Haiku Friday

Back and forth he shapes
the dough into tortillas
the size of his hands.

Haiku Friday

Even while eating
leftovers our mouths watered
for the leftovers.

Even red carrots
blended to soup were trumped by
the sweet potatoes.

Art Food

I don't think anyone has left on vacation this month. The farmers' markets are jammed. And with good reason. Forget carbon bites or food miles, forget taste and local economies; the markets this month are a visual destination.

I stopped on Sunday before I left the market to consider if I'd bought any food at all or if it was all impulsive food for my eyes.

I had handfuls of candy pears, three in each one. "Have a taste," the vendor insisted. I didn't care what they tasted like. They were miniature sculptures, Rodin's with a stem.

There were french prunes in my bag that inspired a vision of pheasant feathers, the whole bagged bird, burgundy roses, falling petals, hydrangeas and grapes so heavy on a table it sagged.

I had one pink lady apple, the first, chosen in a scented cloud of lavender. The basket of figs I'd filled myself was already almost gone. I'd bite into one, study it, the maroon and purple of it, and because it was prefect, picked before it was too soft, but only moments before, I'd stand in the center aisle, people coursing on either side and I'd practically pour the rest of those colors, their winey sweetness into my mouth. I should have bought more.

There were the tomatoes; sungold tomatoes, beads of sugary sun, a rope of summer jewels. And a musky red Russian tomato with deep green cheeks, "Paul Robeson, it's called. He was an opera singer," the grower sang. I wanted them all.

There were Gravenstein apples I couldn't resist for their freckles, eggplants purchased for their purpleness. I carried a rainbow of radishes, blue potatoes, orange cauliflower, raku stained Asian pears, elephant heads of garlic bursting from their seams. And three hand held squash blossoms. Three twisted, concubine orange squash blossoms.

All of it art but only temporarily so. We're eating it all way too fast.

What's beautiful on your table this month today?

Cucumber Salad

The cute guy and I went stealing apples last night. Not exactly stealing, we had permission. But it sounds more fun to think we were getting away with something.  The reality is we opinionated too loud to be competent thieves. I thought he picked the apples too green and he thought I harvested them from the ground with too many worm holes.

The vacationing homeowners offered anything ripe in their garden in addition to the apples . We carried home twenty pounds of fruit for juicing, a few green and two lemon cucumbers and several stalks of celery. Their tomatoes weren't quite ripe.

We were without fresh food after a long weekend camping which made whatever leftovers or gleaning harvest from an empty house and our own back deck exactly what we would have to eat. The challenge was on.

I made cucumber salad.

2 Diced Green Cucumbers
1 Diced Lemon Cucumber
3 Stalks Celery Cubed
1 Medium Heirloom Tomato Diced
1 Minced Serrano Pepper
1 Tablespoon Each Minced Lovage, Parsley and Wild Arugula
1 Teaspoon Minced Mint
Sea Salt to Taste

Combine everything in a favorite bowl and stir with a slotted spoon. Serve right away or refrigerate.

My only regret was I didn't have leftovers. And that the vacationers weren't going to be gone longer!

I have a few more cucumbers. Any ideas for quick salads? Chile uses them for juice and sorbet. Both of which are entertaining but it's salads we really want on the table this week.

Local Food Testimonial #1

It was dainty how he picked a single leaf from his plate, between thumb and forefinger. Held it out the way people do when they're far from home. "What is this?" he asked.

"Arugula."

"Arugula," he repeated as if explaining something to himself. He looked at it from all sides. "Do they do something to it?"

"It's local," his sister answered. "Fresh."

He studied it again but this time more intently. I started studying it too, wanting it to be special.

Then he put the leaf in his mouth shaking his head.

"It's good," he finished and reached with his fork for more.

Haiku Friday

He'd been gone so long
I nearly ran before he
disappeared again.

Eat Local Cupcake Challenge

My apologies. Really, I'm sorry, but my dog ate my eat local challenge that was due today and I'm going to have to start over.

I worked on the challenge for eight days and was doing great. I made fresh garbanzo beans, dropped them into a tomato salad with lime. I made fresh hummus, baked bread, mashed potatoes, sauteed broccoli with garlic chips. I baked squash, froze corn, scrambled eggs, tossed salads. I sliced apples, pears, halved figs, spooned melon. I snacked on walnuts, almond butter, licked my fingers of goat cheese that topped a mixed green salad. I dripped single cups of organic fair trade coffee and poured local milk from a methane powered dairy into them. I invited people to tell me their local stories, to go to the farmers market, to come on over for dinner. I did not want for anything.

And I didn't want the red velvet cream cheese frosted cupcake that a co-worker gave me today. I'm not kidding. There are new pants in the closet and they have no room in them for a cupcake.

"I brought this for you," my co-worker smiled, holding a smashed, triangle of cupcake out to me. "I had it in my bag," she explained.

"Oh, no problem," I said reaching for it, noticing with a watering mouth that it didn't stick to the bag. "Thank you," I coughed at the smell of sugar.

I still had a choice, after she left my office to save it for someone on the street. I knew I wouldn't throw it away. But those thoughts were fleeting, barely articulated. I ate the cupcake hurriedly before my challenge got in the way.

After that my farmers' market date cancelled. "I have to work," she emailed. It was the same time the sugar began going the way of the stock markets. Not pretty.

There was nothing to do but have a bowl of brown rice.

Brown rice is my answer to everything. Brown rice with a little olive drizzled over it after it's hot. It's better than a red velvet cupcake. Unless the person giving it to you is smiling and the cupcake is smashed within an inch of its life.

Then it's a toss up.

What's your local food answer to everything?

Eat Local Spousal Challenge

I live with a saint. All our friends will vouch for him.

He eats everything I put on the table. Except nettles after the quiche debacle last year. It was a slimy thing. He's not wild about kale, he's burned out on chard and will tolerate only small servings of broccoli. Other than that he'll eat anything. But that's about as far as his local food intake goes. Once he leaves the house the bets are off.

I've learned not to ask what he eats during the day while we're at work. Actually I haven't learned. I haven't asked for weeks and tonight I didn't expect to ask, but, well, that's where the conversation went, and there I was asking, and he was telling me, and I was being Miss Objective while the world sank deeper into irreversible climate change because he bought a chicken salad at the grocery store. All I could see were stationary hens unable to turn in their cages and the sterilized tasteless lettuce grown in an environment more sterile than any industrial chicken will ever enjoy and the next thing I knew we were defending ourselves.

Ahhh, the joys of love and passion. I've packed him a lunch for tomorrow to stem global warming. He has his choice of Iacopis cranberry beans I made on Sunday with roasted dry farmed tomatoes, leeks, onions, cayenne peppers and garlic or a bowl of calabacitas I made tonight. It's hotter than our 'conversation' was this evening with jalapenos, and packed with zucchini and fresh corn. There's even a leftover flour tortilla he made with Prather Ranch lard, half Full Belly wheat flour and half Guisto's flour too. They weren't the same consistency of the store bought tortillas I grew up with but they tasted better, which explains why there is only one left.

Or he could choose to go to the store. I'm not going to ask. Really, I'm not going to. Either way he's a saint because he does appreciate the local food I prepare and he makes a point to tell me often. I love that.


PS: I'm over at the Bookworm Blog this week too. Stop on by.

Take Back The Filter

The first time I visited my father in law he made calabacitas, a combination of zucchini, corn and jalapenos. And he's made it each successive visit since.

But this is the first time he's made calabacitas at our house.

"How many ears of corn do we need?" I asked him at the farmers' market.

"I don't know," he said. "I've always bought the corn in a can." We did a generous approximation and bagged six.

"How many jalapenos do you think it will take?"

"Can we just get them in a can?" he asked. "I use two cans." I bought five fresh jalapenos.

"Do you use garlic?"

"Garlic salt."

Can you use fresh?"

"Oh, I guess so," he said. The canvas bag he was carrying, potatoes bulging in the bottom, corn husks sticking out the top, was beginning to take him sideways. He looked like he would agree to anything to be free of it.

"I've got garlic at home. We'll use that."

The cute guy prepped the corn and garlic for the calabacitas. They added grass fed ground beef my aunt had given us. And at dinner, we swooned. Well, I swooned. TCG didn't stop eating long enough to swoon. And truth be told, my father in law seemed non-plussed with the fresh ingredients. But he had seconds.

Two nights in a row.

Maybe he liked it a little.



(If you use Brita water filters and haven't checked out the Take Back The Filter Campaign, please do. After meeting Beth, of Fake Plastic Fish I've signed on to be a collection point for used filters in Marin County and/or for friends and family that would like to contribute their filters (email me from the sidebar to coordinate). The filters will be returned to Clorox, the owners of Brita, to encourage them to initiate a filter recycling program, which Europe already enjoys.)

Food Memories

Time has slowed down at our house. The cute guy’s Dad is visiting and the beauty is he has nothing to be in a hurry for. He naps a lot. He’s 86, plays Scrabble with me and together we worry over the production of ethanol and alternative fuels in America. And then the whole house takes another nap.

We also talk about food because, well, because I always talk about food. He’s been telling me stories. His Grandmother would make oil soup with onions, noodles, parsley and olive oil. “It was good,” he says laughing because my face is skewed in disbelief.

He remembered buying peaches in Auburn on his summer trips to Tahoe where he was raised. “And then we’d stop in Tahoe City and buy cream.” He paused, remembering, a new smile in his eyes. He looked like he could still taste the combination.

I stopped because I recognized something new. I know taste is linked to memory of a place. What I ate is most often the first thing I remember. His memory of the peaches revealed another layer though. It wasn’t only a memory of food and place but also of season.

His annual trips to Tahoe as an adult were in the summer, when the Auburn peaches were in season. Not peaches brought from somewhere else to Auburn but the peaches grown in Auburn. The year was charted not only in time and place, but season and taste too. I've not noticed that before.

This morning at the farmers’ market I bought a generous bag of yellow peaches from Parlier. And stopped at the store for a bottle of fresh cream from West Marin. For the first time all weekend I hurried, to get home, unpack the car, to quick get in the kitchen. The peaches could hardly be peeled fast enough.

Once on the table though, peaches spilled with too much cold cream, I slowed. Still the peaches and cream were gone too fast. And then the whole house took another nap.

We're going to remember this summer visit.

Tomato Salad

Last fall I romanced every winter squash on the market. Every shape and size caught my eye. The irregular, bulbous and most weathered came home with me to be oohed and awed about, but yes, eventually eaten.

This summer I'm having a fling with tomatoes. And my desire has changed. In the summer heat I want perfection. Every crooked seam, disjointed nose is cause for rejection and I move on to the next. I look for a tomato with cheeks, a tomato that could have grown in the curved palm of my hand and gives the width of a dime when I squeeze. And the tomato should be bright, lit from an ethereal source within. I look for tomatoes that grin. And when they do I nestle them in my canvas bag for the short ride home.

And then I devour them.

Wednesday Night Tomato Fling Salad - For 2

1 Early Girl Tomato
10 Cherry Sized Chocolate Tomatoes
2 Generous Handfuls of Home Baked Herbed Croutons
1 Cucumber
2 Fingers of Andante or Your Favorite Chevre
Sea Salt

Dice the early girl and quarter the chocolate tomatoes. Fold in the croutons.

Peel, dice and introduce the cucumber. Crumple the chevre' on top and add salt to taste. Fold gently and serve immediately.

Leave the dishes for tomorrow and enjoy. Summer only lasts so long.

Seventeen Tomato Sandwiches

I've been buying heirloom tomatoes one at a time. For sandwiches. These babies are an investment but they're also a meal. For two. Of course they're sweet, juicy, local. Plucked from the vine when they're ripe and not before.

Each sandwich is independent, spontaneous. It's different depending on the contents of the fridge, what I can pick from the backyard garden pots. It's informed by the weather and the farmers' markets.

In my mind a tomato sandwich is bread, tomato, mayo and salt, although I've yet to bite into that childhood tradition this season. I've decided to keep a list of this seasons sandwiches. To see how many local ingredients I can incorporate; to see how the sandwiches change as the summer races by and fall arrives.

I hope the last sandwich with the last tomato of the season will be as memorable as the first when the juice dripped onto my clean laundered shirt and I just didn't care. I suspect it will be, if only for the longing for just one more.

Let me know what you do with your local tomato sandwiches this season. I'll add them to the list and likely try it too.

#1
Cherokee Tomato
Acme Ciabatta
Arugula and Shiso
Olive Oil
Sea Salt

#2
Pineapple Tomato
No Knead Bread
Freckles Lettuce
Avocado
Mayo
Sea Salt

#3
Cherokee Tomato
Grace Bakery Sourdough
Minced Jalapeno
Andanto Chevre
Bariani Olive Oil
Sea Salt

#4
Big Red Heirloom Tomato
Penngrove Sourdough
Dark Edged and Feather Leafed Lettuce
Prather Ranch Bacon
Mayo

#5
Cherokee Tomato
Grilled Ciabatta
Spinach
Jersey Milk Monterey Jack
Butter

#6 From Simple Green Frugal
Tomato
Homemade Yogurt Roll
Local Gouda
Basil

#7 From Simple Green Frugal
Tomato
Homemade Yogurt Roll
Roasted Zucchini and Eggplant
Gouda

#8 From Chocolate Crayons
Tomato
Sourdough
Cheddar Cheese
Parsley
Salt and Pepper

#9 From A Sonoma Garden
Tomato
Crusty Bread Sprinkled w/Dry White Wine
Gruyere Cheese
Dijon Mustard
Broiled

#10 From Chile Chews
Tomato
Nice Sourdough
Basil
Salt
Toasted

#11 From Live Green Wear Black
Tomato
Acme Seeded Baguette
Smoked Tofu
Avocado
Squeeze of Lime

#12
Beefsteak Tomato
Brickmaiden Sourdough
Cress and Mizuna
Butter
Sea Salt

#13
Cherokee Tomato
Wildflour Seeded Wheat Bread
Cucumber
Slices of Jalapeno
Olive Oil
Sea Salt

#14 From Melissa at Better Living
Tomato
Local Sourdough
Mozzarella
Basil
Olive Oil

#15 From Melissa at Better Living
Full Belly Farm Heirloom Tomato
Toasted Sumano's Sourdough
Rouge Et Noir Brie

#16
Azoychka Yellow Tomato
Seeded Whole Wheat Sourdough
Cilantro Pesto w/Walnuts & Bulgarian Banana Chile
Sea Salt

#17
Early Girl Tomato
Brick Maiden Sourdough Toasted w/Ghee
Bacon (Optional)
Campfire

Olalaberries

(Photo - Yellow Cherries)

I ate my first basket of olalaberries today.

One at a time.

In three minutes.

I wanted to be slow and savor the flavor, their texture, the scent. But after the first one I unapologetically whipped them down.

The berries, in green pulp paper baskets, resembled long blackberries. Each one the size of a deep thimble and round as a silver wedding ring.

They tasted smooth, not too sweet. They tasted like early morning, the first sunshine over the ridge.

I've had olalaberry jam, olalaberry scones but in my grocery store days I'd never seen olalaberries in the flesh. I thought they were make believe.

Until today when I ate them, alone, unadorned with sugar or sweet and licked my juice stained lips for real when I was done.

Protesting

I handed the last two bites of a relish pasted, mustard slathered hot dog I was sharing with the cute guy back to him. It tasted terrible. The waitress asked if we wanted anything else. We shook our heads no.

"I'm not a tear gas kind of a girl," I said to TCG's friend in response to a conversation about activism while finishing my diet coke in a plastic cup. And knowing how ridiculous what I was going to say next would sound, I added, "That's why I eat local food." The napkin blew off the remaining french fries on my plate. TCG's friend looked at me, at the near empty plates around us, back to me.

"This is an exception," I said searching for an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence but the canned sauerkraut in a disposable condiment cup had diluted it to a period.

The caffeine spurned me on though. "I'm not going to be a radical protester on the front lines of a world summit meeting but I will be the first person at the farmers' market buying a bunch of carrots or a bag of arugula. That's what I can do."

TCG looked at his watch. We were supposed to be working on the boat but I had a point to make. "I can support local agriculture." I left out vote with my fork given that the one beside me was plastic. "I can remove myself from the industrial food grid." The waitress leaned the check between the umbrella in the middle of the table and a bottle of Heinz ketchup.

"No hurry," she said.

There was a pause and the unfolding of wallets. The conversation returned to sailing.

Eating a cold french fry I laughed inside at the scene of life crashing with ideals. It wasn't a pretty sight.

Jam Report

The cute guy made biscuits, invited a friend for dinner, and we tasted the jam. The table was set with our repurposed placemats - bubble wrap cut to the appropriate size, a new cube of butter and tiny jam knives with the names of airlines on the handles.

We politely passed a bowl of scrambled eggs and goat cheese, dished healthy helpings of salad. Each person took one biscuit, buttered it, put on the jam and then I noticed they were poised to eat with almost held breaths and making sideways glances at me. I picked up my biscuit and took a bite.

First you have to know that any kind of a bread with butter is like what chocolate is to most people and this was no exception. But damn, the jam was good too.

It was a little runny and the strawberries could have been sliced smaller. TCG only thought the first bite tasted like brown sugar and the rest he said he didn't notice. That was good. There was an undertone of ginger but not strong enough to identify.

We ate nearly the entire jar. And I gave our friend a jar to take home, which was the most satisfying feeling of all. Eating local and being aware of what's on my plate is all good but getting to share it - that's even better.

Reducing Our Carbon Bite - Everywhere

,Sometimes I leave a lot of people out of the local food movement and I'd like to apologize and invite everybody in. I know we can't all shop at the farmers' market or eat totally local for a universe of reasons. Regardless, we all have the ability to vote for a more sustainable food future and we all have the ability to take action to reduce our carbon bite.

There are as many ways to make a difference in the aisles of the grocery store as there are in the aisles of the farmers' market or even the rows of a side yard garden. And they're all the same. I don't know why I couldn't see this before.

I've made a list of actions, which aren't anything new but they do have a different flavor when applied to the grocery store, the farmers' market or the garden.

- Choose fruits and vegetables grown as close to home as possible.

- Say no thank you to farmed salmon and shrimp.

- Buy what's in season.

- Choose organic when you can or every once in awhile.

- Pick seasonal flowers grown as close to home as possible, preferably not grown in a hot house.

- Eat one locally grown food or meal a week.

- Don't waste food.

- Drink water from the tap instead of disposable plastic bottles.

- Say no to bags when they aren't necessary.

- Take a canvas bag.

- Try a new fruit or vegetable - the purple tomato, the red carrot, the heirloom variety you've not heard of before.

- Choose the produce that isn't boxed in plastic.

- Reuse plastic bags.

- Use cloth instead of paper napkins or towels.

- Choose GMO free.

- Compost.

Every action toward a food system that makes more sense counts. For all of us.

Haiku Friday

Whoops

The cans on the shelves
have expired while we've been
eating local foods.

Feeding The World

The more I hear in the news about people on the planet going hungry the more I appreciate the northern California food on my table.

And I don't mean a generic thank-you-for-this-food kind of gratitude, not that that isn't a component; it certainly is. What I mean is I am appreciating my food - actually feeling appreciation for it.

My friend, the Renaissance Woman, told me of a study where people appreciated dirty, polluted water. Every day they talked to it, felt appreciation for it, saw it as clean and yes, the water became clear. Drinkable.

Maybe she made the study up, maybe it never happened. It doesn't matter. I believe it's true. It seems possible.

So I've been talking to my food. Respecting it. I taste the food in front of me like I've never tasted it before and I do not take any aspect of it for granted. I work that last grain of rice off the plate, eat the crumple of pizza sausage that falls in my lap. I lick my spoon, my fork and my knife. I lick my fingers after I lick my lips.

And I picture plenty of food for everyone on the planet. I don't know how that picture will happen but it seems possible.

And picturing it as already true seems like a good place to start and the only way I can hold that isn't already so.

Walnut, Chevre and Strawberry Salad

All I want to eat is my new favorite salad.

It's a mix of Marin Roots Farm lettuces. Yesterday it was little gems and a variety with red lace edges. And I bought a head of a kind I swear is from a Beatrice Potter story book.

I add other greens I'm inspired to bring home too - wild arugula, mustard, pea shoots. I haven't tasted greens as good since the first time I tasted mesclun mix on an organic farm in Sebastopol. Fire rockets went off in my mouth and everything I thought I knew about the world in that moment disappeared.

This is lettuce I'm talking about. It's not supposed to be that good.

But back to making the salad. I toast a small pan of Jackie's walnuts thinking about the people who stole her orchard of irrigation pipes in the night. And then I burn the damn walnuts, curse and stomp and eat them anyway.

Slicing up organic strawberries from Swanton Berry Farm in Santa Cruz I top the lettuce in an oversized bowl.

Next is a third of a round of the Andante chevre crumbled over the berries. And gladly stuck to my fingers.

Adding the hot walnuts on top of the cheese is the best part. They make a noise you can hear even if you aren't quiet.

I've quit using bottled dressing and instead use Bariani's olive oil and sea salt. It's straightforward good. There's no question that a bite of strawberry, tastes like strawberry. The salt like salt, the lettuce like a pretty day.

Licking my fingers between each bite, I eat slowly, without a fork, tasting all the combinations of berry, cheese and oil, lettuce, salt and walnut.

Not wanting any of it to end.

Our Carbon Bite

"Do you want to needlessly burn fossil fuel and increase our carbon footprint?" I asked a friend.

"Sure," she said. "Where are we going?"

Yeah, I laughed, but underneath was a consciousness I didn't have before. And I was able to share it in a way that it didn't have to be swatted away.

For years the guy and I have made note of different things we do that are less than healthy. "Watch out," one of us will say when we stick something in the microwave, "I'm going to change the molecular structure of this." As a result we rarely use the microwave any more.

The other night he brought home a local, industrial raised chicken that was roasted at the corner store and packaged in an inordinate amount of plastic. "I see we're having something close to a chicken marinated in petroleum products this evening."

"Yeah," he replied. "I was so hungry I couldn't help it."

I was hungry too and with some sea salt the chicken tasted damn good. But we choose to have chicken less and less and wax poetically more and more about pastured chickens we've had.

I love reciting the place and the story of the fruits and vegetables from the farmers' markets. I feel good making local and organic choices. That I can put cash in the hands of the actual people that walk the fields. But more importantly I note the ways I'm not green - long hot showers, Starbucks coffee, clothes from China.

Before we stopped going to the grocery store the produce aisle would be a noting and international blessing fest. "This is from our brothers and sisters in Chile," I would say choosing apples for lunch.

"And this is from our cousins in Mexico," the guy would continue, dropping in a bag of limes or jalepenos.

"Blessings on our cousins in Mexico," I would add.

"And Chile," he would finish.

And little by little we've been able to source our food closer to home. Point Reyes, I think now, green fields, red winged blackbirds singing, the smell of dirt. And I thank our neighbors that work the fields and get up early for the markets.

We continue to work to lighten our carbon bite and footprint, but first we've had to wake up to the less than stellar choices we're constantly making. And not make ourselves too wrong in the process.

It's slow going and a lot of laughter helps.