Taster Spoon

What does KFC stand for, again?

Fun food fact: microwaved cauliflower smells exactly like fried chicken. 

It must be cauliflower season.  All kinds of varieties, from those fun, tinted ones to the organic type to the fractal one are on sale for 99 cents a head.  (All totally local, I'm sure.)  Last week I got an orange one; today I got the organic one.  I note that organic cauliflower is much less stressful than organic broccoli - there's nowhere for the bugs to hide.  Or else it's so compact they can't get in in the first place.

I swung by the Milk Pail on the way to work this morning because I had no lunch makings at home and picked up various fruits and veggies to munch throughout the day.  I also saw a two pound container of Organic Goat Yogurt from Napa.  Local!  The shelf said it was $2.99, which seemed totally comparable to the other yogurts, so I added it to my basket.  When it rang up - $6.59!!  I thought about returning it, but I've never had goat yogurt before so figured I could shell out four extra bucks to be adventuresome but mainly just didn't want to be that annoying customer.  Jeez.  $7 for yogurt.  And it isn't even nonfat.  I'm paying $$ for fat.

I'm eating my cauliflower interspersed with little bites of aged asiago - also totally local.  Well, USA anyway.  Do you feel like I'm beating this local thing to death?  I know.   I was just going to meditate on cauliflower for a short minute and then got all defensive.  WHEN will this month END??

Jacques Pepin did a salad with cauliflower a few weeks ago on Fast Food My Way (my favorite cooking show at the moment - I love the way he chops through that quesadilla with such gusto in the opening credits - it almost makes me flinch, like, what if my finger were under there?) and quoted somebody as saying it was "cabbage with an education" and talked about how much he loved it.  He cooked it up in a pan with, I don't know, tomatoes or capers or anchovies - I don't even remember, but he motivated me to give it a try.  I usually just ignore it as a presumably less nutritious cousin to broccoli (because it's so pale).  Also because I never seem to cook it right in a pan - bits are burned while other sections are still raw. 

But nuking it for two minutes (or steaming it) gets it nice and consistently 'done' and then you can sauce it as you will.  I put it in leftover curry sauce (from a restaurant) recently and couldn't believe how good and weirdly rich it was.   

Beth C makes an awesome low-carb (if you're into that) "mashed potatoes" with cauliflower.  It's incredibly delicious and surprisingly creamy.  That may have something to do with vast quantities of cheese, so I don't know that it really qualifies as health food, but I want to try that again.  (Speaking of low-carbing and cauliflower and fakery, I made that faux "rice" out of cauliflower once and didn't find it satisfying at all, and kind of burpy.)   

I don't know where I was headed with this.  I was just struck by the fried chicken aspect.  I knew a bartender who had a neat trick where he combined a lemon wedge, frangelico and sugar (take it like a tequila shot) to taste just like chocolate cake!  Do you know any foods that combine to make an unexpected flavor or to taste like something else entirely?  I'm not counting those Jelly Belly "recipes."

(Ha - I was going to put this image up because it's so pretty, but noted that it had a "signed model release" and looked like it cost money, but got a giggle out of the thought of a cauliflower being a supermodel and signing off on its headshots.  Sashay!)

Know what?

I feel better about myself when I peek in at all the blogs I love and discover that they haven't updated recently, either.

Chi Town Got it Goin' On

I'm in the Windy City today, which is less windy, more sweltering.  (90 degrees and humid.)  Accuweather misinformed me (70 degrees and dry); consequently I am wearing a sweater, and I am melting, melting....melting...   

I had hoped to sneak away for a run along the lakeshore and check out the site of the brouhaha over the possible new Children's Museum - aka Grant Park.  Is Buckingham Fountain running?  What a perfect summer day THAT would be! 

But alas, I work.

Anyway, I learned at lunch from someone in the know that there's a farmer's market every day of the week in different parts of the city here.   More as the story develops.

(My "eat local" kick isn't getting a ton of sympathy around here.   "What could be more local than Mom's spaghetti and meatballs?" she says.)

Grow Local Challenge

Here are some items posted in PaloAltoOnline.com:

Winter Compost Crops and Diet
John Jeavons will explain the selection and rotation of cool/cold-weather crops and their part in the design of a complete annual diet. Sat., Sept. 15, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. $25. For more information, call at 650-493-6072 or e-mail www.commongroundinpaloalto.org. Common Ground Garden Supply and Education Center, 559 College Ave., Palo Alto

Economic Mini-Farming
Learn the concepts, techniques and crops that can lead to successful economic mini-farming. Instructor John Jeavons is the Executive Director of Ecology Action and author of "How to Grow More Vegetables." Sat., Sept. 15, 1:30-3:30 p.m. $25. For more information, call at 650-493-6072 or e-mail www.commongroundinpaloalto.org. Common Ground Garden Supply and Education Center, 559 College Ave., Palo Alto

Let me know if you go!

Food Kicks I Have Known

I've failed.  My local food campaign is a failure.  I'm a failure.

See, the problem with not setting out stringent guidelines at the outset is, it's too easy to let convenience outweigh your underlying purpose.  (What was the purpose, again?)

• Visiting Monterey, Ace and Victor and Rad took me to a splendid fish restaurant for my birthday, where it never crossed my mind to inquire the source of what we were eating.  (The restaurant's whole angle was sustainable seafood, so maybe that part of my conscience was soothed, distracting me from this "local" biz.)  We joined V and R for wine and cheese at their hotel, and stayed on for more wine even after V and R went to Pebble Beach for dinner, after striking up a conversation with the lovely Wendy and Matt. 
• Because of our extended trip to Monterey, we missed the Mountain View farmers' market, and I resorted all week to vegetables from the Milk Pail.  Unmarked eggplants, spinach of origin unknown.
• This week I traveled to Irvine for work, and, let me tell you, there was little local anything to be had.  Or at least, there was little choice in the matter.  I ate the biscotti that was handed to me, you know?  On the plane I had honey roasted peanuts from Virginia, and water that came from a can.

The problem, alternatively, is that you convince yourself that only the highest bar applies to you (what would that ideal be, exactly, growing my own produce and chickens, having my own Turkey Hill?) and then feel like a complete failure when, in fact, you can mark a number of successes.

• Instead of hitting Starbucks the morning of Ace's race in Pacific Grove, I ducked into Toasties, a country-decor drenched local diner where I chatted with waitress and the only other customer about the wildfires and spraying for moths.  You know how I know they kept it real?   They didn't have mochas or lattes or anything.  I got a cup of coffee and a glass of skim milk, OG style.
• Wendy and Matt's daughter colored for Ace and me each a picture with crayons.  We thought we were just drinking; in fact we were supporting local artists.  The next morning Ace and I dropped by a local artist gallery exhibition with the thought we might hang something featuring sea-spray over our fireplace.  (Out of our budget.)
• Rather than relying on the chain hotel we stayed at before the race, we made a last minute decision to sack out at the Beachcomber Inn, a local motel that offered waffle batter and a griddle in the morning, videotapes for borrowing, bikes with which we could pedal down and up beautiful 17 mile drive on Sunday morning, and a friendly innkeeper who did her laundry out back as we sat on the deck, and who whispered up to us, "Pssst!  Look!  Deer!" as they traipsed across the yard.
• Among the unmarked vegetables and fruits I picked up at the Milk Pail, I found eggs from Sonoma and really fat, soft English Muffins baked in Berkeley.  I took a picture of my local breakfast (which included a morning shake of cold watermelon, half a pear and home-grown mint - mmm) and will post it as soon as I remember to get it off of Ace's camera.
• On my way to Irvine, despite eating the airplane peanuts, I also packed a salad of mixed greens and several red tomatoes home-grown by Tracy, the award winning green thumb I keep mentioning.
• For dinner, my colleague and I went to a fish restaurant whose menu was printed daily (to emphasize that everything was fresh) and I made a point of inquiring whether anything was "local."  Seriously, only one item on the menu noted "California."  But I got it (Sea Bass) and it was delicious.
• Though we breakfasted at the hotel's cafe, as I was inspecting the prepackaged cereals, the chef I'd met the day before wandered by and urged me to try his homemade granola instead.  He was right - not only was it really good (cinnamony), it kept me full until about 2 pm, as the Raisin Bran never would have.
• Yesterday, after we finished up our work, I investigated the farmers markets in the Irvine area and was impressed to see that there was one, in varying locations, every day of the week.  But I had missed the Thursday one by an hour. 
• I talked with a young woman who'd helped us out with our work, and she recommended a vegan place not far away - in a yurt! - and after googling around I went one better, and found a raw restaurant next to her recommendation called 118 (i.e. alluding to their top temperature).  I went on a raw food kick for a couple of weeks a few years ago - I still remember my lovely L.A. ladies indulging me so generously for my birthday.  I went there for lunch, and it was delicious, and beautiful, and thoroughly stuffing.  (I didn't take pictures, though I really wanted to, because I was one of only two customers and would have felt foolish.)  I got leftovers to go, but have to say, with the raw food, it was kind of much to have that much in a day.  I think they relied pretty heavily on nut butters, because it was all really rich.  Also, I think raw garlic gets overpowering after a while.  (However, I did have my leftovers today for lunch and everything was still really good.)  Anyway, I confess that I didn't inquire whether the food was local.  For one, it seemed like, if you were picky enough to be choosing a raw, vegan, gluten-free restaurant, it seem a little excessive to specify a whole lot further.  For two, it seemed to be kind of a lifestyle place anyway, such that I strongly suspect ingredients were chosen with, let's say, conscience.

So while it's been easy to break or bend rules that I have yet to set for myself, I can say that this local thing has at least held my attention for the past week. 

I suppose for the second two weeks of September, it would behoove me to pick myself some guidelines.  But at least they will be informed by realistic expectations now.   

I would walk 500 miles, just to be the man

to show up at your door with a pluot?

I'm going to work my way into developing my Eat Local Challenge rules.  Today, I simply defined "local." 

I picked a 100 mile radius.  I was thinking about all the yummies that are grown in Cali, and thought 100 miles would be awareness-raising without being a total buzzkill. 

Here is what's 100 miles from me:

It's rather less than I envisioned.  (Here's the tool I used.)

Thank goodness there's only three weeks left in the month!

It looks to me like at least part of Napa or Sonoma is in there, and that Gilroy (garlic) is within range, and definitely Watsonville (berries and apples).  I'll have to investigate what seafood swims close by.  Thorough investigation will wait for another day, another post. 

This tool purports to identify suppliers that are within my range, but it's not a particularly useful selection.

According to it, there are 3 bakers and 40 farms within 100 miles of me.  Two of the bakers are in Santa Cruz (2 hr drive) and one is in San Francisco (45 min drive).  Uh, yeah, no.  I guess I'll have to do more independent research - and besides, I'm more interested in ingredients than processors.  Does a local Krispy Kreme count as a local baker?  What's the difference if they all get their flour from Nebraska, you know? 

As for truly local farms - i.e. farms that aren't an hour drive away, kind of mooting the localism point of reducing the impact of trafficking - there aren't a lot listed on this site either.  I guess, on review, these are supposed to be meat sources. 

I'm intrigued by the Hidden Villa listing.  This place is totally local, I ride my bike past their little "No Spraying - Organic!" signs all the time, but they never seem open for business.  Besides which they were recently busted in some kind of marijuana raid.  But they list having eggs - I'd wondered where I'd get eggs locally.  Will have to keep an eye on them.

Rad has mentioned another little farm on our bike routes, but I've never stopped.  Maybe I'll check it out this weekend.

There's a goat dairy in Pescadero that might be a fine cheese source - their shop always seems to be bustling.  I'll just have to carry a friggin knapsack on my next 5 hour bike ride.  :-(  Or a fanny pack.

This TLC Ranch in Watsonville looks good - all kinds of well-tended-to animals.  Need some reason to get down there, though.  It's a couple-hour drive.  Just as far to Marin Sun Farm, and I've heard good things about them through this meat-buying co-op email list I was on for a while.  (I never got anything; you had to order, like, half a pig, and we just don't eat that much meat.)  I also got the impression that MSF sold out of stuff fast - particularly eggs.  Did you know that hens naturally lay in the spring only?  Not really a shocking revelation, but I hadn't really thought about it.

I'm not sure how to verify the distance my vegetables travel, except, I suppose, to shop for them exclusively at the farmer's market.   Although, the farmers market rules don't say anything about distance traveled - I guess maybe that's implicitly enforced because the actual farmers have to make the trip, which would be a total drag if it were hours away.  But Ace has pointed out that Milk Pail produce is about half the price.  I just don't know where it's from, though, unless there's a big, highlighted label.

Oh, wait.  This Pluot I'm eating, it has a sticker on it.  Hmm.  Let's check it out.  www.harvey-farms.com.  Tulare County.  Now let's see what the map says. 

BAH!  245 miles!! 

Oh well.  I'm not going to let the foods I already have rot just on principle, so I guess I'll just have to clear out my fruit bowl without feeling too guilty.  I mean, my awareness was raised, right?  Mission accomplished.

Boy, some of these projects (like No Impact Man and similar) seem appropriate only for folks with a ton of time on their hands. 

My first eat-local conclusion?  Yeah, I get it about trucking produce hither and yon, but at the same time it seems incredibly inefficient to expect farmers to grow a big variety of food on their land, when specialization could help them streamline their processes and hone their expertise.  Or is expecting diversity the problem - are we supposed to narrow our diets, after years of being taught that variety = healthy?  Am I resting on some false assumptions somewhere?

I was thinking about whether making September my Eat Local Month would be fair, because I'm traveling around a little.  I'm going down to Monterey this weekend to cheer folks at Pacific Grove, I'm going to Irvine next week for work, and I'm going to Chicago the week after that to see my family.  Is it cheating that I get to diversify my diet by traveling closer to certain sources  (e.g. pleasepleaseplease let there be local seafood in Monterey; please don't let sweetcorn season be over in Chicago)? 

I've decided, No, it's not cheating.  If anything it'll make me more acutely aware of where things are grown, and how seasons influence various areas differently.  And isn't that kind of the point, to be in touch with nature and blah blah blah?  I don't know how well my eating on-the-road will go; I may not have a lot of say in restaurants or menus.  But I'll do my best.

Next I'll have to figure out what, exactly, I intend to do with those 100 miles.  As indicated previously, I've already got all these foodstuffs in the house.  And a navel orange from Australia on my desk.  And a kiwi from New Zealand.  And my peanut butter from Virginia by way of Colorado.  This is not going to be easy. 

September 2007 Eat Local Challenge

I just learned (a week into it) that this month is the Eat Local Challenge.  (Who decides these things, I do not know.  I learned about some annual Soup Potluck thing off of someone's blog a week too late and felt totally gypped that I'd missed it.  Wait, we can't say "gypped" anymore, can we.) 

This seems like an intriguing project, so I thought I'd climb on board.  Recommended guidelines for designing your own Eat Local Challenge are available here - they also have a few requests, like that you register and "be counted," that you blog about it a little, and that sort of thing.  They seem pretty cool about it, mostly focusing on awareness raising. 

What they don't do is define for you what, exactly, is "local."  The site lets you decide - 50 miles, like the Google restaurant?  100 miles?  Your state?  It seems only reasonable to allow flexibility given the uneven distribution of various kinds of food producers around the country (and world). 

But I'm going to have to ponder this one.  I mean, I could pick "California," but that seems like a cop-out, because there wouldn't be too much deprivation involved at all.  Not that deprivation is the point, but I would imagine that the vast majority of my diet starts in California, just because there's so much agricultural variety in this state, so picking California wouldn't change my awareness much.  And Ace is already all about the farmers' market.  Then again, I can't recall any wheat fields bordering I-5, so I wonder if I'd have to cut out bread and tortillas.  (Queries to Ace's favorite apple-cinnamon bread maker elicited the response, "Sure it's local!  We mill and bake it right there in Berkeley!"  Hmm.)  But I know a guy whose wife's family has a rice farm up in northern California, so maybe I could eat rice as my starch for a month.

But I see how this is going.  I want to pick an arbitrary number at the outset, sort of to prevent myself from first determining how far away those rice fields are, or Watsonville (where my strawberries come from), and so forth, and then picking a distance that gets them in range.  I'll have to decide whether items currently in my freezer (sea scallops from Russia!, potstickers from China!) or my fridge (calamansi juice from the Phillipines! Swiss Gruyere!  New York Cheddar! - hm, my cheese consumption is definitely going to take a hit) or my cupboards (a dozen different beans and grains, my flour, my cooking oil, my peanut butter) will be allowed, since they're already boughten.  What about wine??  We have two bottles from Garrod Farms - will they see us through??

I'll think on this tonight and hopefully come up with my own Eat Local rules by tomorrow.  Here are some of the organizer's suggestions I'm going to consider (edited way down for quick reference) - I won't do all of them, but a few of them are very inviting:

1)  Commit to eating local for 30 days in September.  To do this, define what "local" means to you --  be it a 100-mile radius or your entire state or region.  Sign up on the "Locavores" website to  get counted. 

2)  Write about your experience with eating locally on your blog.  What's it like in your area?  Which parts of eating locally are easy, and which are difficult?  What advice do you have for others? 

3)  Take photos of local food, local farmers' markets and local farmers and post them.

4)  Make one local meal a week in September. 

5)  Submit original content about your eat local experience to the Eat Local Challenge blog to be posted during September. 

6)  Attend a farmers' market each week in September. 

7)  Can, freeze, or dehydrate your local summer bounty so that you can spread your local eating into the winter.

8)  Ask your supermarket manager where your meat, produce and dairy is coming from. 

9)  Sign up for a local CSA.

10)  Find out what restaurants in your area support local farmers. You can do this by asking the restaurants about their ingredients directly, or by asking your favorite farmers what restaurant accounts they have.

11)  Learn more about a farmer or a local producer by talking to them. 

12)  Draw a 100-mile radius around your home and identify local providers. 

13)  Start simple and small by replacing one food item a week.  Find out who in your area roasts their coffee beans.  Try replacing your fruit during September with locally grown fruit.  Buy only locally grown tomatoes. 

14)  Commit to learning more about the implications of growing food on our enivronment, health and economy by reading some of the most popular and influential writings in this area.

15)  Take your kids to a u-pick in your area.

16)  Host a local foods potluck. 

17) Resolve to quit bottled water!

If this project interests you, too, I urge you to go to the website.  It's a treasure trove of links and tips and suggestions.   They even link to a neat tool to draw a 100 mile radius around your house and then another tool to discover what food sources fall within that circle.  Cool!

6)  Attend a farmers' market each week in September. 

7)  Can, freeze, or dehydrate your local summer bounty so that you can spread your local eating into the winter.

8)  Ask your supermarket manager where your meat, produce and dairy is coming from. 

9)  Sign up for a local CSA.

10)  Find out what restaurants in your area support local farmers. You can do this by asking the restaurants about their ingredients directly, or by asking your favorite farmers what restaurant accounts they have.

11)  Learn more about a farmer or a local producer by talking to them. 

12)  Draw a 100-mile radius around your home and identify local providers. 

13)  Start simple and small by replacing one food item a week.  Find out who in your area roasts their coffee beans.  Try replacing your fruit during September with locally grown fruit.  Buy only locally grown tomatoes. 

14)  Commit to learning more about the implications of growing food on our enivronment, health and economy by reading some of the most popular and influential writings in this area.

15)  Take your kids to a u-pick in your area.

16)  Host a local foods potluck. 

17) Resolve to quit bottled water!

If this project interests you, too, I urge you to go to the website.  It's a treasure trove of links and tips and suggestions.   They even link to a neat tool to draw a 100 mile radius around your house and then another tool to discover what food sources fall within that circle.  Cool!

They asked me how I knew...

We're having weird skies this week.  Yesterday we never saw the sun - it was bright and warm, but there was no blue sky, there were no discernable clouds.  I just thought it was Fall coming on quickly, and thought it was kind of nice, kind of restful after the blast of heat we sweltered through over the long weekend.  The grey, dark day made me think about sweaters and choir practice and needlepoint and bay-scented candles, and all those little projects I associate with back-to-school days.

But at Run Club someone reminded me of the fires we're having and apparently it's smoke from those that's blotting out the sun.

Monday as I was riding my bicycle home, I was traveling southeast on Sand Hill - that hill before you go over 280 - and off in the distance, at the bottom of the Sierra Foothills - what would that be, Morgan Hill? - there was a thick column of roiling grey rising up from behind the hill.  I swear, it looked like Mt.  Saint Helen's going up.  The grey mass pushed straight up and then T-boned outward into a thinner grey cloud that was spreading across the south eastern sky. 

I couldn't imagine what it was - as I say, it really did look like a volcano.  It looked much bigger than any building fire I've seen.  I guess it was a wildfire of some kind (though I would have expected wildfires to be less, I don't know, concentrated and smokey).  I wanted Ace to go look at it, but it was dark by the time I got home and I didn't think about it after that.

But yesterday, like I say, the constant overcast.  Someone at run club said there was another fire up to the northwest of us, and that's actually what's been covering our sky due to the prevailing winds. 

And today it's the same.  I look south out my office window, and usually I can see across the Bay, clear to the foothills and the snow-capped Sierras beyond.  Now, all I can see is the near edge of the Bay and beyond that, whiteout.  And the sky isn't grey, but brown.  I think there's a darker smudge over where I saw the "volcano" on Monday, but I could just be imagining that.

Only now that I know why we have no sky, I'm less serene about it than I was yesterday.  This isn't apple pie weather, this is trees frying and little ground squirrels running and not knowing where to go, and little grasses who never had a chance.