Honey & Plastic In A Jar

I got the chance to use our downtown independent drug store today. It was actually the cute guys idea. I suggested a chain store.

Here's what happened. I started buying local honey for our kitchen at work in a big jar. And then I bought a syrup pourer so people could, you know, pour it. The honey stuck in the spout instead. The lid had to be unscrewed to get to the honey except the lid would stick because it was caked with honey.

That was the case today. Hot water didn't help. I twisted harder. The glass syrup pourer shattered in my hand. A plastic honey bear was sounding like a better idea until this evening. Bandaged I went to see Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins from the Algarita Marine Research Center on Beth's suggestion at Fake Plastic Fish.

After studying jars of collection samples from the Pacific gyre which they passed to the audience, think a dirty snow globe of plastic, buying throw away plastic stuff (except maybe medical supplies when you're bleeding all over the place), I'm convinced throw away plastic isn't worth the damage it's doing to the ocean. Plus we likely end up eating the plastic when we think we're eating seafood.

Bottom line, syrup pourers for honey and throwaway plastics are dangerous. Fortunately there are alternatives. Like regular honey jars, water from the tap and canvas bags to start with.

Does anyone have a non-plastic alternative to keep greens fresh in the fridge? That's a plastic alternative I haven't figured out yet.

Haiku Friday

Standing at the sink
eating tomato salad,
nothing else matters.

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.

Membrillo and Orange Raspberries

One of my favorite parts of any farmers' market is finding a treasure. That rare fruit, one of a kind, twisted vegetable that should have grown straight.

This morning it was the perfect paper blue basket of orange raspberries. I cradled them to the car for my Goddaughter's ninth birthday. She devoured them like candy.

Saturday morning at the Pt. Reyes market (my favorite and the last I'll make this year), I found membrillo, membrillo. I didn't hesitate for a second. When in the world will another opportunity to buy quince paste from a woman with a corner store smile selling it from a table in front of a 20 foot wall of hay bales present itself? It's as much art as it is food. And it tastes better than I could have imagined.

Last week the best market treasure was Ann from Brookside Farms in Brentwood. If you are in the area for the Thursday market at the Crocker Galleria stop and say hello to her. She's got her finger on the pulse of nature and the seasons. Everything she, her husband and son grow informs her as she'll happily tell you. And she wasn't just a treasure last week, she is every week.

It's generally the small growers where I find a one of a kind surprise, a piece of something that got to go wild, or was grown with extra affection. I know the markets aren't all strawberries and rose petals. I know the farmers work their asses off but if you ask me that's all the more reason to romanticize and appreciate them.

Besides it makes the food taste even better.

What treasure have you found at the farmers' market recently? Have you ever had membrillo? Orange raspberries?

Haiku Friday

After Dinner

Walking unlit streets
the asphalt smells of new rain
and we hurry home.

Eat Local Challenge

I know. It's no surprise that I'm participating in the Eat Local Challenge again. But I'm excited anyway.

The challenge last year changed how I eat. It turned me into a locavore with pointed green ears. So what more could I want to take the challenge again, I keep asking myself.

The truth is embarrassing but here it is. I want to make your ears pointy too. Really, the reason I started eating local was to save the world. And as naive as that is I can't let go of it. Eating food that is grown nearby is something I can do and I have the opportunity to do it three times a day. We all do. I believe every bite makes a difference. I know it tastes good. And, yes, there are challenges.

I can't do anything about the economy, bail out packages, the war in Iraq. I feel powerless over the negative political campaigns and a thousand other things but I can have a say about what I put on the end of my fork, how it got there and by whom.

I eat local food for peace. I eat it to support my neighbors so they can be the stewards of the streams. I eat local food so I can return the jars and cartons when I'm done. So I know the names and smiles and stories of the people who grow the food on my table. I eat local food because it's real, it's colorful, it has character and it tastes like what it is. I eat it because I can. Because fields of food are little bits of heaven and poetry and dirty hands and home. Because it's encourages biodiversity and wild things. Because eating local makes sense.

I'm participating in the Eat Local Challenge this year mainly for other peoples stories though. I'm inviting family, friends and co-workers to prepare a local meal, a local snack, a trip to the farmers' market, to a restaurant that serves local food; I'm inviting them to dinner, lunch, anything to get them to take a bite and tell me what they think.

Whether anyone takes me up on the offer or not I will continue eating local with a few exceptions: organic free trade coffee, salt, yeast and a bit of flour for baking. I'm looking forward to seeing if I'll notice a difference other than baking my own bread instead of loaves from Acme or the Brickmaiden.

In any event, I always look forward to enjoying my food.