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.

Local, Organic Popcorn?!?!

Understanding where the food I eat comes from has taken me down paths that I never really thought of... like popping my own local, organic popcorn. My wife loves to eat buttered popcorn and we often have a package of Orville Redenbacher or Jiffy Pop in the house. I have never been interested in buying this kind of popcorn - it's not that I don't like it, I just don't love it and have never been that interested. However, when I saw at the downtown Palo Alto farmers' market that Full Belly Farm had 1 1lb packages of corn kernels grown on their farm in Capay Valley, I was intrigued by buying local, organic corn kernels from someone that I knew and trusted.

As it turns out, popcorn is very simple to pop - heat oil in a saucepan, throw in the kernels, cover and wait for them to pop, and season as desired (who chose salt, butter and grated parmesan). And I can tell you that I have never felt so good eating popcorn. To be honest, it all tasted the same to me. Popcorn tastes like popcorn - salty, buttery and delicious. BUT instead of buying an anonymous package with contents that conjured up images of stomach-ache-inducing movie theater popcorn, I bought my popcorn from Dru Rivers from Full Belly Farm, who I see on a regular basis at the farmers' market and whose farm I plan to visit next year. And that connection made all the difference in enjoying this tasty snack.

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]