The Quirky Gourmet

Searching for Sour Cream on the South End

2010-07-29T09:52:00.001-07:00

My crew loves sour cream. We keep a big tub of it at the kitchen and we use it to fill a smaller tub to bring to the markets to eat with our own tamales and quesadillas. But yesterday we were out of sour cream at the kitchen so we couldn't bring any to Columbia City.

The first two hours of Columbia City tend to be slow and I usually bring a book and sit in the park and read, waiting for the dinner rush. Yesterday I told the crew I'd go find them some sour cream. It's the kind of errand I enjoy: exploring a neighborhood on foot with an atypical agenda as a way to see a place in a new way. I also like doing little things for my staff that can make a big difference to their morale.

I knew there was a Safeway about 8 blocks north of the market, but I figured I'd be able to find closer sour cream at one of the many convenience stores just south of the market. First I visited the Shola Ethiopian grocery on S. Edmunds. It's the closest food store to the market and I've gone in there over the years when I've forgotten to bring cooking oil. They had fresh injera bread (the spongy stuff that you use to scoop up those tasty Ethiopian dishes.) They had raw coffee beans, whole cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods, and even ghee in their refrigerated section. But no sour cream.

Next I visited the Busy Bee grocery, which had mainly processed convenience foods. I also found another 3 or 4 Halal groceries rich with traditional Middle Eastern, Indian and North African products, but I did not find sour cream.

After walking 6 blocks, I turned back empty handed. I finally did find some sour cream ("crema") at a Mexican grocery that I had passed over on my way south because it looked like it just had mercantile products.

I thought about the term "food desert", often used to describe inner city areas whose main sources of food are overpriced convenience stores that carry very few healthy options. These stores had virtually no fresh vegetables (and no sour cream). But they did carry plenty of grains and legumes, which are relatively healthy, affordable, unprocessed foods that tend to get short shrift in discussions of food security such as Joel Berg's All You Can Eat, and Mark Winne's Closing the Food Gap.

It would have been nice to see some fresh vegetables (and some sour cream.) But I walked away from the experience feeling, again, like nothing is as simple as it seems.

Columbia City's New Location

2010-07-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

This month the Columbia City Market moved from the parking lot where it's been held for the past 12 years onto the street adjacent to that lot.

The move has been a long time coming. Market administrators have known for years that the lot was slated for construction, and have had their eyes open for a new location. Fortunately, the city dramatically dropped fees for street closures last year.

It's tricky to move a farmers' market. Most of the moves I've experienced have been well thought out and successful, but there are always risks to breaking routines that take time to establish. Columbia City, in particular, always felt like it would be a problematic move. The two or three blocks right near the market have a lot of vitality, but if you go three blocks north or three blocks south, the area has a different feel.

By moving just half a block, the Columbia City market has been able to easily redirect customers: even if they're headed for the old parking lot, they can't possibly miss the market. Some complain about the parking situation because they've lost all the street parking, but I think it's a small price to pay.

I love seeing city streets closed for farmers' markets. The events project a confidence that they don't have when they're tucked away in parking lots. It's as if they're puffing out their chests and saying, "This matters enough to reroute traffic."

Overstaffed

2010-06-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

A farmer friend of mine said, "My place looks great. That worries me. It means I'm overstaffed."

Foodies: The Book

2010-06-26T20:23:00.001-07:00

Okay, it's definitely not a conventional page turner, but I was fascinated by this rather academic analysis of sociological trends at play in today's world of food aficionados.

The book's subtitle is "Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape", and it describes the tension between our egalitarian inclination to enjoy all types of foods, from burgers to truffles, and our relentless pursuit of authentic and exotic foods. These two tendencies play off of each other in complex and perplexing ways, like relentless pursuit of high quality simple staples and appreciation for cheap street food that you can only experience with an expensive plane ticket.

Johnston and Baumann also point out contradictions and blind spots such as the emphasis on eco friendly foods but overall lack of awareness regarding social justice issues in the food industry, and the shared conviction that we can purchase our way towards a more just and sustainable foodscape.

I would have liked to see more discussion of one of my pet topics--attitudes towards meat consumption--which happens to provide fertile illustrations of many of the book's main ideas. Sustainable meat has been eagerly embraced by the foodie community, with good reason. But there's been very little reflection over the fact that its price is too high for most people to enjoy it regularly and even if it could become a mainstream staple, it still wouldn't be sustainable for everyone to eat a lot of it every day.

I doubt that a book like this will do much to raise awareness within foodie communities about these issues. Still, I'm glad someone is thinking about them.

Renegade Vendor

2010-06-24T08:59:00.001-07:00

There's been a renegade food vendor selling pink lemonade and corn on the cob in the park right across from the Columbia City Market the past two weeks. Apparently they applied to the market and were turned down, but they decided they were going to come anyway.

After their appearance the first week a few of us called the health department only to find out that the health code makes a special dispensation for corn on the cob, so they don't need oversight by an organization like the farmers' market, as required for other food vendors. The health inspector suggested that we call the parks department, but apparently they're covered there too, with a permit that allows them to set up in public parks.

Yesterday the market folks had Billy's Farm move their big, colorful box truck to a spot that blocked the line of sight from the market to the corn vendor. In response, the corn vendor called parking enforcement, so the market folks had to move the truck.

I don't want them there, but I've been wondering why they have less of a right to be there than the ice cream truck or the guy selling African baskets.

Georgetown Carnival

2010-06-12T16:08:00.001-07:00

"It's like a carnival," a farmer friend excitedly told me last weekend about the brand new Georgetown Market. (I wasn't able to be there personally on opening day because I was at the Bastyr Herb and Food Fair.)

I found it ironic that she described the event's vibrant atmosphere using exactly the same word that some farmers' market managers use disparagingly to describe events that don't focus sufficiently on farmers.

The Georgetown Market feels a lot like Fremont 1995, before the event split and the farmers' moved west to Ballard. There are crafts and flea market stuff as well as farmers and prepared food. There's even a guy selling Vermont maple syrup, which seems to defy the local focus, except that he divides his time between Washington and Vermont and actually does make the syrup himself. He's in the craft section rather than the farmer section, which is an interesting way of integrating this unusual compromise.

Rebekah Denn wrote an interesting piece in this month's Seattle Magazine exploring the question of whether Seattle has too many farmers' markets. Reading it, I was struck by the thought that I've always regarded farmers' markets as an ancient phenomenon in the sense of people gathering in public spaces for commerce, but they're actually quite modern in the sense of providing a venue with a strict focus on farmers, as a way to foster local, small scale agriculture. If that really is the point of a farmers' market, then perhaps these "carnivals" are getting in the way and creating debilitating competition.

On the other hand, farmers' markets are many things to many people. They're public gathering places as well as places where local economies can thrive. Food happens to be the ideal product for this type of event because local food is the freshest food, so locally food producers can offer great value on the best food around. But a great market has to give customers more than just food as an excuse to come down week after week. Even the farmers-only markets recognize this when they offer live music and chef demos.

The Georgetown market has room for 100 vendors, There are about 50 vendors there now, so there is considerable room for growth. It's got a unique setting, with railroad cars and a defunct brick brewery as a backdrop. Last week was crazy busy. This week was considerably less busy, but that's not unusual at a new market that holds a big opening. I'm looking forward to watching it evolve.

Food Stamp Foodies

2010-06-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

I've been reading lately about controversy swirling around food savvy food stamp recipients spending their food stamp dollars at establishments that focus on quality food, like farmers' markets and Whole Foods. A recent article in Salon.com, titled Hipsters on Food Stamps, has generated a flood of responses from outraged foodies defending their right to buy sustainably produced food products, even with government subsidies. (Many aptly point out that the industrial food system is heavily subsidized as well.)

But the discussion, like so many other others, seems like an unfortunate collection of one dimensional, knee jerk reactions. The Salon.com article uses phrases like "a local, free-range chicken in every Le Creuset pot" and makes reference to "organic salmon". (What is that anyway? If you could control everything going into a salmon's diet it would be a farmed salmon, and no self respecting foodie would want to eat it anyway.)

Although the line often grows blurry, there is a real difference between fussy gourmet food products and honestly produced staples. Both are available at farmers' markets and at Whole Foods, and both tend to cost more than the highly processed industrial foods that are killing and sickening so many people. But there is a real difference between expensive food as a pretentious status symbol, and quality products that happen to cost more than the garbage on the shelves of the typical American supermarket. Fancy food may be a luxury, but good food is a necessity.

Covenant

2010-05-20T10:27:00.001-07:00

I read weather reports obsessively. When I don't like what one says, I check another. Yesterday morning I checked at least four and they all said the same thing: a major storm would be moving in during the afternoon.

I gave my Columbia City crew the day off, figuring I could handle things myself and cut my losses. By 1 in the afternoon, however, it was still sunny and 70 degrees, and I was starting to second guess myself.

Sure enough at about 1:15 the sky got very dark very fast, and on my way to the market it started raining. By 2 o'clock there were gusts of wind strong enough to lift the tent off the ground, even with 25 pound weights on each leg.

If this had kept up consistently all afternoon, it would have been among the worst market weather days I'd experienced in more than 12 years of vending. Fortunately it was only intermittent bursts of crazy wind and heavy, sideways rain.

As soon as the market ended, a spectacular rainbow made an appearance. I like the biblical take on rainbows, seeing them as signs that everything is going to be okay. It's going to be a great season. But on any given day, anything can happen.

Update: Beware of Leafy Greens

2010-05-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote recently that the health department is in the process of designating leafy greens as potentially hazardous food. That means they would have to be held at 41 degrees Fahrenheit or colder, seriously complicating things for farmers' market vendors like myself.

I've been reading up on the issue, and I've learned that they're mostly concerned with leafy greens that have been cut rather than leaves that are intact such as heads of cabbage or romaine, or bunches of chard. There's some clarification about exactly what they mean by "cut". Apparently the first cut, detaching the leaf from the plant, doesn't count. One person I spoke to also thought that the regulation would only apply to greens that have been repeatedly cut in multiple facilities but I haven't found anything to support this.

The health inspector I've been talking to sent links to the FDA recommendations to local health departments, and the proposed Washington state changes based on these recommendations. The FDA recommendations use the phrase "ready to eat" multiple times, while the propsed Washington state changes do not. This is important.

Let's put aside for a moment the very important consideration that industrial farms handle their produce in ways that are much more likely to widely spread pathogens than the scale and methods used by small, local farms. A salad mix or cole slaw mix with cut greens that will not be cooked before you eat them is much more likely to make someone sick than a braising mix, which is meant to be cooked. The process of cooking kills pathogens. That's why we're instructed to handle raw chicken with all manner of precautions while cooked chicken is generally regarded as safe.

I've never been someone inclined to get involved in the process of agitating for change. Under "politics" on my Facebook profile I wrote "complacent radical", meaning that I'm very much in favor of dramatic change, but I see my own potential to affect change mainly in terms of just living in ways that are consistent with my ideals. But this new regulation about cut leafy greens is a concrete issue that could have serious consequences, and its really just a matter of sloppy wording.

I sent in a comment form (there's a link for "Issue Submittal Form" in the Washington state document) and I've been contacting market managers and vendors about the issue. I've been encouraged by the fact that several market managers had already learned about it by the time I approached them because an email I sent has been making the rounds.

One market manager said that she'd like to see farmers' market vendors classified as exempt from these kinds of regulations because their production processes are so different from the mainstream industrial paradigm behind most of the difficulties. That's a beautiful thought, but I have a hard time imagining it actually happening. But in the meantime, this matters.

Simple, Tasty Sorrel Soup

2010-05-07T16:29:00.000-07:00

This one's for Dena, who's been wanting sorrel soup. It's supports my conviction that a recipe isn't necessarily better with twenty ingredients than it is with only a handful, assuming they're the right handful. The parsnips are sweet. The sorrel is tart. The leeks, garlic and stock give it depth.

I started with a few cups of stock. Cleaned a leek, chopped it coarsely and threw it in. Then I cut a couple of parsnips into chunks and added them too, along with a couple of peeled garlic cloves. I used one bunch of sorrel, which turned out to be about a packed cup of leaves, once I trimmed the thick part of the stems and chopped the leaves coarsely. Then I seasoned it simply with salt and pepper. After boiling it for about 45 minutes, I whizzed it all in the food processor. It made a hearty, thick soup. You can use extra stock, of course, if you don't want it to be so thick.

Enjoy!

The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook

2010-05-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

I first met Debra Daniels-Zeller when I was regularly catering monthly dinners for the Vegetarians of Washington. She was the guest chef, and I was the "ghost chef". I'd work with chefs the organization wanted to feature, collaborating to develop menus and then executing the recipes myself because I had a commercial kitchen and catering gear.

It was sometimes a tricky job. The guest chefs wanted to show themselves off while I wanted, first and foremost, to earn enough money to make the endeavor worthwhile. I learned a lot about putting my ego aside.

When I first learned I'd be working with Debra, I went to a bookstore to check out her book, and promptly bought a copy. It was a lovely, self-published volume filled with enticing recipes as well as profiles of some of my favorite farms. By the time we touched base and began discussing recipes, I had already picked out a menu, which turned out to be very similar to the one that she had in mind.

We've crossed paths regularly since then, since we both frequent local farmers' markets. Getting to know her better I discovered that the original decision to self-publish her book was actually very much in line with her ideal of supporting local businesses and maintaining short supply chains in every possible way. I'd never seen anyone promote a self-published book as thoroughly or as conscientiously and I was continually impressed, though I also wished I could see the book receive the benefit of a publisher's established distribution channels.

The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook, which came out just this week, is an updated version of the original volume, with new insights and recipes, and an expanded reach, profiling farms in Oregon as well as Washington. It's a beautiful book. I rarely cook from recipes, but I'll definitely be trying some of these, such as the Potato, Fennel and Tomato Soup, and the Orzo with Shallots, Kale and Walnuts.

Congratulations Debra!

Beware of Leafy Greens

2010-05-03T16:42:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I spoke with a health inspector who informed me that the USDA has recommended that local health departments begin treating leafy greens as potentially hazardous foods, and the King County Health Department is considering following this recommendation. I asked her whether the proposed regulations would cover greens like collards and kale that are cooked before you eat them, and she said it would.

If what she said is accurate and these regulations go into effect, they could have serious consequences for farmers' markets. Treating leafy greens as potentially hazardous foods would mean handling them in the same way you're supposed to treat chicken, at least with respect to temperature control. This means that any farmer selling leafy greens would have to keep them in closed ice chests. Not only would farmers be unable to display leafy greens, but they would also be severely limited as far as what they could transport back and forth to markets because ice chests take up a lot more space than boxes. The implications for my own business would be tragic, because my vehicle couldn't hold enough coolers to keep my greens cold.

I did some cursory online research and learned that the stricter standards for temperature control for leafy greens is coming about in part because of the initiative and voluntary compliance of vegetable grower trade associations, or groups that lobby on behalf of industrial scale commercial farmers. This was equally disturbing: commercial growers truck their product in refrigerated vehicles to refrigerated warehouses. It's mainly the little guys who store their greens at room temperature on the way from the farm to the market.

Opening Day at Columbia City 2010

2010-04-29T13:12:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was opening day at Columbia City, the first seasonal market to open. Opening day was originally scheduled for May 19 because this season the market will no longer be able to use the parking lot where it's been held the past 12 years. The market will be moving out onto the street nearby, and the organizers were planning to wait a few weeks until there was more produce available, and then hold a big opening day event to commemorate the move. But just a few weeks ago they received permission to continue using the parking lot until the end of June, so they decided to start the market earlier in the season, as usual.

Opening day at Columbia City used to be a big event, with great music, larger than life puppets, and appearances by the mayor. The past few years it's been much more low key, in fact, it often feels like many folks in the neighborhood don't even know it's going until it's already been open for a few weeks.

Columbia City used to be my best market, but it peaked 4 or 5 years ago and plateaued. It's still a great market, especially when the weather is good. Yesterday the weather was lousy, but we still had a decent day. It just felt more like a winter market than a summer market.

Blanching Asparagus

2010-04-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

Most recipes that call for blanching asparagus tell you to immerse it in boiling water for a couple of minutes and then plunge it into an ice water bath to prevent it from over cooking. This always seemed like a ridiculous amount of fuss to me. Instead of cooking the asparagus until it's done and then taking drastic measures to prevent it from cooking any longer, I just undercook it, and let it cook a bit more once it's drained. I blanch my asparagus for only about thirty seconds. It's always worked. No ice bath necessary.

The Flower Vendor's Garbage

2010-04-26T17:22:00.000-07:00

My neighbors at the Ballard Farmers' Market lately have been a family of Hmong farmers who sell mainly flowers this time of year. As we were packing up yesterday I looked over and saw this collection of bruised flowers on the floor of their booth, and I thought it was lovely. At the end of a day the floor of my booth is usually covered with charred vegetables.

Superfoods

2010-04-22T13:15:00.001-07:00

I was at Whole Foods earlier and I noticed this list of the most nutrient rich foods in the store, ranked according to a point system they devised. I was pleased to see collard greens and kale at the top of the list. Collard greens and kale are among my favorite foods. I'd eat them even if they weren't good for me.

Burgers At My House

2010-04-21T11:44:00.000-07:00

Burgers at my house are always an occasion. We only make them a couple of times a year. The impetus this week was that I found some lovely looking whole wheat buns at the Bread Farm in Edison. (It's really hard to find fresh, whole wheat buns big enough for a burger.)

A couple of friends of mine started a business a few years ago based on selling sustainable burgers. They quickly found themselves in a tricky situation: either use inferior ingredients, or charge a lot more than folks are used to paying for a burger. The business didn't work out.

Watching their travails I came to the conclusion that the term "sustainable burger' is an oxymoron. A burger is, in its essence, a cheap everyday food whose primary ingredient is meat. No matter how good the meat you use, it's not sustainable to use it as the primary ingredient in an everyday food. According to Mark Bittman's Food Matters, the average person on the planet eats about 3 ounces of meat a day while the average American eats about 8 ounces. There is more meat in even a small hamburger than the average person on the planet eats in a day.

On those occasional occasions when we make burgers at my house, we usually spend more than we do on almost any other meal. Every detail needs to be just so, from the lettuce, to the pickles, to the onions, to the mustard. It keeps it special. It should be special.

Willie Greens Makeover

2010-04-14T11:55:00.001-07:00

The last time I visited Willie Greens farm was 4 or 5 years ago for a solstice party. I remember seeing some very young red Russian kale growing and understanding for the first time how a farmer creates a truly interesting and tasty salad mix.

I went out there again this past Monday with my friend Debra, who has a vegetarian cookbook coming out next month profiling farms in Washington and Oregon.

On the drive out there we were talking about the difficulties some established farmers have been facing due to competition from newer farms for sales and market stall space. I gave my typical perspective that new farms and new markets are a challenge and an opportunity. Businesses have to evolve in the face of changing circumstances, and if a farm is having difficulty maintaining their sales, then they probably need to try new things.

When we got to the farm Jeff showed us around the venue he's been creating to host weddings and catered dinners with the fields as backdrops. He's incorporated boulders and landscaping, and a sectioned area for ceremonies that will convert to a dance floor. There's also a lovely fountain and a mighty fire pit. Soon there will also be a Raj tent, and sunflowers shaping a border. ("People like the idea of being out on the farm," he said, "But they don't need to see the stuff growing while they're having dinner.")

His original vision had been to build a restaurant, but the permitting process was Kafkaesque. Among other things, the county required a second water source but wouldn't allow him to install one. Instead there's going to be an outdoor kitchen that can be disassembled at the end of each season. I think that'll be spectacular, and more unique than a restaurant.

One of my favorite things about self employment has always been the potential to creatively evolve, making mistakes and finding new solutions to obstacles. This project at Willie Greens was a perfect example of a fresh endeavor with beauty and vitality growing out of a series of tough challenges.

Vegfest 2010

2010-04-13T15:55:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I participated in the annual Vegfest, a busy event promoting vegetarian food choices.

I've been part of Vegfest since the beginning, nine years ago, watching it grow into the biggest vegetarian food festival in North America. Each year I cater a dinner for the principal people involved the night before the event starts. I found my publisher for Local Bounty at the Vegfest.

There's so much I'd like this event to be that it isn't. The organizers tend to play it safe, focusing on processed grocery products and meat substitutes. Things change very little from year to year.

Despite my ambivalence, I'm impressed year after year by the enthusiasm of the volunteers. This year they signed up more than a thousand people to hand out food samples, distribute sampling supplies, and even sweep the floors. Many of them seemed very, very young. I found this inspiring.

Baking

2010-04-08T15:54:00.000-07:00

I like to say that there are 2 kinds of people in the world: cooks and bakers. Cooks are free-spirited creative types. Bakers can follow instructions.

I am a cook. But I am also a caterer and from time to time I need to prepare desserts. My strategy has been to find a few recipes that are adaptable and forgiving, and make a slew of variations.

The recipe I use most is based on an oat an flour dough. I use it to make bars, with a crust on the bottom, a layer of fruit or chocolate, and more of the dough crumbled on top. It also works well for apple or berry crisps. I've taught this recipe in cooking classes and use it in four different recipes in my two cookbooks.

I usually prepare it without measuring. It doesn't always come out the same, but it is always appealing. This week, however, I had a miserable failure. The bars were hard and crumbly instead of soft and chewy. I made three pans, or 72 bars, for a catering gig tomorrow and I just can't use them. I think I used too much flour. Either that, or the baking soda was old so the crust didn't rise.

I like to say that the difference between a good cook and a great cook is that a great cook can fix anything. But this one is just beyond me. Live and learn.

My Family's Farm

2010-04-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

I've never thought of myself as coming from a farming family but this week, during a quick trip to NY, my family's farm was much on my mind.

My dad picked me up at Kennedy Airport, and as we turned out onto the highway I noticed a sign I'd never seen before for Farmer's Boulevard. I knew that my great grandfather had a dairy farm near where they later built the airport, and that my grandmother grew up there. (That's her in the picture, feeding the chickens sometime in the 1920's.)

The farm was where the Ozone Park neighborhood is now, near 88th Street, Sutter Avenue, and PS 63. Many years later the Balsam family, who lived across the road, acquired the land. There's a housing development there now called Balsam Village. The main street close to the farm was Old South Road, which was mostly replaced by the Belt Parkway. The farm spanned 8 acres and they had 80 cows.

In 1913, when my grandmother was 5 years old, the health department ordered farmers to put down all cows in the city limits because of an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease. I remember my grandmother describing the passive look on their faces as they were herded in to be shot. Until today I hadn't realized how young she was when it happened. Her father worked odd jobs after that until he was able to earn enough to replace his herd.

His cows weren't pastured, but rather kept in the barn. (So much for grass-fed.) Among other things, he fed them broken Nabisco crackers that he was able to acquire cheaply. This fact, in particular, fascinated me because his dairy products were kosher certified and marketed specifically to the Jewish community. I remembered not being allowed to buy Nabisco products when I was a kid because they weren't kosher. It turns out that Nabisco did obtain kosher certification for many of its products in 1997, but I doubt they were certified kosher in 1910.

There were truck farms all over Queens at that time. The land was gradually developed as roads and subways made the area more accessible to the city. Land values began to climb and commuters began to settle there. There have been similar changes here in the Seattle area during the past few decades as farmland has given way to suburbia. It's an old story.

Farmers Market Report

2010-03-26T15:19:00.001-07:00

I just read through the Farmers Market Report released by King County last month. It's a thoughtful document, assembled after a series of surveys and interviews with vendors and administrators.

The report described an enterprise and a community in the midst of a challenging growth phase. Beginning farmers find it difficult to compete and get into old, established markets. Administrators of established markets feel that newer markets are cutting into their turf. Too many farmers are selling too many of the same crops, but there's also a perception that it's unfair for markets to admit newer farmers over more established growers even if this helps to create a more interesting and appealing product mix.

It's certainly challenging for new farms to break in, but most of the established farms took time to hit their stride as well. Newer farmers feel shut out of the bigger markets, but markets of this size didn't even exist when most of the established farmers were getting started. Everyone wants to vend at Ballard, but when I first started vending at Ballard it was the size of many of the smaller markets today.

It takes time to build a business, and it takes time to establish seniority. The same people who are saying that there are too many markets are also saying that it's too hard for newer farmers to find places to vend. New markets are ideal venues for new farmers who can't get into more established markets. I've seen various farmers achieve success at small markets simply by sticking around until other farmers with unreasonable expectations pulled out, leaving the best stalls for the folks with staying power.

Personally, I find this turmoil fascinating and exciting. Things will sort themselves out eventually, until there's a new growth spurt and we're faced with a whole new set of issues. It's a great problem to have.

Brazilian Hot Sauce

2010-03-18T13:18:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite things that I brought back from Brazil earlier this year was a collection of hot sauce bottles. Some were gifts, but others were for my own enjoyment pleasure.

I'd been working on a bottle of molho de pimento de cheiro during the past few months. That translates literally as "sauce of fragrant pepper." Pimento de cheiro is a small pepper indigenous to the Amazon region, where I visited. It's not outrageously hot but, as the name suggests, it has a wonderful aroma and flavor.

I dropped the bottle and broke it the other day. I was heartbroken, but it gave me an opportunity to get started on a new variety. Now I'm enjoying some molho de pimenta malagueta. I first encountered the Brazilian malagueta pepper during a very long airport layover, when I saw it on the ingredients list of a packaged snack food. I was familiar with the name "malagueta pepper" from my readings about food history. Known also as "grains of paradise," malagueta pepper was among the exotic spices that medieval spice merchants imported from Africa and India. In fact, the search for this spice (among others) was what sent the Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral in a wide arc around northwestern Africa in 1500, causing him to unwittingly "discover" Brazil.

Curious about their flavor, I've looked for grains of paradise in spice stores. (I once watched a cooking show where Alton Brown used them to season okra, so I figured they had to be available somewhere.) I was excited to see them on the label of a snack food at the Manaus airport, until my sweetie set me straight, explaining the ingredient on this particular label was actually a variety of Brazilian chile pepper.

I'm curious about how this food indigenous to Brazil came to be named after the spice from the other hemisphere. It's probably no great mystery: the New World chiles were all named after Old World spices as the meaning of the word "pepper" expanded to describe these newly found delicacies.

Speaking of Brazilian peppers, we went out for lunch one day while I was visiting, and there was a little crock on the restaurant table containing hot sauce, with a couple of small, hot chiles sitting attractively on either side of it. My mother in law, who is pushing 90 and not entirely in possession of her faculties, reached for the pepper and popped it in her mouth. My sweetie and her sister, who dote over their mother, flipped out. "Mae! Mae!"

Grinning, the matriarch reached into her mouth and pulled out the perfectly intact pepper. She knew exactly what she was doing. She just wanted to get a rise out of them.

This Winter

2010-03-16T15:44:00.000-07:00

About four years ago I started thinking seriously about the future, and I came up with a five year plan to set up my business so I could sell it, and transition to a career writing about sustainable food.

My vision has shifted since then. In the process of setting up my business so I could sell it to someone else, it's evolved into an enterprise that meets my needs so well that I want to keep it. My thoughts about sustainable food have changed as well: I've discovered that nothing is as simple as it seems. I used to think that if everyone could just see the light and eat local, sustainable food, everything else that was wrong with the world would eventually work itself out.

These days I see the problems with our food chain as a symptom of deeper, broader difficulties like greed, hegemony and colonization. I certainly feel called to spread these insights by writing about them, but it's hard to imagine that this will turn into a career that will support me. It's a complex message, not a tidy one that is easy to sell, and my challenge is to work at my own pace to figure out the right way to communicate it. I enjoy writing this blog, though the traffic is nothing to write home about. (And I really do appreciate those of you who read it regularly.)

Working on both of my cookbooks during the spring of 2008 I realized that creating book length manuscripts suits me well. I love immersing myself in a project, and I enjoy the give and take of working with engaged, professional editors. I spent the winters of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 putting together a book length manuscript that gives a historical perspective on the current sustainable food movement, and this winter I've been sending it around. I got an exciting nibble last week, but sometimes (more often than not) a nibble is just a nibble. So we'll see.

Because the economy has been difficult, and because I'm getting too old to keep saving money over the summer and then depleting it all winter, I decided to try to earn a living this winter doing something other than running my business (which can't support me over the winter anyway.) I taught some classes at PCC. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed that.

I've also been doing some online copywriting for a company that is, for all practical purposes, a content factory. They gather information about key words that folks submit to search engines, and they pay freelance writers to write articles targeted to the search terms. The articles get traffic, the company gets ad revenue, and the writers and editors get paid. Despite my ambivalence, this has worked well for me this winter. I've been working from home, making my own schedule and earning a living. For the first time ever, my bank balance is higher at the end of the winter than it was at the beginning. Not by much, but it still feels like an important milestone.

A few weeks ago, things started to change. The company's editors seemed to change their standards and criteria overnight, demanding scholarly references and extensive rewrites. I don't have anything against scholarly references and extensive rewrites under the right circumstances, but not for the amount they pay per article.

Fortunately, this happened right around the same time my business started getting back into gear. I also got started with a new writing project of my own which has been germinating all winter. Now I wake up in the morning and I get started right away on my own stuff. If there's time later in the day, I generate content.

It feels good. I'm looking forward to market season.

Makeover

2010-03-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

I finally did it. I invested in some new signs for my booth. I mostly stay away from purchases that don't directly add to my bottom line. I'd much rather buy a bigger grill so we can crank out more food in the same amount of time than upgrade my signs so the booth looks prettier. But there's a time and a place for everything. For better or for worse, customers do care about appearances.