancestral hunter-gatherer memory, finding something sweet and lingering at a spot to enjoy it.

The sugar peas from Willie Greens are the best.

Opening Day at the Lake City Farmers' Market

Yesterday was opening day at the Lake City Farmers' Market, and its first day at a new, permanent location. It's now being held in Albert Davis Park, north of NE 125th St, between 26th and 27th Ave. NE.

The new location is a big deal, because this is the first Seattle market to secure a long term spot. The other markets have to renegotiate their right to use their sites year by year.

To commemorate the occasion, the mayor made an appearance. It's the third time I've seen him at a market during the past few months, and he really does seem sincere about building a partnership between the market organizations and the city.

The market's layout was a bit strange, and I was concerned about the loading and unloading situation, which has half of the vendors (including myself) hauling our stuff on carts through a narrow service lane. That part actually went unbelievably smoothly. The layout has a number of vendors on the street, which is closed to vehicle traffic, and the rest of us in the park. I didn't think the connection between the two sets of booths was quite clear enough, but people seemed to find their way.

It was a cold, showery day. I think it's all going to be really lovely once the sun comes out and the grassy part of the park is full of people enjoying the day and, of course, eating. We're also right in front of the community center and the library, which has great bathrooms.

Fishing Vessel St. Jude

This is Joyce, from Fishing Vessel St. Jude. They sell sustainably caught albacore at a number of farmers' markets, and also to some fine restaurants. They've been my neighbors at the Columbia City Market for many years.

She and her husband, Joe, fished together from their own boat for 12 years before starting a family and hiring a crew. Now they raise their 2 children and market their catch.

I'm a huge fan of their kippered albacore, which is marinated and then smoked, and also their canned tuna with jalapeno. My sister in Vermont loves their stuff as well. I cram my suitcase with it every time I visit her.

Pea Vines

I first tried edible pea vines at a Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn many years ago. They're delicate greens with curly tendrils.

I'm seeing lots of them at farmers' markets lately. That's partly because they're used in traditional Asian dishes, and also because the rest of us seem to be collectively growing a bit more adventurous about what we'll eat, and more open to eating different parts of the plant.

The vines come in earlier than the peas themselves, which are only just starting to appear on market tables.

Picky Eaters

The Bastyr Fair this weekend got me thinking about picky eaters. We had one woman who asked us to pick the beets out of her mixed vegetables, and grew indignant when we refused. Another guy wanted a whole quesadilla with half of it vegan (we charge $6 for a whole and $4 for a half) but couldn't understand why we wouldn't just charge him $6 and cook the two halves separately, so no cheese would touch the vegan sections.

I understand making a choice to not eat a particular food. I don't understand refusing to eat anything that touched anything that touched that food, like the vegans who get upset that we cook cheese on the same grill as their vegan food, or because there's a tiny bit of cheese on their tamale's corn husk, even though you unwrap the tamale and don't eat the husk. It reminds me of the kids who burst into tears when a vegetable touches their cheese quesadilla.

I think that rejecting particular foods very often becomes a way to create divisions between people. I grew up in a kosher household, with separate sets of dishes for meat and dairy. Some Orthodox Jews even refuse to eat in the company of non-Jews. I do see how the kosher laws were an important factor in enabling us to maintain our cultural identity during two thousand years of diaspora, but I can't help wondering whether the separation that they mark also played a part in our history of religious persecution. Nobody likes someone who goes out of their way to say, "I'm not like you."

Dandelion Quest

I was amused to see some dandelion greens growing by the curb when I stepped off the grounds of the Madrona Market this past Friday to empty some waste water (shhh, I'm not supposed to do that.)

Some of the market vendors have been selling dandelion greens. They're supposed to be great for your liver and kidneys, but they taste really bitter. I find that strange because bitter flavors often indicate poison: there's some evolutionary thing going on where we've developed congenital distastes for foods that are harmful to us.

I've tried various ways of cooking dandelion greens, but I haven't yet been able to get them to taste good. I hear they're somewhat sweeter in the winter, but that's just hearsay. Jason, from Local Roots Farm, suggested using something sour to counteract the bitterness so I sauteed them with rhubarb. It was interesting and I was able to choke them down, but I won't be trying that again. The quest for a palatable dandelion recipe continues.

Strawberries!

I saw the first strawberries of the year at the Madrona market on Friday. Tiny's Organics had a few pints, although they generally focus on tree fruit. They just have a couple of rows planted, to tide them over until their plums and pluots come into season.