Fans of the Public Market

publicmarketman's 2012 New Year Resolutions

2012-01-02T10:20:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year RPM Fans

After long and arduous effort, your humble Fan Club publisher has struck in stone a dozen 2012 New Year Resolutions:

to store all my screen names and passwords in a readable format in one place.
to not stock-up on crappy Aldi's canned goods for the 2012 Rapture.
to not over-react when my Pogo euchre partner doesn't lead trump on my call.
to improve my typing speed to 25 words a minute.
to minimize my facebook facetime.
to forgive those who clip me with baby strollers and shopping carts at the RPM.
to only believe polls for which I was called.
to reach out with kindness and peace to non-RPM shoppers.
to only make smoothies that my sig-other will drink.
to stop cold-turkey, multi-tasking.
to limit attendance at box stores to one day a week.
to enhance my efforts to retire gracefully.

Happy New Year!

Food Auctions

2011-12-29T09:21:00.001-05:00

I have a confession. I was an eBayer. And, I did it as a business.

When you eBay as a business, you have a tendency to go to area auctions to procure inventory. In so doing, you visit your area's AuctionZip page to get the schedule and place for your area's upcoming auctions.

Here's the page on AuctionZip for our area's January 2012 auctions . You can set-up your own auction query radius by entering your zip code and desired radius in miles around it to see a calendar of reistered auctioneers in your locale.

When you go often to the AuctionZip site you can't help noticing a few area listings for food and grocery autions.

While I've never gone to a food auction, I have been at antique/collectible auctions where the first 1/2 hour is devouted to the sale of what looks to be surplus or near-expiration date processed foods and, sometimes, meats.

There's a smattering of information on the web about how to find food auctions and how to buy at them.

OK, here we go touching the 3rd rail. If you're a frequent shopper at the RPM, you have to notice the similarity in many produce products on display. If they're stickered like bananas and other imported products, they often have the same origin and distributor, not to mention quality. I dunno, but to me this might mean they are all being purchased at the same place and at relatively the same time.

Well, try to get some information on this around here. The web is as silent as the market. I'm not affixed on this subject because I just don't buy what doesn't look good to me. But, it would be nice to know what are the sources of out of local and imported fruits and vegetable sold at the RPM, especially when they're out of season.

Inquiring minds should want to know.

Making Smoothies with Ingredients Bought @ The RPM

2011-12-23T06:04:00.001-05:00

Hey smoothie lovers, check out this informative and colorful article from Smoothierecipe.tv about Smoothie History.

Here's a link to her smoothie food combining chart that illustrates her do's and don't for mixing different kinds of foods in smoothie recipes.

I'm going to be trying out my own smoothie concoction this morning. You can buy most of the makings for a smoothie at the Rochester Public Market.

I'm good-to-go to try making a smoothie every morning for breakfast.

Do have a splendid holiday season.

My crude purple people eater smoothie:

Zoe's Smoothie Food Combining Chart

Good-bye Cheap Food

2011-12-16T08:36:00.001-05:00

You don't have to food shop at a big box grocery store to be aware of soaring food prices. Shopping at the Rochester Public Market, local farmers' markets, mid-sized food discount stores, along with food clubs and co-ops is often a better barometers for measuring food price inflation. Overheads for packaging, customized and attractive shelf presentations, smaller lot sizes geared toward single individuals and partially prepared or ready-to-eat foods for the shopper-on-the-go are minimized in these food shopping venues.

There are common factors in the upward spiral in food prices, with energy costs being the easiest to understand. Fresh grown, farm raised and factory processed foods use fossil fuel based energy sources throughout the entire process from sowing to harvesting, processing, distribution, warehousing and retail bricks-and-mortar overheads.

Around the Rochester region, attendance at the RPM is booming, keeping parking at a premium on Saturdays no matter how many free and paid spaces are added. Local farmers' markets have also grown in numbers in the surrounding townships. Is it because there's some kind of innate draw we humans have to experience the marketplace? Or is it a keen desire to beat the system when it comes to soaring food prices?

Interesting FAQs: historic food prices.

Once you get used to the "buyer beware" regimen involved with buying produce, dairy products and meats at an open air market, a shopper is almost always able to beat local grocery chain prices (although new places like PriceRite might give you a run-for-your-money.) Public market shoppers also have to get used to paying for many fruits and vegetables on a cost per item rather than a cost/lb. basis.

The history of public markets like the RPM evolved from municipalities recognizing the need for an alternative to high food prices found in local grocery stores during the post Industrial Revolution era. They combated quasi-monopolistic prices by providing a low overhead market facility for farmers, wholesalers and brokers to sell fresh produce, dairy products, meat along with limited processed and prepared foods to folks looking for a break in food prices.

Extreme Couponer in Big Box Store:

Given our times, with what I believe to be a sea change in the domestic economy, I can only see continued growth in venues like the RPM. Let's hope it always remains an oasis in a desert of big box stores, scanners and shopper club cards that track your every move.

It's The Berries @ the RPM (per container w/volume discount):

Be One With The Smoothie

2011-12-11T12:08:00.001-05:00

What better place to buy you smoothie ingredients than at the Rochester Public Market.

Smoothies have become popular with many on-the-go folks looking to eat a quick nutritious food during their busy day. Smoothies have become regular fare at big grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants and diners. Smoothies have also crept onto fast food menus. McDonald's mango/pinapple smoothie is only one of the selections available today at a fast food franchise.

If you want to make your own smoothies, not only will you need to routinely buy fresh produce, you're going to have to find a place to buy ingedients at a reasonable price. The broadest selection of reasonably priced fruits and vegetables will probably be at your local farm market or at places like the RPM.

Like juicing, making smoothies can be both expensive and a labor of love. Knowing that you're pouring something into your body that's good for you should be incentive enough. Also, the satisfaction of preparing your own healthy food instead of buying fast or processed foods helps one stick to it. In today's busy world, like exercise regimens, accomplishing the getting started part is often easier than the sticking to it part.

Instructional YouTube Tutorial on Making Green Smoothies (you can check out comments and info links below directly on Zoe's YouTube screen page):

Just as with home exercise equipment, there will be a smoothie making machine in the offing if you already don't own a blender that will do the job. There's an abundance of specialized smoothie blenders out there as well as recipies for using them.

I go to the RPM on Saturdays with a friend who stocks-up on fresh fruit ingredients he needs to make his custom smoothies every day. Once you routinize your pick at the market it becomes a snap.

Upon extensive research, you'll find many mid-range smoothie machines that'll do the job at home.

There are also many very reasonable single-purpose smoothie-makers on the market, some with take-and-go containers built right into the blender.

Tell us what your experience has been buying fruits and vegetables to make smoothies and what process you use to make them.

Heirlooms, Hybrids or Both?

2011-12-06T11:36:00.001-05:00

There's a lot of talk about the dangers of hybrid grains, fruits and vegetables.

I must admit that I tend to agree with opinions like those found in this Mother Earth News article. I think many fruits and veggies like tomatoes have been hybridized in order to improve their shipping and handling tolerances as well as their shelf life in stores and in the home. If you have ever seen modern equipment harvesting and loading produce in the fields as well as in packaging plants and warehouses, you'd get why producers need thicker skins on fruits and vegetables.

Here's a great web page fruitsinfo.com that gives you a great pictorial review of modern-day hybrids fruits.

To help you decide if hybrids affect nutitional values of produce, here's a page that offers copeous Information on hybrid vegetables.

So, you can make-up you own mind whether heirloom or hybrid fruits and vegetables are good to go on your table. And, we leave you with this humorous pictorial account of freaky fruit and vegetable hybrids at Hybrid fruits and vegetables pictures .

Tis The Season

2011-12-03T19:11:00.001-05:00

Like every Saturday morning, my buddy and I went to the City of Rochester's Public Market. It was a beautiful sunny day for fresh fruit and vegetable shopping, people watching and visiting with customers, musicians and vendors.

The colors were popping in the light, especially the reds, so I took a lot of pics with my Kodak digital camera. The sunshine had everyone in a jolly mood so quite a few folks let me take pictures of them when asked.

I put stored them as an album on the Fans of the Rochester Public Market Facebook fan club page.

I also uploaded them as an open-to-the-public album on imgur.com:

Public Market Pics - 12/03/11

I'm going to start using imgur.com because it's more user friindly than FB to upload, edit and store pics and transport images from albums to other places like facebook.

Tell me what you think either here or on the FaceBook page.

Processed Food Addiction

2011-11-28T09:08:00.001-05:00

Sunday night, 60 Minutes had a segment on food additives and proceesed foods and it piqued me to do some internet research on the subject.

A friend of mine ran a health food restaurant here in Rochester, NY. It wasn't totally vegan. He did serve free range eggs, especially in breakfast dishes.

Joe bought most of his fresh fruits and vegetables at the Rochester Public Market. Often while Saturday shopping at the Rochester Public Market, my buddy and I would get a call from him to pick up produce items for his restaurant. We'd bring them with us on our stop to eat there after shopping at the market.

While eating, our friend would circulate around and sit with customers. More often than not, the conversation would get around to healthy eating.

I was new to the game, but had developed good eating habits from my mother who was into veggies big time and served at least two of them at every "balanced meal." She knew the term "Mediterranean Diet" long before doctors and dieticians began pushing it.

Joe believed that to start eating healthy you had to break your addiction to the engineered tastes embedded in the brain by fast and processed foods. He thought for some, shedding the addiction could be gradual and for others, cold turkey. He elaborated that the addiction was created by adding large amounts of salts, sugars and fats, often in in combination, to produce a very specific, satisfying taste that would be burned into your memory to the point that you would crave it again. Also, a repetitive experience with the taste enabled you to recognize it immediately upon tasting it.

The example that Joe often used to illustrate an addictive processed food taste was McDee's french fries.

The trick is to get a consumer to the point where they can remember the taste of the product and visualize it in their mind at any time.

Part of the problem in weaning off food with additives is that at the beginning most folks can't handle the "blandness." A good natural food cook knows how to counteract this using natural spices. But, after only a few weeks, I began not missing salt at all. In fact, now when I eat something with high salt, it tastes awful. I now hardly use salt on anything and go around preaching to others to use sea salt.

There's so much stuff out there on additives like MSG, you can get paranoid. But, like my friend Joe would say, if you're going to have a heart attack worrying about what you eat you might as well eat what you want. It's a mind-over-matter thing.

Here's a few informative links I found on the subject:

And, as always, the test will be next Monday @ 11:00 AM.

Waiting Around for Turkey

2011-11-24T13:33:00.001-05:00

We were waiting around on T-Day for guests to arrive and celebrate with us some fine food and good conversation. Of course, I was wondering how much of the food we would eat was from local farms. Or for that matter, how much was produced in the U.S.A.

With N.A.F.T.A. and all the other free trade agreements, it's become very hard to know where food products originate, even when they have one of those little hard to read stickers attached.

Speaking of where food comes from, I found this great web page called History of some fruits and vegetables which traces some varieties of fruits and vegetable back 11,000 years. Here's a teaser from this most informative page:

"Many of the fruits and vegetables written about on this page have grown in the wild for thousands of years. When people began to eat them as food they simply gathered the wild fruits and vegetables. Then, about 11,000 years ago people began to plant fruit and vegetables, to farm the plants and to care for them. The farmers experimented and grew new kinds of the wild fruits and vegetables."

And there's a great set of live links at the end of the above page (you'll have to go directly to to History of some fruits and vegetables to get them live:)

"Fruit is the edible part of a plant that develops from a flower.

Go here to find a list of fruits and vegetables that we eat

Go here to read about fruit and why people should eat it

Go here and find a word search puzzle about vegetables in the word games box"

It's not that I'm paranoid, but the recent articles on canteloupe contamination and danger to dogs from Chinese-made chicken jerky treats keep me on my toes about this sort of information from the Colorado State University Extension, "Preventing E. coli From Garden to Plate."

Don't forget to wash what you buy at the Rochester Public Market and anywhere else you get fruits and veggies.

I leave you with this from The Organic Consumers Association web page: What Types of Produce Have the Highest and Lowest Levels of Pesticide Residues? .

Nutrition Videos

2011-11-18T20:53:00.001-05:00

Enjoy:

Food Processing: Harvest, Wash, Chop, Package, Store.

2011-11-12T12:24:00.001-05:00

If you measure interest by the number of YouTube videos devoted to a subject matter, there must be a fascination with modern food processing machinery and systems. So, I thought I'd share some of the more well- done videos with all our Rochester Public Market fans so you might get a feel for how our fruits and vegatables are processed from field to table.

I had in-laws who lived in Modesto, CA, which sits in the middle of walnut/pecan/almond country (dominated by the Diamond nut conglomerate). Modesto also sits on the edge of the San Joaquin Valley's mega- wineries and is just north of the Monterey Bay's mega Delmonte and Dole veggie/fruit fields.

On visits to Modesto, I got to see a lot of fruit and orchard planting, pruning, irrigation and harvesting operations in the giant fields of what is sometimes referred to as the produce basket of the world. The roads around and through the San Joaquin have an endless stream of fruit, nut and vegetable transports bringing the year-round harvest to market.

Monterey Canning Co. Tourist Trap

Down in Monterey they celebrate John Steinbeck and have somewhat preserved a portion of the Cannery Row he wrote about. I did not see Lenny from Of Mice and Men, but did see the hugest artichoke, tomato and pinapple fields laced around Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay. You have to adjust your perspective of California orchards and vegetable farms vis-a-vis what we have in New York State.

Artichoke field near Monterey Bay

So, here we go on a tour of man and machine processing our food supply. Take a peek at any of the videos that might pique your interest:

Tomatoes Processing Line

broccoli floret harvester

food processing equipment - canteloupes

fresh market cabbage cleaning process

Multipurpose Vegetable Cutting Machine

Fresh produce packaging

Modified atmosphere packaging bags

This one blew my mind: DOLE Pineapple Packing (narrators have to have a Brit accent to have credibility, today)

Here's an informative link on Cold Storage of Fruit and Vegetables , something you should bone-up on if you shop off-season at local farmer's markets.

And, as always, the test will be next Monday @ 11:00 AM.

Monterey Bay

In New York, Say Cheese.

2011-11-04T11:50:00.000-04:00

Recent news coverage concerning open-air counter displays of artisan cheeses (or is it "artisinal?") piqued my interest in cheese and the way it is sold at the Rochester Public Market and many other NY open air food markets. First of all, I was having an inferiority complex moment because I didn't know what "artisan cheese" meant. But then, I lead a sheltered life.

Wisconsin aside, I do know that New York is a leading cheese producing state. The reason why is that I've heard of New York cheddar cheese and I know there's the Polly-O dairy smoke stacks along the 390 in the Southern Tier.

It turns out, artisan cheese is a highfalutin way of saying it's hand produced by small businesses instead of by Kraft, which is OK as long as it's wrapped in Saran Wrap or Reynolds aluminum, I guess. I'm also thinking a small business that mostly brokers cheese for sale isn't an artisan no matter who makes what it sells.

And, guess what? We have New York Finger Lakes cheese trails, too. All you got to do is find the ones that overlap with the wine trails and you can save a lot of gas with a twofer trip.

Folks, you really don't have to go to the Finger Lakes for cheese when we have high quality, reasonably priced cheese vendors at our very own Rochester Public Market."

And, when in NYS, say cheese.

In Vino Veritas

2011-10-29T17:03:00.002-04:00

"In wine there is truth." So said the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Greek poet Alcaeus is the oldest known source for the phrase. The Roman historian Tacitus described how the Germanic peoples always drank wine while holding councils, as they believed "nobody could lie effectively when drunk." All I know is that a cheap wine drunk is a bear the next morning. And,I guess if you want to find out if your spouse or significant other is cheating on you, take a joint wine tasting trip to one of the fine Finger Lakes wine trails and hire a lawyer.

Seriously folks, where we live near the Finger Lakes region we are blessed to have ready access to one of the nation's leading wine producing regions.

Years ago, my grandfather made wine using New York grapes bought at the Rochester Public Market. Around 1960, the retail cost of New York's grapes and the ready availability of cheap California wines and bulk grape juices made it prohibitive to press fresh grapes so he and about everyone else started buying bottled grape juices that were blends of New York grapes and California hybrids that were milder, dryer, and less musky than our varieties.

Over time, the aches of aging set in grampa's bones and Modesto's wine barons grabbed the market for reasonable table wines. They grow grapes in the San Joauquin Valley like Iowans grow corn. It was a lot of work making wine from grapes. I know because I helped my grampa make wine with a large manually operated press a few times.

In the 1970's there was a slight resurgence in the art of wine-making with wine stores selling juices and do- it-yourself wine-making kits. Specialty stores came and went now replaced, it seems, by wine tasting tours and an explosion of wine aficionados and connaisseurs.

That is, except for our very own Bully Hill Vinyards, complete with its humorous wine tasting room skits that poke fun at the "raised pinky finger" tasting technique and the effite Napa Valley wine industry. Bully Hill is also renown for its unconventional wine labels that stand-out on the store shelves. Try a visit to their facility just north of Hammondsport. It's an unique wine tasting experience.

New York State surely has some wonderful things going for it. And, two of those things are the Rochester Public Market and the Finger Lakes wine country, both great excursions for seniors trying to retire gracefully.

Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick, Horticulturist - 1870-1951

2011-10-22T10:45:00.000-04:00

If you attend auctions around the Finger Lakes region like I do, you will run into the works of U. P. Hedrick, a legend in New York whose books are now very collectible and appear for sale at many on-site farm homestead auctions and estates sales.

U.P. Hedrick came to New York from Michigan and contributed immensely to the advancement of New York's fruit growing business. He worked at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva, New York starting in 1905 and as its Director from 1928 to his retirement in 1939.

His many beautifully illustrated books were treasured by New York farmers and by today's serious antique book collectors. His books are always right along side those antique rural atlases also found in many New York farm homesteads. Here's a link to a google images array which includes some of the original litho images found in U.P.'s New York fruit books.

And, yes, you can now read books online for free. Here's Hedrick's The Small Fruits of New York (1925) published by the Internet Achive.

We can thank New York State for bringing U.P. Hedrick to the Geneva station and providing the means to produce these beautiful works of science and art that document forever our fruit growing heritage.

Rochester Public Market: A Springboard Experience

2011-10-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

After countless treks to shop and shoot photo albums for the Rochester Public Market Fans of blog and FaceBook fan club page, I began to realize the market served many different purposes for its diverse visitors.

Which reminds me of a guy who taught ancient Greek at Aquinas Institute. His course was well attended not only because ancient Greek has many more root derivatives loaned to the English language and scientific terminology than Latin, but the priest who taught it let us explore any subject that was faintly related to the study of the ancient language. He told us he liked to think that his Greek class was a springboard to a world of experience.

If you let it, the Rochester Public Market can be a springboard, too. I've always been fascinated by the many comments on the Fan club page about the market's surrounding eateries, although lately there's a little more talk about the vendors - mostly regarding their booth location or existence. Also, the many cultural and commercial repeat events offered at the market have broadened user comments and likes.

The alternative uses of the venue by the City illustrates that the site, used three days each week as a food and produce based public market, is a healthy setting for other entertainment, commercial and cultural activities. To see what I mean, here's the City's event calander. Whoda thunk the Public Market would start to rival The Dome out in Henrietta for planned events?

Turns out there's a plethora of books written about the farmers market experience. One right here in our back yard is the new Public Market Cook Book available by clicking HERE .

Happy farm marketing, all!

Listeria Hysteria

2011-10-15T12:50:00.000-04:00

The recent news scare about cantaloupe contamination emanating from a Colorado grower rekindled my interest in the overall safety of all our domestic and imported fresh fruits and vegetables.

When you’re a regular customer of the various produce vendors at the Rochester Public Market, you are exposed not only to the seasonal cycles for locally grown and distributed produce, but you also get to experience the year-round cycles for cold storage distribution, hydroponic/greenhouse production, domestic and internationally imported fruits and vegetables. Sometimes, it can get confusing from where a product was grown (those little oval stickers on labels can be a bear to find and read without a loupe.)

Often, asking a vendor where the product came from will get you a terse response. Often, where the product is grown and from where it is distributed gets blurred in the answer.

Why should we even care about where that avocado came from? Well, I can tell you one thing, there are an awful lot of studies about the contamination of fruit and vegetables along the way from planting to distribution, especially when irrigation practices use waste or “gray” water.

What’s to worry, right? Just scrub, wash and watch how you store your produce to avoid external contaminants like bacteria and farm chemicals used in weed and pest control, fertilizer and coloring. Or, better yet, buy organic produce and minimize your exposure to the problem.

Sounds easy enough. Then why is there the hubbub about cantaloupes? Maybe it’s the media playing off people’s fear. Or, the federal government wants to prevent a cantaloupe-based listeria epidemic. Either way, it’s apparent the public may not be trusted to watch out for contaminated food products without help. And, that’s worrisome.

Myself, I’m going to keep turning over those clear plastic strawberry containers to look for fuzzy gray stuff on the inside-bottom and ask where they were grown, not from where they were distributed.

Meanwhile, don’t forget, keep scrubbing.

Licorice - Candy or Herbal Medicine?

2011-10-11T16:39:00.000-04:00

If you’re old enough to remember penny candy, what a treat it was to plop down a cent for a licorice stick at the local candy store. You either like or hate licorice. Long before it became popular to think of licorice as an organic health food, I have always cottoned to it.

Late in my sheltered life I got introduced to the Panda brand of licorice. I was getting turned-off with the slow degradation of modern licorice brands and had stopped buying it. Then, a member of a local food club in my town said I ought to try Panda licorice. Well, I did and it immediately revived my licorice fetish.

Of course, then I realized how many other folks knew about Panda licorice and were prone to tell me all about the nutritional and medicinal qualities of the popular herbal candy.

All I cared about was that Panda bits had a real licorice flavor and wasn’t as waxy tasting as the cheaper box store-bought brands (you know, the one’s that are right by the check-out counters that get your kid pleading for you to buy a pack.) I think it’s worth it to hold off and try one of the more natural brands of licorice, like Panda and Feydar brands. You won’t go back to the other stuff.

Do you know of any vendors at the Public Market that have licorice products, including items like licorice tea?

What’s Your Take on Sprouted Tofu?

2011-10-10T09:13:00.000-04:00

Vegetarian and natural food products are growing in popularity among consumers looking to find alternative protein sources. The Rochester Public Market, other farm markets and local grocery chains are adjusting to the growing demand for such products. In fact, one large locally-based grocery store is highlighting the effort with targeted advertising, banners and allocation of more floor space within its stores.

Staple soy food products include the many different types of tofu. Not so long ago, tofu was only found at Asian grocery stores or natural food stores like Lorrie’s and the Abundance Cooperative Market. Members of groups like the 19th Ward Food Club also had regular access to regional distributors of tofu products made by companies like Nasoya and Wildwood.

Well, you might say the tofu market is sprouting. There’s a new product, sprouted tofu. Does it satisfy your perceived or the advertised expectations regarding taste, texture and nutritional value? Can you tell any difference between sprouted tofu and one of the other types used in your recipes?

You can add your comments about tofu here or on the RPM FaceBook fan club page. You might also like to tell us what about your favorite soy product vendors at the market?

Thanks, fans.

With Grapes and Grampa at the Public Market

2010-03-03T13:50:00.000-05:00

My grandparents on my mother’s side were old school. My grandma prepared large Sunday spreads well into the 20th Century, until she could no longer manage the work involved in such a formidable enterprise.

To be honest, my grandparents lived on the west side near Edgerton Park and did not frequent the Rochester Public Market. There was a local Hart’s Market within walking distance on the corner of Phelps and Lake Avenue’s that could provide most of their food needs.

Neither of them drove, so additional trips to the A&P at the West Ridge Plaza, Star Market on Lyell Ave. or Loblaw’s on Dewey near Driving Park had to be chauffeured by my dad, often with me in tow.

However, every Autumn, there were obligatory trips to the Public Market to buy regionally grown grapes for my grampa’s annual wine-making project. Most of the seasonal grapes were from the Finger Lakes region and tended to be of the Concord varieties. They were often trucked straight from the vineyards still in their long rectangular grape crates. My dad had to usually find a truck somewhere to haul the crates from the market back to my grampa’s house. Afterwards, I think he used to take the crates back to the vendors. This was done as a favor by the grape vendors so that the grapes didn’t have to be transferred to other containers to get them home.

I was pretty young when I tagged along on these trips, but I do remember the haggling as part of the grape selection process. I think some of the wine-making additives like yeast and chemical stoppers were also available at the Market.

Gramps had 55 and 20 gallon casks in the cellar of his big old house that was once the residence provided to the warden of the Monroe County Jail located at Edgerton Park before it was moved downtown. The 55 gallon cask was for general red table wine. He also made a small amount of a hardier red wine that had more kick to it and was used as an appetizer, after dinner or special occasion sipping wine.

A few times I was able to watch him make the wine down in his cool, damp cellar. I remember the grapes for the special wine got extra-strength turns on the old wooden wine-press screw wheel in order to get the last nectar out of the skins of all the grapes used for both the regular and special wines.

Unforgettable was the tart acrid aroma wafting through the cellar as a result of the squeezing of all those grapes.

So, my grandma always had home-made wine at her Sunday and Holiday dinners. Grampa didn’t filter or pasteurize it. Nor did he add preservatives. I’ll always remember the sediment in the bottom of the small glass allowed to me as a youngster. It just wasn’t the same as Gallo.

There was a right of passage during dinner among the grandchildren to be asked to go downstairs in the cellar and refill the wine decanters.

And, you knew you had reached adulthood when around the holidays you were allowed to try the special red wine. That stuff sure did pack a punch.

Near the end of the annual life-cycle for his batches of red wine, gramps would siphon-off the bottom of the kegs into quart bottles and let the wine go to vinegar for grandma’s and his daughters’ kitchen use.

Sadly, the time and cost of making wine from harvest grapes became a limiting factor as plentiful California reds were sold at discount rates in stores like Century Liquor. Also, the earthy, musky taste of pure New York grape wines could not compete with the smoother, lighter California varieties. In fact, for a while, at the tail-end of wine-making grapes being sold in bulk at the Public Market, bottled California grape juices were offered to blend into home-made wine recipes. Soon, New York grape juices were too offered in bottles as a basis for making wine at home.

The end of an era had arrived. I wonder if today there is any bulk sales of grapes or juice for home wine-making at the Market?

Saving The Public Market

2010-02-27T09:33:00.000-05:00

Let me burden you with some City of Rochester political history which gives the context of why the Public Market is still located where it is, today.

Back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, by fluke, the local G.O.P. won a majority on City Council and ran the City for a mere 4 years from 1969 to 1973. They had not had a majority on City Council since the late 1950’s and were surprised they won.

For those of you who are into politics, here’s what happened. The City was a city manager form of government back then, without a generally elected mayor, so when a party controlled City Council, they controlled the City.

There still were 4 district and 5 at-large council seats. A new Democrat coalition was making its move on taking over the council from the “old guard” Democrats, one of which was a district councilman in the Northwest District (Charlotte, 10th Ward) who happened to be an old school, staunch conservative Democrat.

Well, the New Dems couldn’t have that, so they gave their endorsement to another more palatable candidate. The sitting district councilperson was disgruntled enough to run as a Conservative in the race for the seat.

While he didn’t win, he drew enough votes from the sparse Dem base in the district to allow the G.O.P. candidate to win by plurality. The G.O.P. ended up with a 5-4 majority on City Council. In the next at-large election cycle, they expanded it to 6-3, riding the Nixon “silent majority” bandwagon (this was pre-Watergate.)

And, that brings me to the Public Market. During their 4 year tenure running the City, probably because they knew their majority wasn’t going to last forever, the G.O.P. tried to strip the City of as much as they could and get it into something they controlled long term
at the county or authority level.

One of the projects involved a transfer of the Public Market to the new Regional Market Authority at Jefferson and E. Henrietta Roads. The takeover was proposed as a cost-cutting measure for the City because all operating costs and bonding service charges would have become the liability of the Regional Market Authority. There was also the allure of a commercial/industrial redevelopment project for the potentially vacated lands currently occupied by the Public Market.

The proposal turned out to be a bomb - a big political bomb. At the time, no one could remember a contemporary political issue that created so much furor in the City of Rochester (later, the G.O.P. majority proposed buying the old Aquinas Stadium and created a massive support response from AQ alumni since the proposition would relieve the school from the stadium's debt burden that plagued it.)

The phone began ringing and the newspaper began reporting. A whole bunch of ethnic customers of the Public Market doth protested closing their fruit and veggie marketplace. Of particular note were the folks who lived in the general neighborhoods around the market, often walking to it for the bargain prices they knew they could get there.

Urban legend has it that little old grandmas living in the N.E. City, and elsewhere, called their lawyer sons to complain about the prospects of losing their source for fixing Sunday spreads at the old homestead. Some of those lawyers were judges who knew councilpersons.

After some hedging with compromise proposals like splitting the retail from the wholesale operations, the folks running the City threw in the towel and left everything as-is at the market.

Some of the larger wholesale food distributors moved to the Regional Market. And, the local G.O.P. who lost Council to the New Democrats now find themselves in jeopardy of losing their lucrative and coveted Genesee Valley Regional Market to the likes of a resigned sitting governor who’s also strapped for cash.

Why was this happening so important in the life of Rochester’s Public Market? This political support was read by future City administrations as a basis for keeping the market an operating division of City government and making modest improvements to enhance the retail experience of its customers who go there.

Otherwise, we would probably have a newer facility sandwiched in some corner of the city with plastic awnings and neon trim accent lights on the vendor booths. Vendor rents would at least be doubled. Fruits and veggies would probably be priced higher than Weggies and parking would be metered.