Thursday, February 21, 2008

Ahoy! Oysters!


Wow. Laura Avery, Market Supervisor of the Santa Monica Farmers' Markets, I salute thee. The Santa Monica Market has kicked it up a notch. While poking around the market today browsing about for interesting things for a few clients, I passed by a strange vendor. My first thought, you must be new, came just before I noticed his three metal bins on his table. And what IS that you have there?

Clams! Mussels! Oysters! Abalone! Oh my!

The vendor was busy getting interviewed for KCRW's' Good Food which will air this Saturday at 11am, but that didn't stop me from gasping and practically hugging the nearest onlooker. We're talking sustainably harvested, eco-friendly 100% California genuine farm-raised shellfish from Carlsbad at OUR local market. Amazing!

And with all the depressing news about how aqua-farming is hurting our oceans and coastline ecosystems, sustainably minded aqua farms are they way to safely enjoy these delectable goodies.

I picked up a dozen Luna Oysters which were harvested just a day ago
for a mere $8.
Carlsbad Aquafarm will be at the Santa Monica Wednesday market each week. Run oyster lovers, run!

Monday, February 18, 2008

A Grand Crevace

Just spent 4 days walking and hiking around the Grand Canyon.

Yep. I know. It's quite a crevice. 

It's truly remarkable. Stunning. Moving. Knock-your-socks-off-feel-like-a-hundred-bucks amazing! (see gallery on the left)

Next stop, Zion National Park! Glacier National Park! Hell, the La Brea tar-pits right by my house! Sadly, I'm told that attendance at National Parks is on the decrease.

Wwhaatt? Yep. It's true.

Interestingly enough, visits by foreign tourists to our own national treasures are on the rise (thanks to the record low of our fantastic dollar- or perhaps because seeing natural wonders are more highly regarded in other cultures? Namely Japan and China).  Why is that?

Which got me thinking, what does that mean for us when we don't visit our own national parks? What else are we spending our time doing?  What's the value and importance of national parks and natural spaces? I was struck by how easy it was to forget how beautiful our own country was...how I've been more inclined to reach for a trip abroad than in my own backyard.  So much more glamour and "cultural experience" in traveling abroad, I had thought.  

What a silly little girl I am.

To overlook the trunk-load of incredible natural wonders in our own backyard is truly a tragedy not only to the individual, but to our nation.  What a lost opportunity for understanding more about our planet and our place in it. Everyone needs to see these incredible landscapes, see deer walking by and watch the sun play along
the canyon walls - if we don't fall in love with it enough to preserve and protect it... who will?If we don't enrich our lives by seeing the vastness of the American landscape, how will that change the America we give over to the next generation? What will be lost? Are we bringing up a generation who will value nature and understand their place within it? What's at stake?

So what started out a silly blog turned serious. 

Know the Canyon's History, See Rocks Made By Time. -Grand Canyon Motto

Booyah! A canyon billions of years in the making... what tiny little blip-of-a-life we all have.  Humbling? Empowering? Inspiring? Daunting? Go and decide. 

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Potato, Potato

Year of the Potato: Bringing spuds back

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The potato is back on top! This year, the spuds take over the limelight as 2008 marks the Year of the Potato. And no, this isn't a gimmicky ploy by the French fry industry or the chip lobby. The potato reaches for a higher cause this year and brings us back to what all foods are supposed to do: Give us nutrients.

The potato is being hailed for its ability to play a huge role in the fight against global poverty and economic development for rural communities. The Year of the Potato also brings attention to the rapid loss of potato farmland in North America. In 1900, more than 300,000 potato farms speckled America, growing all kinds of potato varieties that each have their own flavor, color, and texture profile. Now, only 12,000 potato farms remain in the U.S. In fact, Europe and America have been surpassed in potato production and consumption by Asia.

Like its counterpart rice, which had its own year back in 2004, the potato is an excellent source of complex carbohydrates, protein, and vitamin C. Easily grown and harvested, increased attention and focus on potato farming globally means economic development for poor farmers and preservation of our small potato farmers here.

So go on, give the spud a second chance. The Potato Famine of the 1800's is wayyy behind us now and we gotta give some love back to the potato! To get you started, look for these potato farmers at the Santa Monica Wednesday Market: Jerry Rutiz Family Farms, Weiser Family Farms, Pritchett Farms, Xiong Pau (japanese yams, sweet potatoes), and Windrose Farms.

And try this spud-inspired recipe with your local, farm-fresh produce!
----
Year of the Potato-Leek Soup

  • 2-3 leeks
  • 1 small yellow onion
  • Approx. 2-3 potatoes (russet, yukon golds, butterballs)
  • 2-3 cups of chicken/veg stock
  • 1/2 tsp unsalted butter
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • pinch of pepper

Place a deep pot over medium heat and melt butter. Add leeks (dice up the white/light green part only!) and chopped onion and sweat until both are very tender and translucent. Add 2 cups stock, diced potatoes, and salt. Raise heat to medium high and boil. When you see large bubbles reduce heat to simmer and recover to cook for 15 more minutes, until potatoes are tender when pierced. Let soup cool and puree in blender or food processor. Work in batches so as not to overfill and return pureed soup to pot. Adjust consistency by using remaining stock if needed. Reheat gently, stirring until visibly steaming. Ladle into bows and enjoy!

Monday, February 11, 2008

Accidental Muesli

February is a good month for cooking adventures. From squashes to apples, potatoes to cabbage, winter-time is keepin' us busier than ever at the market and the produce is begging for experimentations of all kinds. I gotta say, my favorite so far is this incredible squash bake that I think I ate almost two entire batches of. De. Lic. Ious. Stop reading, and go buy a butternut squash and do this immediately.

Not that there haven't been some major set-backs (my giant "roast of root vegetables" did not go so hot and I'm too prideful to ask around at the market where I went wrong... how hard can a root roast melody be? They'll all laugh and point at me!).

And some things magically come out well despite the fact that you brazenly look at the recipe and think, "I don't have ingredient A, D, and F, and I'm gonna wing it!" Enter my Accidental Muesli.

In an attempt to make this incredible sounding power bar with only the things we could find offhand in my mom's kitchen, we ended up not with powerbars, but a crunchy sweet muesli. Which will come in handy when my bro and I take off for Arizona and la canyon grand cette week-end. I've been munching on it all week with yogurt and mixed it into my oatmeal... horray for experiments that go wrong in all the right ways!!

Accidental Muesli

Around 1 cup dried coconut
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
1 cup bran flakes cereal
1 cup pecans
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup slivered almonds
1 cup maple syrup
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup raisins

Per Heidi's instructions on her site, we toasted the nuts and coconut on a cookie rack at 350F. Just until the coconut was nice and brown which was under 10 minutes with my mom's spiffy oven. Placing all the nuts and coconut in a mixing bowl and adding in the rolled oats, we moved over to the stove and poured the maple syrup, sugar, salt, and vanilla in a deep pot and brought it to a boil while stirring constantly.

At this point we are munching on the toasted coconut and nuts. Again I repeat, toasted coconut is food of the gods. De. Lic. Ious.

After bringing the maple syrup to a rolling boil, we poured the sauce over the nuts and stirred to incorporate fully. I then attempted to press the mixture into a pyrex dish to set into bars but foud that my mixture was much too flaky and sticky...

So flaky.

So sweet.

So nutty.

So totally wonderfully granola-y that you'll be picking and pouring into yogurt, stashing in your car for a rush-hour snack, or putting over pancakes.

On Cloning and Magic.

Aiye! This picture cracks me up. And yet it chillingly makes me think of the cloned meat issue that's happening in America right now. Should they (producers) be required to label cloned meat? The USDA doesn't seem to think so... do you? I think this quote put it nicely:

"The thing that they just don't get about cloning is that from an animal breeder's point of view, which I hold, is clones are dead ends. There is no improvement in them. There is always room for improving the genome through selective breeding and the process is fun, an intellectual challenge. To just copy the same animal over and over turns my farm into a factory. Boooring. I would rather keep improving. Keep moving forward. Evolution doesn't favor dead ends."

Well said, I say.

Anyway, back to what this post was supposed to be about. A friend of mine just stayed with me from London and we got to talking about farmers' markets. London is host to some really incredible markets that really have an emphasis on preserving markets as places of community and economic opportunity for small farmers. I was really excited to see that they have a similar organization as ours (the Southland Farmers' Market Association), called FARMA who makes sure that markets operate with integrity, discouraging the cash cow of a "swap meet" in favor of a market that accommodates farmers' who genuinely grow or make what they are selling.

We were talking about how the market is a real place of community where people rub up against each other and look their food producers in the eye, thanking them for the food they cultivated, harvested, and then brought from miles and miles away to put in YOUR hands. That's pretty sweet. And from London to L.A to Morocco to Costa Rica, theres that same sense of magic and community cohesion that happens. It kindof is one of those connective linkages that anyone from any culture can identify with- it brings us back to our roots, reminds of us of our common dependence on the planet and our similar needs to be fed (and our common choice to eat well!). Part primal. Part magical. That's a pretty good mix right there.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Before we begin...


I would love to have started with an epic introduction about the plight of food policy in our nation or some ultra, oh-so-insider news about food happenings in LA that I hear about via my work with the Santa Monica Wednesday Farmers' Market, but I'll muse over that in a minute.

Right now, I'm going to take the ethnocentric rout and excitedly announce my interview with KCRW/NPR on the show Good Food! (Gasp! Clutch heart!) I interviewed with them at the market on Wednesday at which point we discussed the new Market Basket Program that I helped launch last year. Who wouldn't want to have farm-fresh produce from the best farmers' market in California, (oh let's just be honest, the best in the United States), handpicked and delivered to you at your office the same day as the market? Well? Wouldn't you??