CUESA Newsletter and Local Food Blogs

My bags are packed. I have dried apricots and almonds packed for the plane in reused plastic bags I bought before I joined the plastic posse at Fake Plastic Fish. I'll add a sliced apple before I walk out the door and figure out what my plastic alternatives are when I get home. Waxed bags? Are those better?

While I'm away check out the a year of eating locally feature in the CUESA newsletter. It's me. While you're there sign up for the newsletter. It's year round and always has good goings on, not to mention seasonal recipes by a variety of San Francisco's best chefs, farmers and all around good cooks.

For more good reading check out bloggers in other parts of the world participating in the Eat Local Challenge this month. Finland. Belgium. Sweden. The word is spreading.

And for a good laugh about the challenge catch up on Food on the Food, a locavore with kids. She's wild. But she can cook too.

I'll be back in time to vote with fingers crossed that there will be a strawberries and tomatoes still on the market. But if not I'll find something just as good.

Be well.

Haiku Friday

Slicing an apple
I remember the fruit tree
and all the spring bees.

Plankton, Potatoes and Plastic Oh My!

I'm creating monsters. First there was the Muse telling a friend she couldn't order the farmed salmon. Now it's the Blond telling everyone they should be using cotton and mesh produce bags instead of plastic. She can actually quote the ratio of plankton to plastic in the Pacific gyre from nearly two weeks ago at the talk by the couple from the Algarita Marine Research Center. (My jaw dropped.)

I work at being subtle about these things. I smile, breathe, laugh. Turn blue. Start again. I share stories, provide information, refer to experience. These ladies armed with information, "Education works," the Blond said, are slamming down the law though. They get away with saying words like can't and should. Words I step back from.

The Blond took her new cotton produce bags to a shopping center farmers' market today and called me tonight. "I asked the guy selling the potatoes what kind they were. He couldn't tell me." Had she been standing up instead of in her car she would have been kicking dirt. "Do you know who runs that market?" she asked.

I didn't laugh out loud or miss a single beat. "No one," I told her. "It's a shopping mall. Think about it." But I wanted to jump up and down that she suddenly cared about the variety of food she was buying.

"I think they're selling food from the grocery store," she continued.

I did laugh then though, because she cared about where her food came from. I've been talking about local food until I'm orange and violet, sienna and cotton candy in the face and it never phased her. But put enough plastic in the ocean that it outnumbers the plankton and where her potatoes come from becomes an issue.

I don't understand how that connection works exactly but I'm glad it does. And really everything is connected. Right?

Terry Gross and Michael Pollan

Terry Gross did a terrific interview with Michael Pollan today regarding his letter to the next President that was in the New York Times weekend before last. I'm embarrassed to say I haven't read the letter. I mean, have you seen it? It's long. Even one of the campaigns (he didn't say which) asked if he could write an outline for the aides. The outline of his answer was no.

I've been listening to Michael Pollan for several years and he's on fire right now talking about solutions for the changes that need to be made to food policy at the federal level to our own backyards. He's the only guy that can talk about the farm bill and laugh at the same time. And he is laughing a lot. He made the idea of a vegetable garden on the White House lawn (it's apparently in the letter) sound completely reasonable. He made the fact that there isn't a vegetable garden at the White House seem ridiculous.

I know I'm a how-does-food-get-to-the-table geek but this is an enjoyable interview. It's 40 minutes and you can listen to it here while you're doing something else. I promise you'll smile more than once and you may think a little differently about the food on your plate or how in the world it got there.

Eat Local For World Peace

A few days ago Kendra at A Sonoma Garden smartly listed 11 ways to eat locally in her town of Sonoma. I'm considering my own list for San Anselmo.

How about you? Wouldn't it be great if every town had their own list at the Chamber of Commerce, Town Hall or posted in a public place? Or found on line at the town's local food blogger? And then we could all eat local and save so much fossil fuel we'd have world peace forever. What have we got to loose? Nothing else has worked.

Or, how about posting 11 ways to eat locally because it would be fun to share with friends, provide a resource for people thinking about eating locally and it would support local business. In any event, it's a smart idea.

My first way to eat local would be a secret. It would be the persimmon trees at Robson Harrington Park. The park hosts a riot of community garden plots but the persimmon trees are unfenced and loaded with fruit this year. It's far too soon to consider eating them but not too soon to admire. Their leaves are still hanging on and the fruit looks as if their pointed bottoms were dipped in an early sunset. Already delicious.

Let me know if you post 11 ways to eat locally in your community or, shh, what your one local secret is.

And let's keep working on that solution for world peace.

Haiku Friday

Van Jones' book made the
New York Times best seller list!
Very good, good news!

Eat Local Challenge

The moon is already waning and I've yet to post an eat local challenge story that isn't mine. I've had voice mail messages about local food but aside from that the month has been an extended bit of summer with only fleeting reminders of sharing the challenge.

The Takeout Queen visited a farmers' market in New York. "They cross pollinate their summer squash," she exclaimed over the phone and then more than likely went out to lunch. But her enthusiasm was appreciated.

My mother called too after discovering chard at the farmers' market near her. "It's red," she said. "Delicious." Which had me investigate chard at the grocery store the other day on a trip with the Muse. I didn't remember ever seeing it there. There was some bunches on the shelf, anemic and barely pink. Probably because it was the end of the day. Buying a bunch of chard is like buying a bunch of already opened lilies. The petals, or leaves in the case of the chard, get bruised if they're handled or set upon hard surfaces. I can understand why grocers would be hesitant to carry it.

Emily, a pioneer mother of four, emailed she was going to fix a local meal for her family. But really, if she doesn't get to it, well, can I blame her? I had one of her four and one of another two overnight; I fed them a can of refried beans and flour tortillas. They loved it and in an abbreviated bit of time that was all that was important. I did throw in sauteed buttery corn I'd froze earlier in the summer. They each had seconds and I was quietly elated I got something local in their meal.

Do you have any local food stories this month? If you're doing the challenge, how's it going? And if you're doing it with kids, extra green stars to you!