Inspired by the market

One of the reasons that I like shopping at the farmers' market is being inspired by what I see and what looks good. On a recent trip to the Mountain View farmers' market, I saw all the heirloom tomatoes and was inspired to make...

A heirloom tomato (Happy Boy Farms), roasted beet (Nunez Farm), basil (Happy Boy Farms), goat cheese salad with olive oil from Soul Food Farm for dinner on Sunday and...

A heirloom tomato (Happy Boy Farms) soup with roasted corn (G&S Farm) and fresh basil (Happy Boy Farms) for dinner on Monday. Yum.

Summertime Dinner

Summertime dinner from the Mountain View farmers' market:

Meatballs: ground pork from Full of Life Farm, ground beef from Pampero Ranch

Asparagus from Bounty of the Valley Farm

Roasted Bintje potatoes from Thomas Farm

Relationships, Not Transactions

It clicked when I was talking to my favorite pastured pork vendor a few months ago - I have a relationship with the food that I eat, and every day, I make choices about how distant or close this relationship is.

For most of my life, I treated my purchase of food as just a simple financial transaction. I would take my hard-earned dollars, and exchange them for food. This was basic commerce between me and the supermarket - in some ways our interests were aligned (our mutual objectives were met if I spent my money and received desired food in return), and in some ways our interests diverged (I wanted to capture the biggest bang for my buck, and therefore I might shop around or only buy things on sale). I didn't care about the well-being of the supermarket, and or where the heck the broccoli / apples / whatever foodstuff was grown or produced. If the broccoli looked fresh and the right price, I would buy it. And if it wasn't, I might try somewhere down the street. It was just business.

My perspective started to change when I started shopping regularly at the Mountain View farmers' market several years ago. I started to see the same people every week - Paul from Super Sweet hawking stone fruit in the summer and citrus in the winter, and the hipsters from Happy Boy Farm with their funny and informative labels on winter squash and summer melons spurring me to buy things I had never even heard of before. I would ask Jim from Pampero Ranch about grass-fed beef and different cuts of meat, and we might swap stories about our young toddlers. Paul from Hain Ranch would tell me about why everyone should learn to butcher a chicken, and then get into the history of his 4th generation farm and how his son might come back to the land after working in high-tech in LA. I would always be sad at the end of summer when my friends at Kashiwase Farms would bring the last of their organic peaches, nectarines and plums for the season. I would be grateful when Sylvia from Prevedelli Farms would save me some of my favorite organic warren pears when I got to the market late. And I eventually made it out to TLC Ranch near Watsonville, so my daughter Kaiya could run around with the pasture-raised piglets and walk among the free-range chickens.

When I could talk to Rebecca or Paul or Jim, it was easy to see and be more conscious of the fact that someone was actually growing the food that I was buying. Someone plants the seeds, cares for the orchards, and raises the animals with care. And in the case of the farmers' market, someone gets up way before dawn on Sunday mornings, rain or shine, to drive a couple hours and bring me the apples/carrots/pork chops that I eat every week. This isn't just a simple transaction of money and food, it's a relationship with people based on trust, respect, shared values and mutual dependence. I trust and rely on these hard-working farmers to provide me with the healthy, delicious, sustainable food that our family consumes every week, and they rely on me and other loyal customers to come back every week to buy the food they produce.

And this is what dawned on me - I have always had a relationship with the food that I eat, and the people who grow it. When I was shopping at Safeway, this relationship was like with a stranger I passed on the street that I didn't notice or pay attention to - anonymous, distant, non-existent. I didn't give a second thought to who or what was on the other end of this transaction - the farmer who produced the food, how or where the food was grown, whether it was someone that shared my values or that I could trust to grow the food that would feed my children. Whereas at the farmers' market, this relationship feels like that of a good friend or neighbor - full, deep, gratifying. I can look people in the eye, ask questions, have them know my name and my family, visit their farm, and have an actual relationship.

And this is what hit me the hardest - just like any relationship, there is a trust and expectation (in a good way) that we will each do our part to care for each other and hold up our end of the bargain. And when I have this relationship with the food that I eat (and the people who grow it), going to the market is not just “shopping” – it’s about seeing old friends, being neighborly and taking care of important people in my life. It matters if I decide to walk over to the market on Sunday morning – and it has an impact if I decide I’m a no-show because I’m too lazy or because it’s too cold or rainy. I wouldn’t bail on a friend that’s counting on me – and now I realize that I have a relationship with the food I eat, I’m going to treat it with the respect that it deserves.

Change, One Person At A Time

My mother-in-law is a first generation, Cantonese immigrant matriarch who scraped her way to a comfortable life for herself and her family with the hallmarks of millions of immigrant family stories before her: working hard, being resourceful, managing every penny like it was the last. I doubt she has ever been opposed to eating fresh and healthy food, but I also imagine she has never given much thought to how something is grown - value is paramount in ensuring everyone gets fed on whatever budget they had growing up. She lives in the San Fernando Valley in LA, and shops often at Chinese supermarkets in Monterey Park, where the best price can be had - and you never know where the food comes from. She is one of the last people that I thought I might influence to participate in any kind of good food movement. But what a difference shopping at a good farmers' market can make.

My mother-in-law recently spent a couple weeks with us in the San Francisco Bay Area. She joined me on our Sunday morning routine, shopping at the Mountain View farmers' market. As we walked, my favorite vendors greeted me by name, I picked up a bag of satsumas that she knew her granddaughter would devour, and she saw the richness and diversity of food that I could buy at the market - fruits, vegetables, eggs, beef, cheese, nuts, honey and much more. As idyllic as this experience sounds to me, I'm not sure she gave much thought to any of this. I'm guessing she thought it was a pleasant walk that was one of those funny, "green" things that her odd son-in-law did.

And then she found the chestnuts.

Fresh chestnuts. She was delighted to see them. I think they took her back to her childhood in Hong Kong. She bought a couple pounds, took them home to cook, and she was in heaven. She kept asking me to taste them, and asked if I liked them. She lamented that she wouldn't be around for another Sunday market to buy more. She asked us to buy a couple pounds for her the next weekend and ship them to LA (!). And then, when she got back home to LA, she looked up farmers' markets near her (!!!) - and plans to hit up the Calabasas market on Saturday, and/or maybe the Agoura Hills market on Sunday.

Wow. Really? Who knows if my mother-in-law will become a regular farmers' market shopper, or develop an appreciation for fresh local produce, or develop any relationships with the people who grow the food she eats. But, man, this is an inspiring step. If my mother-in-law can take this step, I am optimistic that many, many more can.

New Year's Resolution

So buying produce, meat, and eggs directly from the farmers' market makes it easy to know where a lot of the food eat is coming from. When I go to the Mountain View farmers' market, I know that Lucy takes care of the free range chicken and duck eggs that we cook in our omelettes, and Jim raises the grass fed cattle that becomes the beef that we put in our beef stew, and Paul has been taking care of the satsuma, nectarine and asian pear orchards that bear the fruit we enjoy. I have a lot of confidence that the food is, on the whole, produced sustainably and with care, and that if I have any questions, I know I can just ask. But what about the wheat in the spaghetti or pasta sauce that we buy at the farmers' market or grocery store, or the hot dogs that are served at my daughter's daycare or just about anything when we're eating out? How do I know if any of this is produced sustainably, or good or bad for me?

Well, it turns out that we can ask.

We can ask Santa Cruz Pasta Factory, and Steve will write me back telling me about the wheat/grain suppliers for the pasta that they make. And we can ask LunchMaster, who is the company who caters my daughter's lunches at daycare, and Felicia will tell me a little about their vendors. And if I happen to see an emphasis on local and organic on the menu at a restaurant, like I did at Chow, I can ask and have someone like Andrew email me back and tell me about the farms they source from directly or indirectly.

Last year, I took a big step in really shifting most of our grocery shopping to direct from the farmer, rancher or producer, primarily through shopping at farmers' markets (so much that more than half of our grocery bill is spent at local farmers' markets). This year, I want to continue in that vein as much as possible - and also not ignore the relationship (or lack thereof) with the food that we consume otherwise. I can ask the question of the people that we buy from, get more information, gauge the responses, and change our consumption and behavior accordingly. The more I know, I can make more informed choices about all the food we eat.

I want to know if the food is good to eat - and good to think. If one restaurant serves delicious food and cares about the relationship with the food, how it was grown, and where it came from, maybe I feel better about supporting them. And if that one vendor doesn't know or care where their food comes from, maybe I don't want to support them as much, or at all. Having that information is so empowering, and I'm going to spend this year asking those questions.

Full of Life Farm: New Sustainable Meat Vendor @ MV Farmers' Market

Ever since TLC Ranch closed down shop a couple months ago, I have been lamenting the lack of a sustainable, pastured pork vendor at the Mountain View farmers' market. Other than the sporadic sustainable meat sales from Hidden Villa, I have not found a convenient, local option of pork (which happens to be the most consumed protein in our family) - with Whole Foods serving as an okay option, but where I often feel little or no connection to the farm or ranch that grows our food.

But recently a new pastured pork and grass fed beef vendor, Full of Life Farm joined the Mountain View farmers' market. The proprietor, Bernard Smith, has an interesting story - growing up on a family farm in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, before moving to San Francisco for work, only to eventually take over the family farm, and sell sustainable meat in Oregon and in SF Bay Area markets. Although I'm not crazy about the meat actually being raised in Oregon, I am excited about this new potential connection to healthy, delicious, sustainable food.

Sweet Dumpling Squash

I have a new favorite food: roasted sweet dumpling squash.

Butternut squash has long been my favorite winter squash - roasted with olive oil, pureed in soups or featured in risotto. The sweet creamy flavor and its utility as a hearty featured ingredient for fall and winter meals has endeared this vegetable to me. But I recently picked up a couple sweet dumpling squashes from Happy Boy Farms at the farmers' market, roasted them with salt and olive oil, and was in culinary heaven. Rich, deep flavor scooped straight out of the shell that surpassed even my long cultivated affinity to butternut squash. Yum.

What's In Season [Winter 2010]

I love shopping at the farmers' market in the fall and winter. It's not quite as sexy as the kaleidoscope of colors and deliciously sweet flavors that you get with all the heirloom tomatoes, stone fruit and berries in the summer. But I love the selection of vegetables that make for hearty soups and stews, and the fruits that come into season that have that crisp flavor that makes me think of fall.

For those of you not familiar with the broad selection of produce that our farmers' market vendors brave the cold (and sometimes rain) to bring to us every week, here are some of my favorites (including vendors at the Mountain View and downtown Palo Alto farmers' markets that I frequent the most):

• Winter squash, such as butternut, acorn, kabocha, delicata, and carnival: They are all great roasted and pureed in soups, or as the main highlight of a risotto, or just roasted with olive oil and scooped right out of their shells. You can typically find them at several vendors in any farmers' market with some of my favorite vendors being Happy Boy Farms and High Ground Organics, both out of Watsonville, at the Mountain View farmers' market on Sunday, and Full Belly Farm out of Capay Valley at the Saturday downtown Palo Alto farmers' market.
• Apples, including honey crisp, gala, fuji, gravenstein, cameo and many more: I grew up shopping at grocery stores where there were just apples, always shiny and red. Sometimes, there were green apples in the store, but those always seemed odd to me and they were called "green apples", whereas the red ones were always just "apples". Having been introduced to perhaps a dozen variety of apples over the last few years (out of the 2,500 varieties grown in the US), I have come to appreciate more breadth and depth of this wonderful family of fruit. There are a number of vendors with a decent variety of apples. But for a real education, you can head to Prevedelli Farms at the Mountain View market or Hale's Apple Farm at the downtown Palo Alto market. In the fall and winter, they both have a constant rotation of at least half a dozen apple varieties in season, and in particular Prevedelli has a helpful staff, good signage and plentiful samples.
• Citrus, and in particular satsuma oranges: The disappearance of peaches, nectarines, plums and other stone fruit at the end of the summer is a sad time in our household, where my wife, daughter and I devour these fruits all summer long. We can hang on for a while on the longer seasons that strawberries sometimes offer, but we don't get really excited again until winter when citrus, and in particular satsumas, come back to the market. These seedless, easy to peel, tangy fruits are mistaken for candy in our household where I need to buy a few dozen to make it through the week. All through the winter, I buy big bags full of satsumas from Paul at Super Sweet at the Mountain View market with Sunny Cal at both the Mountain View and downtown Palo Alto markets coming through in a pinch when needed.

If you are not already taking advantage of the fact that we have some very high quality farmers' markets in the area, here's to hoping you can explore what we have to offer.

Farmers' Market Chatter

I was at two of my favorite farmers' markets this weekend - the downtown Palo Alto Saturday morning market and the Mountain View Sunday morning market - and a couple comments that I heard from vendors at the market made me really glad that I shop at farmers' markets, take the time to talk to the people that are selling and growing the food that I eat, and feel compelled to shop even when it's cold, wet and/or when the selection of produce is not the same as the rainbow bounty of the summer.

Heard at the market from a variety of vendors:

• [In the middle of a steady drizzle on a cold Saturday morning] "It will be slow day today, but our regulars will make it out. I have faith in them."
• "Thanks for braving the market the weekend after Thanksgiving. It's always cold and usually one of the slowest days of the year at the market."
• [After asking a vendor if they carry sell something particular] "I have them but I don't bring them to this market. Do you think I should bring them to this market?" [To which I emphatically replied yes]

Thankful for a local Thanksgiving

I am very thankful to be able to have a local Thanksgiving, with most of the ingredients coming from local, sustainable farmers that I patron at the Mountain View farmers' market. It was the first time that Wendy and I have ever cooked and hosted Thanksgiving dinner and it turned out great!

Dishes with ingredient list:

• Local, heritage turkey grown in Sunol by Jim Frei at Pampero Ranch
• Blue lake beans from Iacopi Farms
• Mashed potatoes with russet potatoes from Zuckerman's Farm
• Mushroom gravy with mushrooms from Far West Fungi
• Deviled eggs with pasture-raised eggs from Lucy at the Mountain View farmers' market
• Corn niblets from Trader Joe's (my wife couldn't pass them up)

Picking Up My Local, Pasture-Raised Heritage Turkey

When we decided to host Thanksgiving dinner for the first time this year, I was excited for a lot of reasons - the opportunity to host loved ones at our house, the first Thanksgiving dinner our daughter Kaiya would have at our house, the fun and challenge of preparing all the delicious food, and the chance to buy mostly local ingredients for our Thanksgiving meal at the Mountain View farmers' market.

Obviously the biggest purchase to make was the turkey. There are plenty of other people more knowledgeable and articulate about why buying a local, pasture-raised heritage turkey that have written articles like this and that. I was happy to find out that Jim from Pampero Ranch in Sunol was raising pasture-raised heritage turkeys for Thanksgiving. On Sundays at the Mountain View farmers' market, I buy a lot of the grass-fed beef we consume from Jim and I have been hoping to check out his ranch in Sunol (I have an open invitation from Jim but just haven't found the time). So it was great to know that I could buy a local, pasture-raised turkey from someone that I know and trust. I was a little late to the game in ordering my turkey in early October but I was lucky that Jim had been raising a bunch of turkeys and I could still place an order.

Other than having food that would be good to think as well as good to eat, it was not that transcendent of an experience. At the same time, there were little things about the experience that I appreciated that were different from just purchasing a bird from Safeway, or even Whole Foods.

• Every week at the farmers' market, I could ask Jim about how things were going with the birds. He could tell me about the trials and tribulations of raising birds (along with their longhorns, buffalo and egg-laying hens).
• Jim hosted an event at his ranch where buyers could take part in the "harvesting" of the birds if they wanted to have that connection with their food. I was not able to make it, but it was interesting to have that option.
• I had originally wanted a smaller 12-15 lb turkey, but Jim mentioned in early November that the birds were growing bigger and faster than he thought. So Jim told us that if we wanted a smaller bird, we would have to take it in early November (since he didn't have room in his freezer to store it). I ended up opting to pick up later so I wouldn't have to store the bird our freezer for as long, so the birds grew larger and we ended up getting a 18 lb turkey.

All in all, it was an interesting experience that I look forward to repeating next year.

Eating Local This (Short) Week

We don't always make time or plan ahead appropriately to shop at the farmers' market over the weekend to make meals that from 100% local, sustainable food. But when we do make that effort, I always appreciate it.

Meals that we made from local, sustainable ingredients purchased at the Mountain View farmers' market this short week:

Cream of tomato soup with end-of-the-season heirloom tomatoes from Happy Boy Farms, blue lake beans from Iacopi Farms, roasted delicata squash from Happy Boy Farms, salsa with roma tomatoes and onions from Swank Farms (not pictured)

Mushroom ravioli from Santa Cruz Pasta Factory (which sources ingredients locally when possible), with a variety of mushroom toppings from Far West Fungi, snap peas from Happy Boy Farms

Satsumas are back in season!

The end of summer is always sad - no more sweet white corn, succulent heirloom tomatoes, juicy stone fruit or tangy berries. But as we move through fall and into winter, crisp apples and pears and juicy citrus are now coming into season. When I went to the Mountain View farmers' market on Sunday, Paul from Super Sweet (one of my favorite fruit stands at the market) was hawking satsumas for the first time this season. Super easy to peel and seedless, my daughter Kaiya eats satsumas like candy. I bought a couple pounds but we've finished them off already - and it's only Tuesday! I'll need to get more next weekend.

Warren Pears @ Prevedelli Farms

I discovered warren pears last year at the Prevedelli Farms stand at the Mountain View farmers' market. Once I had them, I knew I had found a new favorite fruit. I've had other pears before like bosc, barletts and anjou pears, but these were like no other pear I've had before - delicious, sweet and tasting like fall. Alas, the season only lasts a few short weeks in the fall.

When the folks at Prevedelli Farms told me in late October that warren pears would be back in season soon, I was excited. When I hit to the market a few weeks ago in anticipation of finally biting into a warren pear again, I came home disappointed - by the time I got to the market, they were all sold out. And then I went again the next week, and sold out again (!). After seeing my disappointment (and knowing that I'd been asking about the warren pears for a couple weeks), Sylvia from Prevedelli kindly offered to save me a couple pounds of warren pears for me the next week. She had to ask me if I would really be back to pick them up if she saved them for me - and I finally got my pears this week. =)