Memphis Farmer's Market

Last weekend I took a trip home to the good ole' South. I got some time to spend with my Dad and his lovely wife. And thanks to the most amazing man in the ENTIRE world, DH, I went with no children. Two days with zero parental responsibility? I almost didn't know what to do with myself!

My father and I took a trip to the Memphis Farmer's Market at the Agricenter on Friday the 29th. They have been frequenting the market more and more recently and I am thrilled to hear that. I was really curious to see how this market was different than my own in New York. So I took some pictures and have this to offer.
There were alot of similarities in produce. I am convinced that as Americans we have a collective national palette. We love tomatoes especially, onions, cucumbers, etc. All of that was available in Memphis. But while tomatoes have all but wrapped up in New York, they are still going strong down south, and probably will for the next couple of weeks. Most of the produce were varieties that I have seen in New York. But like tomatoes, they had more of the items I would consider summer varieties in New York. There were a huge amount of pumpkins including a very cool BLUE pumpkin. There were also gourds and mini pumpkins. Unfortunately I got the impression that the pumpkins were for decorative purposes. I really really want to get back to a time when Americans are buying pumpkins for eating purposes, rather than using canned prepared pumpkin. Pumpkins and winter squashes are easy to prepare (even if they take a long time to roast) and filled with wonderful nutrients. Yet most people don't buy them to eat them, but rather to stick on their front porch. And that is okay too, but pumpkins are native to North America and grow prolifically, we should herald that in our cuisine. Hmmm, a pumpkin cookbook....yet another project to tackle. Unfortunately the market at the Agricenter conducted it's last day of business on Saturday the 30th. They will back in April I believe.


Other similarities were local fish. The fish in this Memphis FM was not within 100 miles(a standard definition of local), rather it was trucked in from the gulf coast. Memphis is remember, not along the coastline. However it is from a small operation and is vanned in rather than commercially processed and trucked in. Plus the fish is amazingly fresh. I still believe that this non-industrialized fish should be considered local. I think this is a good way of taking advantage of modern transportation without losing your head in the shipping process. The drive to the Gulf Coast from Memphis is several hours, but can be done in less than a day. This is certainly no Chinese Tilapia, or even Alaskan Salmon. And it's path to your plate is clear, rather than opaque. Plus my Dad loves this stuff and says it is of the highest quality.

What was different? Other than the extended availability of seasonal products, the Memphis Farmer's Market had a great display of jams and jellies. And while we do have that in New York, one product I saw (and desperately wanted) was local Sorghum Molasses. I have never seen than in my farmer's markets. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any back to New York because I did not plan on checking luggage. (Damn you terrorists! You are interfering with my right to travel with regional food!!!) Such an ingredient is not ubiquitous in the cooking of my region (or at least isn't currently, or that I am aware of), so it was an exciting ingredient.

Also, I know of one stand in the Union Square Farmer's Market that sells plants, and starter veggie plants, but my local Inwood FM has none. On this last Friday in October a very kind woman was selling potted herbs of many varieties, all for $2 a bucket. She gave my Dad some good advice on how to care for them and how to prep for next spring. I love it.

I always love hearing what is available at a different farmer's markets across the country. If you think your local FM is cool and you want to plug your blog (or you just want to take the time to write a post) please send me a guest post about what your local market is like, and attach some pictures. I think this would be a cool use of the internet and a way to create a blogging community around The Table of Promise. You can email me at thetablofpromise(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Enjoy!!

Why I Love the Union Square Green Market

Snugar Peas

This last weekend at the farmer's market it was as if the whole earth exploded vegetables! I have been waiting for this week. From just before the beginning of this project we have been going to the farmer's market every week and it has been a difficult thing to get everything that we need! But last week we saw the first week of the various stalls being flooded with items. I knew it would happen, but I wasn't sure when.
We saw the old standards, apples and potatoes, all the milk and meats, but this week there were new things! Kohlrabi and big bunches of adult spinach, and sugar snap peas!

I bought a big bag of sugar snap peas, they were so cute with their little hats on one side and their curly-Q tails on the other. Their peas were little, but their pods were big and fat and the folks told me the whole thing was edible.

I put some into our mix of baby soup this week (big success) and Thing 1 was curious enough to eat one raw. He only took one bite, but he told me they were good, and frankly I was thrilled to see that he tried them so easily these would make a great raw snack. They taste even sweeter than carrots!. When first showed them to Thing 1, he asked what they were. I told him they were 'sugar snap peas' and he called them 'snugar peas' for the rest of the morning. I am not sure I will ever call them anything else for the rest of my life.

I plan on using the rest tonight with a pound of salmon I bought. I will put a soy/ honey glaze on the salmon and broil it; and the peas will get a quick blanche before getting a simple dressing of sesame oil. I can't wait. Talk about an easy meal! There is an amazing almost no prep meal. I will put this fish into marinate in the glaze in the morning so I can throw it under the broiler when I get home. I'll reheat some already made brown rice, and then boil the peas. The whole thing will be healthy and balanced and take no time at all. Sweet.

Local or Organic or ????

As yesterday dawned I was pretty sure that I had a direct path ahead of me. Buy more organics and buy more from the farmer's market. But through the course of the day it became apparent that my clarity had become a little cloudy.

Although I have been shopping at the Inwood Farmer's Market for a couple of years now and I have loved the high quality food, I had never actually asked the question 'Is your food organic?' I just naturally assumed that because these farmer's were pursuing the avenue of selling their fare at the farmer's market rather than contacting a supermarket distributor, that they must be organic. I also see all the folks from my neighborhood that I know from the CSA, and I know that they prize organic foods like I do. Surely the fact that other health minded folks I know shopped there, that MUST mean that everything was organic!

I have known for sometime about the USDA organic program. I know because of Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, that family farms must pay a government certification company a lot of money to become certified organic, so they can stick that USDA ORGANIC logo on all their produce. Many family run farms simply do not make enough money to pay for the certification process, but their food is organic nonetheless. My CSA makes no effort to hide the fact that they fall into this category, and I always assumed that the folks at my farmer's market did too.

Well, I got to asking people. There were several stands that were obvious. Milk Thistle is labeled as organic, Bread Alone Breads too are labeled. The mill selling beans and flour are all labeled. The turkey however....the turkeys were not given hormones and antibiotics, but they did not eat organic feed. So they are not organic, even though theirs is a better practice than at most conventional animal farms. The apples are grown with both chemical fertilizers and pesticides. I have heard from my own CSA that growing fruits organically are especially challenging because there are so many other critters besides us that like fruit. Those buggies just get to it first. All of the vegetable stands sold veggies that were not sprayed with pesticides, but they all used chemical fertilizers. There was one exception, Hawthorne Valley Farm sells organic yogurts and breads and other delicious goodies. They are a not for profit biodynamic farm in Ghent, NY and they were selling organic salad mix. But that was it, no other veggies for sale. It was pricey, but I bought it.

So there I was at the market feeling a little lead astray. But not rightly so, none of these farms had ever lead me to believe that they were certified organic. None of them labeled their food with a misleading label. However I was blissfully happy to assume that they were organic when they weren't. But I didn't feel that I was left with much of a choice. I supposed I could have gone to my supermarket and bought all organic veggies that were trucked in from California. Those veggies would have been from upstanding but nonetheless factory farms like Earthbound farms who grow food in huge monocultures and manage to turn a huge profit. They are wonderful farms that started out small and grew through success. But I don't like that whole 3,000 mile trip that they make across country. Not only is it an amazing waste of gas, but I get fewer days to enjoy my food because it is older by the time it arrives in Manhattan. And the nutrients in food diminishes with each moment after it has been harvested. I have bought potatoes at the farmer's market that were in the ground 5 hours before I bought them (the farmer told me).

And furthermore, buying local means that my food dollar will stay within the economy of New York State. When I purchase a California grown carrot, my grocery store gets one chunk of my food dollar, a distributor or importer gets another chunk and that CA farm gets the last chunk. I am not sure whose chunks are big or little , but I know a thing or two about the wholesale industry, the profit is divided up amongst the people that connect your product to you.

Today I have decided that local is more important than organic. I was hoping that my choices would be more clear. I envisioned a big yellowish-maybe-slightly-orangish crooked carrot that had a pair of evil eyes that were red and swirling around. I would know NOT to buy that carrot because it was bad news. But the choices are not that easy. And it doesn't seem like anyone is talking about all this gray in the marketplace. They are just making black and white statements. Buy more of this and less of that. Eat this, and not that.

We all live in gray. I think the most important thing for each of us is to ask the questions and try and make your way though the cloud.

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Okay before you just click away from the page because you read the title. Hear me out on this one. I had mentioned a couple of days ago that I had bought some whole wheat flour from a mill at the farmer's market in Inwood.

The Inwood Farmer's Market is located on Isham st between Broadway and Seaman. It is just a block up from 207th street. It is open every Saturday from 8am-3pm. The market is held every week year round and you can buy everything there, turkey meat (breast and ground among others), milk (whole, skim, 2% and cream), organic breads and pastries, of course seasonal produce and juices (some certified organic, some that just practice no spraying, etc), there is a fishmonger, pastured organic beef, sheep's milk cheeses, sustainable WINE (that's a new one), and my new best friends, the mill people. The folks representing the mill had various organic grain flours for sale, spelt, rye, whole wheat, etc. I have had only fair success with whole wheat flours in the past, so I opted for the 'Half-White' which has had half of the wheat germ removed. It was $4 for a 2 pound sack. They also had some dried beans, I bought black beans but they had garbanzo beans and navy beans and kidney beans as well.

I knew I wanted to make a pizza, but I did not have a good pizza crust recipe. And I like a certain kind of crust. I found on my Google search all manner of pizza crusts. some with olive oil, some without, some with honey, some that let the dough rise and some that were quick to put together and make. I finally, after reading a dozen, settled on one from the website http://www.easypizzacrusts.com/ I really hope that is someone's blog out there because I can't imagine paying a fee every month to support a website like that. They do have a lot of good recipes and some good tips about how to make the pizza better.

At first I was scared that if I chose a recipe designed for whole wheat flour that it would be tough and cardboardy like healthy food should be (c'mon, you know you feel that way too). But I decided that would be the one to try.

Okay--Attention! Parent Tip: The dough has to stand for 20-25 minutes. It is really easy and quick to add all the ingredients, so do that while the kids are doing something like watching TV where they won't move around too much since you'll be sticky and pulling them down by the ear as they are climbing up the bookshelves will be difficult. Let it stand while you do something that requires your full attention, like bathtime. And if it ends up standing longer than 25 minutes it doesn't really matter so much anyhow, it won't taste or act any different. I got my dough kneaded and rolled out and dressed just as I was going in to put Thing 1 to bed tonight. It went into a 400 degree oven and I went in to put him to bed. by the time I got out I had this gorgeous pizza waiting for me all hot and delicious. My toppings? Baby spinach, onions, olives, some leftover spaghetti sauce, and chucks of that peppercorn chevre I mentioned from last night. Then I dusted the whole thing with Parmesan cheese and black pepper. I don't do a lot of cheese on my pizzas partly out of habit since that heavily copyrighted diet where you track all your food units assigns a particularly high measurement to cheese. And now, I just don't eat a lot of it. But my life is no worse off, and I still do eat cheese when I really, really want it.

The pizza came out beautifully! But a couple things to note: I think I didn't knead it long enough (rushing through it because your kids are screaming will do that to you). The dough was very tender, but that's not such a bad thing. I just expected it to be much chewier. I'll knead it more next time. Also, I am fuller than I usually am after pizza even though I ate less. I have been making homemade pizza for years, but I always buy a store-bought crust. I can put away some serious slices, but I always feel like I have never eaten enough with the white flour crusts. This crust was tender, the wheat flour had a nice nuttiness that paired well with the chevre, and all that extra fiber filled me up. My first experiment was a success! I always thought pizza crusts were really hard. Yeast is a very intimidating ingredient. But it shouldn't be.

I have a feeling that Thing 1 will be eating some of this tomorrow (if he doesn't notice that I put spinach on it).

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour

1 pkg instant yeast (.25 oz)

1/2 tsp salt

8 oz water, warmed to 110 degrees (i used the hottest tap water I could get out of my tap and it was fine)

2 tbsp veg oil (I used olive oil)

(I also added a squirt of hone, about 1 tsp--sorry for bastardizing your recipe easypizzacrusts.com!!)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare pizza pan by spraying with non-stick cooking spray (i just lined the pan in foil) Combine all dry ingredients, except whole wheat flour, into a large mixing bowl. Next, add liquid ingredients and gradually add whole wheat flour, until dough mixture becomes stiff and hard to stir. You may not have to use all the whole wheat flour. However if the dough mixture is still too moist, feel free to add more all purpose flour to stiffen the dough. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and set aside for 20-25 minutes, allowing the dough to rise. Empty dough out onto a clean, floured surface. Knead by had 6-8 times, it may be necessary to add additional flour to the surface to keep the dough from sticking. Roll into desired shape and thickness. Place rolled dough onto prepared pizza pan, add favorite sauce and toppings. Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, depending on crust thickness. (Whole Wheat Pizza Crust. easypizzacrusts.com, 7 May, 2010)

Day One

May 4th, 2010
Why Today? Why start this blog today?
I have been pondering a project like this for some time. I am a full time working Mommy of two boys, Thing 1 and Thing 2. I am the devoted wife of Daddy or Darling Husband (DH). We live in Northern Manhattan and have a right lovely life up here.
A little more than 2 years ago I really needed to lose 15 pounds after the birth of my first son. I had never been so heavy in my life and felt very overwhelmed by the thought of having to lose so much weight. And furthermore I wasn't doing anything to make that goal a reality. A colleague at work told me that several co-workers were creating a group and signing up for a popular diet plan where you track your food intake and share you feelings about your experiences as a way to reinforce your weight loss. I am pretty sure that they are copyrighted and it is not my wish to piss them off, so they shall remain nameless. Needless to say I joined. I had had friends who had participated in the past and had enjoyed the experience so I said 'What the hey". My company even reimbursed me the cost of the program! Seriously what did I have to lose?
I started the program in January of 2008 and I inhaled all the information they could throw at me. Whole food options were recommended and there were also all kinds of modified processed foods too that seemed like healthy choices. I love to cook so I mostly looked for ingredients from the whole foods list for the most part. I started out with the goal of losing 15 pounds. By April, I had lost almost 25 pounds and felt better than I had in years.
The program was eye opening. And I realized that although I was nursing my baby, and everyone tells you can eat whatever you want and the pounds will just melt off, I had been eating so much junk that my weight hadn't budged. I was eating all manner of pizza and tater tots and take out food. And if I was eating it, that is all I was feeding my baby. I had a real come-to-Jesus moment because I didn't want to be feeding my baby this food. And I didn't want to admit to him that I was eating it. And I certainly did not want him growing up thinking it was okay to eat garbage all day and night.
Around the time I lost all the weight, I was in an airport. I passed by a bookstore and saw a book on the shelf that I remembered reading about in a magazine. It was 'Animal, Vegetable Miracle!' by Barbara Kingsolver. I am never one to buy just one book, so I looked down the table and picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's amazing 'The Omnivore's Delimma'. And just like that, I was started down a path I could only imagine where it would lead.
A friend recommeneded that I join the neighborhood CSA, and it sounded like something fun. It was relatively cheap and seemed like a great experiment. As I waited for that first delivery in June I read Kingsolver's lucious words teaching me about seasons, the balance of nature and even turkeys. I could practically see the dew hanging on the leaves of the tomato plants. I could feel the heat of the warm water she used to make cheese. Reading her book was an awakening. And reading her husband's commentary peppered throughout her prose taught me all kinds of information about chemical fertilizer (did you know it was made from petroleum?) and government regulations regarding tap water versus bottled water(did you know that the regulations for the cleanliness of tap water are stricter than that of bottled? And that they aren't even regulated by the same government agency??). All the information flooded over me.
Then I started Pollan's tome. I devoured his book. I read it in a matter of days. I learned more about the politics of food than I ever thought possible. And what was once a simple topic of eat what tastes good and try not to eat too much, became this mission towards whole foods in their natural state, preferably local and organic.
My son was getting bigger and eating real food, so it was fun to include him too! The veggies from the CSA were pouring in. I made a big veggie soup for him every week with anything from carrots to corn to cerlaric and turnips. My cravings for junk just vanished. We stopped going to the grocery store except for once a month and started shopping at our local farmer's market. We got to know the growers and excentric personalities at the stands. We started keeping cream in the house. I stopped tracking what I ate. I never gained back a pound. Even when the weather turned colder we kept going to the farmer's market. My son would only drink the milk from Ghent, NY and devoured the apples from Kinderhook. We made Christmas dinner almost entirely from items procured from the farmer's makert.
Then, I got pregnant again. We were thrilled and over joyed at the prospect of a second Thing. But it all became too much. The stress of cooking, the exhaustion, it was all too much. Fall turned into winter. The stands at the farmer's market dwindled down to the turkey guy and the milk lady and the stand that sells apples. They are the die-hards, they will sell their foods in the driving snow. I also took on more projects at work, and that only compounded everything. I had no time for cooking. I couldn't wake up at 5am anymore to bake muffins or shuck corn. I could barely stay awake to eat the dinner that Daddy had prepared.
And that kind of brings me to where I am today.
I still ate healthy while I was pregnant, alot healthier than my first time around. But my hunger was tough to manage and of course Pringles filled the void on several occasions. Thing 2 weighed in at a whopping 9lbs 3 ozs at birth. A full pound and three quarters bigger than Thing 1. I believe that because I ate better I had a bigger baby. And he is still my good eater!!!
I went back on the heavily copyrighted diet about 3 months after Thing 2 was born. I am proud to say that he has only ever had breastmilk, no formula, so I purposely lost the weight slowly, a pound or so a week, not super fast like the first time. I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight when Thing 2 was about 6 months old. I was THRILLED! But it wasn't quite the same. I was fighting cravings left and right. I swear croissants would actually talk to me as I walked down the street. Every 16 oz lost was a triumph.
I am not sure what made me buy two more Michael Pollan books 'In Defense of Food' and 'Food Rules'. Maybe I just felt spring coming on again. Maybe I just got curious about nutrition. Maybe I remembered the inspiration he lent me two years ago. Whatever the reason I can't put him down again. And his words on nutritionism have me on the move again. We even went back to the farmer's market last week, all four of us.
So here I am on May 4th, 2010. And starting a blog about my life in food in the coming year seems so right. Now that Thing 2 is starting to eat real food, and Thing1 is firmly lodged in the land of hot dogs it seems like the time to get back to food that is right.