Community Supported Agriculture

Are you buying produce correctly? Probably not.

How serious are you about produce? I sure am, and being an opinionated SOB, I think you should be too. I do 99.9% of the shopping for our household, so when M went for the first time a few weeks ago, she was shell shocked by prices and the general lack of good quality produce, as are a lot of folks – as such, I think it’s absolutely time to discuss it – don’t you?

I took the shopping images you see here today – check out the prices. When I see Serrano chiles at $4 a pound, you damn skippy I’m going to be über picky buying them. Bell peppers $2.50 a pop – Same gig. Small limes .89¢ each – uhhh, yeah – picky. If what you do at the store doesn’t more or less mirror my schtick, then you’re not doing enough, and that’s contributing to why what you buy doesn’t taste as good or last as long as it should. Time to up your game, because some necessary adjustments to our typical way of shopping are necessary.

First and foremost, I think that getting produce shopping done right means changing the dominant American paradigm and adopting a more worldly model. North America is about the only place where people expect to go to one place, one time, to get all their food. Think about it – all those images of local markets? The French and Italians, and their routines of visiting specific local purveyors for various things? That’s something we here need more of.

Taking a more holistic approach to shopping means more planning, and taking more time and care when you’re there. The image above shows you the produce I bought on Saturday. I went farther afield than I could have – to a store with better produce, went early to get the best selection, and easily spent ten minutes choosing five chiles, three limes, and one bell pepper – and I enjoyed myself to boot. This means shopping might entail going to the carniceria for fresh tortillas, the Euro market for moghrabieh couscous, or skipping your first choice for produce because what you needed just wasn’t good enough – that’s what we gotta do.

How about shopping frequency? Americans wanna go as little as possible, and expect things they buy to be good for a long time – and that model doesn’t jibe well with quality produce at home. Just as the rest of the world shops several times a week, so should we – buy less, buy fresher, and use it before you get more. If you don’t use it, preserve it to avoid needless waste. Plan meals around what you’ve got and how soon it needs to be used.

Don’t get your produce from your average big name grocery store if you can avoid it. These days, CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) are far more common than they used to be – they can range from fairly large scale ops in a city to small one-family affairs in towns and rural areas. Patronize them and you’ll get far better, fresher produce – and you’ll be supporting smaller, local businesses too. Often enough, a CSA will bring an order to your door, and you can often choose what and how much you need. If they don’t offer delivery, incorporate that pickup into your shopping routine.

Farmers markets are still largely seasonal, but you should check out your area to see what and when you have available to you – here there are quite a few folks who grow year round in greenhouses. Like CSAs, you’ll be supporting local farm families, and getting produce directly from the growers.

Wherever you buy, you probably need to get a bunch more discerning in your purchases. I really do get approached all the time in stores about my produce buying habits, so obviously I’m doing something markedly different from the average bear. Yesterday, it was a young 20-something guy who appeared at my shoulder and sort of sarcastically noted, ‘that’s the most time and effort I’ve ever seen anybody spend to buy five peppers!’ In all fairness, I think he wanted at them too, and I was in the way – still, it played out differently than he thought it would.

I pointed to the sign that read $3.99 a pound for Serranos and said ‘yeah? Well at that price, I’m gonna be picky as hell, and you should be too!’ Curious now, he asked what I was looking for, and there it was – I showed him the ones I’d chosen – firm, glossy, good ends, no lesions, smells like a chile. Then I grabbed a soft one and handed it to him, along with one with brown spots and one with a soft stem end, and one that smelled a little off – I watched the light bulb turn on. He thanked me, by the way.

The same goes for small limes at .89¢ a pop – I’m after ones that are firm but not hard, glossy, no lesions or soft spots and that smell good, and I’m testing as many as it takes until I find three I’m willing to spend $3 on. $2.50 for a red bell pepper? I’m gonna take all the time I need to find one as close to perfect as I can get. If I’m in the grocery store, I check organic versus not, and peruse varieties I may not think I’m looking for in order to score the best stuff.

Take lettuce – no, really. Stand and watch how people buy that – 9.9 out 10 folks just grab whatever is on top of the pile and throw it in the basket – and that’s way wrong. Pick up several heads -notice some are really light and others notably heavier. Squish them gently – some are firm, some are mushy. Look at the cut ends – lots of brown and soft tissue? Smell it – if anything, you should get a faint earthy scent – if it smells strongly of anything, that’s not good, so move to the next head.

Potatoes and onions? Here again, pick up a few and you’ll notice weight difference. We want firm, clean veggies with no lesions or soft spots that smell good. Carrots and celery? Both of those should be firm, and resist a gentle bend. The ends should be clean and firm, no visible rot or soft spots. Smell ‘em, and they should smell like what they are. Crush a little piece of celery leaf and smell that – smells good, stronger than celery, kinda peppery? Good news – buy that.

Be it fruit or veggies, this detailed physical, visual, and olfactory inspection is critical to determine whether what they’re selling is worth your hard earned money – Don’t skimp on the process and you won’t go home with crap that spoils quickly and tastes lousy.

How you store produce at home is equally important. In our kitchen, we have several purpose built produce containers, (ours are made by Oxo). They go in the fridge and act like little crisper drawers – because they’re smaller, with vented sides and bottoms and adjustable ventilation, they work better than anything else we’ve used – Lettuce, cabbage, chiles, root veggies and such all last well in them.

Potatoes like to be around 50° F and dry with good airflow, not in direct sun. Garlic and shallots, ditto. Not always easy to achieve, but if you have a cooler spot in your pantry, that’ll do. Oh, and that old saw about storing potatoes with apples? Don’t do that – together they produce ethylene gas, which’ll make both rot faster.

Heard that tomatoes should always be kept at room temp? Wrong – keep what you’re gonna use in the next day or so there by all means – but leave a weeks worth out at room temp longer than that and they’ll start to rot quickly. Refrigerate them in a crisper drawer or veggie holder, and pull them when you want to use them, letting them get to room temp for optimal taste. Almost all fruit will do best under the same rules.

Again, a big key here is not buying like a ugly Amerikan – don’t shop hungry, don’t get the 6 pack of pretty bell peppers unless you can and will actually use or preserve them in the next five days or so. Buy what you really will use, store it properly, and plan meals to use what you have while it’s still good, to reduce overall waste.

What do you do that I missed or got wrong? Let’s hear it, and see if we can’t all get better at this process, ‘cause we sure need to.

Why Does American Produce Suck?

Got this message the other day, from Mike and Sally Poutiatine,

Hey Food-Dude,

Sally and I have a query – we noticed recently in Ireland that the produce there is SO much better than we get in our restaurants or stores in Spokane. We found eating either in a hole-in-the-wall pub or a 4-star Castle dining room the greens were equally good and way better than we find most of the time in Spokane. The veggies in general in Ireland were much better (though they tended to cook them about 10 times as long as necessary) – We found the same thing before when traveling in Italy, Japan and the UK in term of quality. Is it as simple as faster, more direct farm to table? Or do other countries just take green veggies more seriously than we do? Why is that?

My immediate response was this, ‘Oh, I am SO making this the next blog post – Great question!’

Simple salad with real lettuce - A whole ‘nuther animal — Simple salad with real lettuce – A whole ‘nuther animal

The serendipitous part of the question is this – Earlier, while watering our very bountifully producing little veggie and herb garden, (a daily ritual I not only love, but seem to need), I was contemplating the same thing. Our stuff tastes so much better than 90% of what we find for sale – The only thing that rivals it is found in trips to our local farmers market, and through good CSA operations. And therein lies the short answer – While M and I choose not to accept the produce status quo here, most Americans accept (and have been indoctrinated to expect), relatively shitty produce. That is not good, and it needs to change.

Typical Grocery Store Produce - Bletch! — Typical Grocery Store Produce – Bletch!

The first thing that comes to most folks minds when they experience this is the natural assumption that some combination of basic factors are better over there – Better soil, environmental conditions, and so on – But truth be told, that’s a bunch of hooey – writ large, there’s demonstrably nothing special about european soil, etc, that makes their produce taste better than American produce. This has been pretty well studied, and it comes down almost solely to the fact that most world food cultures other than ours value flavor and taste in their produce more than we do – That’s it. That said, we could be, (and more and more folks are), growing stuff every bit as good – it’s just not often sold in mass market grocery stores.

Mighty ‘Mato’s - Not your typical grocery store fodder — Mighty ‘Mato’s – Not your typical grocery store fodder

Let’s take tomatoes as an example – Many will cite the famous Italian San Marzano as the ne plus ultra of tomatodom, but truth? There are a lot of shitty San Marzanos, gang. Like anything else that gets wildly popular on a worldwide scale, production needs outstrip high quality real quick – And by the way, those things are basically Roma’s, a paste tomato variety – They’re great for sauce when grown right, but for other stuff – Not so much. Here on this side of the big pond, (where tomatoes originally come from, after all), you can bet there are some amazing ones. We make a point of planting Mighty ‘Mato grafted tomatoes each year – They’re a thing developed by Dr. Jim Baggett of Oregon State University. Grafting makes them stronger, more disease resistant, and boy oh boy, do they yield – And they’re stunningly lovely. Yet despite all that, they don’t lend themselves well to being sold en mass, so… Or take the case of horticulture Professor Harry Klee, of the University of Florida, creator of the Garden Gem. That’s an incredibly tasty, hearty, disease resistant variety with a great shelf life – But at roughly half the size of the ‘average’ grocery store tomato, virtually nobody appears interested in bringing those to you and me. And here’s the kicker – The Italians have ordered tens of thousands of Garden Gem seeds – Insult to injury for American consumers.

Lettuce, real lettuce, just doesn’t ship, store, or last all that well... — Lettuce, real lettuce, just doesn’t ship, store, or last all that well…

How about lettuces? Well, M and I grow those, and let me tell ya, those are exactly what I was thinking of when I was watering the other day – A simple salad we’d made had taste and texture, because of the lettuce – Shut up! Ah, but those aren’t nice, uniform, large, tough, resilient heads you can ship and display and sell for days, so, they’re out too.

Real Celery isn’t insipid - It’s flavor packed and seriously crunchy — Real Celery isn’t insipid – It’s flavor packed and seriously crunchy

Celery, maybe? Celery?! Tasteless, boring celery? Well, in the store, yes, that’s exactly what it is. Our plants are anything but. They have bold flavor to match a crisp, crunchy texture – The leaves alone are potent and complex – But they don’t grow in big, tight, uniform bunches either so again, no go.

Herbs should never come in plastic containers... — Herbs should never come in plastic containers…

Whatever you name – Chiles, peas, cucumbers, radishes, and any herb there is – You’ll find them in the store, but what you’ll find in this country is chosen for the unholy trinity of shipability, shelf life, and the appearance of relative bounty – Three things you and I definitely do not need.

Wanna take a guess at how many folks know that this is how artichokes grow?

Mike followed up with this thought, ‘I have always assumed that the produce we get from our stores is tasteless because the distance from producer to table is so far – and I am sure that is part of it. But your observation that we have grown used to bad produce is insightful. We eat bad produce because we just don’t care about produce.’

Sad but true, my friends. There’s a local garden here in our area, much beloved, and big enough to regularly supply local grocery stores with produce in season. It’s pretty, and it’s fresh, but frankly – It’s a local version of the same stuff we always see – It’s chosen for those three criterion I mentioned – And as such, there’s really no magic there.

The good news is that things do seem to be changing for the better. Folks of many generations here are growing tired of paying for crap, which is forcing Big Agro to change, some anyway. We see far more varieties of apples than days of old – Same goes for lettuce, onions, chiles, and so on – And there is stuff therein that is quite good, if we choose wisely. More and more stores are stating straight out where stuff comes from, which is good, and if you do your due diligence, there’s quite a bit more to be sussed out.

A lot of that process means really, truly checking out what you’re choosing – Do you squeeze, poke, prod, and sniff what you’re buying? Do you find a produce person and ask pointed questions? That might be anything from, where is this from and when did it get here, to what’s the harvest date on this, (there is damn near always a harvest or packing or production date), to ‘I don’t know how to tell a good (your selection here) from not – how do you do that?’ In any store worth your hard earned dough, they’ll be able to answer those questions – And if they can’t, (or you don’t ask), shame on you – You get what you pay for.

Mike’s next query was, ‘So what do we do in the US that shows the care and quality that we found in the seemingly universal high quality of Irish produce?’

The good news is that there are things to be found here, and that trend is slowly but surely growing, all over the country – If you read the Rancho Gordo bean post, there’s a shining example. Try those, and suddenly you’re thinking, ‘why am I buying these plastic bags and cans full of tasteless crap when these are out here?’ I’ve seen it first hand with stuff from our friends CSAs in Minnesota as well – How folks react when they have celery that has taste, what good lettuce is like, and so on.

That’s what fresh produce looks like, gang

As for a specific answer to Mike’s last question, I’d say this – If they come here planning to cook, and have facility for such and then go to an average grocery store, what will they get? Mostly crap, unfortunately. If they’re smart, which I think many are, they’ll seek out and find farmers markets – those are the gold standard here these days. In our relatively little town, there are dozens of producers offering gorgeous produce, grown with genuine love and care, just as we do here at home – I’ve had everything from rainbow carrots with amazing taste and crunch, to tiny fingerling potatoes that were melt in your mouth delicious, with a slight tang of the earth they came from as a back note.

So if there’s a unified field theory as to how we go about changing the status quo, this would be my three cents worth.

1. Always grow a garden. You can do this, damn near no matter where you live or what you live in. From window sill to big ol’ plot – Do it – You’ll get better produce, and perhaps more importantly, tending a garden and playing in dirt is good for your soul.

2. Find a Farmers Market near you and patronize that. You’re supporting the little, local folk, and nobody deserves that more – And again, you’ll generally get far superior produce to anything in a chain grocery store.

3. Find a CSA operation Netra you and patronize that. That’s Community Supported Agriculture – we’re the community, and the growers can be anything from those same folks who sell at farmers markets, to larger scale folks who do most of their selling through CSA – Again, no one I know is more deserving of your patronage, and frankly, no one I know is more deserving of great produce than you are.

This is Our Tribe

It’s Gathering time. Every year at this time, we head sixteen hundred miles due east, to the shores of Squeedunk lake, in north central Minnesota. There, at the home of Grant and Christy, we meet with friends old and new to celebrate stringed instruments, and much more – This is our Tribe.

We own www.luthiercom.org, a site dedicated to the building of stringed instruments, and the sharing of that arcane knowledge with anyone and everyone who wants to take part. The Gathering is an unusual thing for a modern day social networking site – A dedicated time for friends from the ether to actually meet in the real world, at a truly magical place. There is much talk, much sharing of special skills, much music played and sang, and very, very much food and drink. Monica and I are Co-Hosts and designated event Chefs, and it couldn’t be more fun to do – The Gathering is a magical place to cook.

Grant and Christy grow much of what they eat, so virtually all the produce we use in 5 days of cooking comes from their gardens. So do the hops with which Grant brews gallons and gallons of beer for the event. Everything else we cook with is local – This year, Ron brought a gift from Winona LaDuke – some fresh buffalo meat for us to work with, as well as his family’s Georgia sourwood Honey, (He’s also brought some amazing moonshine back from there over the years, I can tell you!) We had 14 dozen of the most amazingly fresh, local eggs as well, with deep yellow-orange yolks and true substance to them. Grant’s son Jim and his partner Shel made incredible cheddar bratwurst from venison they’d harvested last year, right on the property.

A neighbor contributed a whole bunch of fresh walleye fillets – It being Friday night, they got fried two ways – in cornmeal and tempura. Donna did panfish ceviche that was to die for. Mitch brought his rightfully famous slow cooked, pulled pork with Carolina mustard sauce, and Lis brought amazing puerco pibil, cooked in banana leaves from the tree in Grandt and Christy’s living room. This is pretty typically how it goes.

In the last couple of years, we enjoyed a ridiculous excess of shiitake mushrooms, but the weather didn’t cooperate this year, (fear not – We had all the dried and roasted/frozen we needed, as well as some fresh chicken of the woods Bonnie foraged and brought along, which is good, ’cause we feed a healthy crop of vegetarians too!.

We did, however, have a bumper crop of beautiful poblano chiles, and lots of traditionally harvested wild rice, so we paired those with Winona’s buffalo – They were, of course, a big hit.

We cook three meals a day, but they’re timed and spaced specifically to accommodate the laid-back atmosphere of the gathering. Brunch gets eaten right around noon, the midday meal slides to somewhere around 4 PM, and dinner to between 8 and 9 PM.

The Round Heeled Woman Speakeasy - Its underground, folks! — The Round Heeled Woman Speakeasy – Its underground, folks!

The back door to the Speakeasy - Leads to our room, no less! — The back door to the Speakeasy – Leads to our room, no less!

After that, it’s music on the main stage, and maybe a trip down to the Round Heeled Woman, the underground speakeasy – Yes, there’s and underground speakeasy, and in fact, the back door that establishment is a ladder down from the room we stay in – I told you, this is truly magical – It’s not uncommon for music and even lutherie activities to go in well into the wee hours, (and that’s why brunch is at noon).

Friday Dinner - Fish, of course! — Friday Dinner – Fish, of course!

It's time for grub! — It’s time for grub!

Our work ranges from brunch for a dozen, to lunches and dinners for 50 or more. Folks volunteer to pitch in, and we cheerfully put them to work on prep and cooking as needed. Chris and M and I do some planning, and most years, we more or less follow the gist of that, but as the saying goes, no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy – We’ve planned to do a coffee roasting demo for 2 years now and have yet to get around to it, and we never did salt cure egg yolks, but hey, just wait until next year.

We did two batches of salt potatoes that the crowd went nuts over, paired with fresh chimichurri. And our Yakitori Sauce marinated a couple of wonderful pork tender loins – Hmmm, this was a very pork-centric year, huh? There was amazing fruit, so blueberry, raspberry, kiwi, and mango Pico de Gallo all made a showing, along with mango butter and granita. Biscuits and pie dough were about as deep as the baking got, ’cause it was kinda warm this year.

Blueberry, raspberry, kiwi, and mango Pico de Gallo

We didn’t take enough pictures, but, hey you get the idea, right? It was another fabulous time with friends old and new – The new ones are a gas to watch – John Joyce came up from the twin cities for the first time, arriving on Thursday evening into the middle of our chaos. At first, folks can be a bit intimidated with the craziness, intimate relations, and long running jokes and shtick, but those who get it are quickly drawn in. John brought some beautifully made instruments, number 13 being his newest – She’d only been strung up for 4 days before he arrived, but she sang like an angel. I’m glad to report that JJ is now hooked and is expected back next year.

And that’s how it goes. Interested? Wherever you are, you’re welcome to join us. I guarantee you’ll be blown away in the best sense of the words. Stay tuned for next year’s dates.

Crisp and tart pears at perfect ripeness

Gathering Swing

Gathering Swing – It’s what happens once you get here and get into the rhythm of the place.

Swing on through. What you’ve come for will be here in spades, be it playing a bunch of hand made instruments, or working on or talking the technical and artistic aspects of building them.

If none of that is for you, there will be plenty of non-builders here to discuss art, history, philosophy, archeology, geology, and a dozen other things. And if that don’t float your boat, there’s more great food and beer and music than you can shake a stick at.

Whatever your bailiwick, you can immerse yourself in it, or do as I do, and drift in and out of things as you see fit. Of course, since I’m the Chef, I spend more time on food than anyone else, and that’s exactly how I like things.

Chef swing – A Chef working a thing like this has to do a lot of planning, but probably not as you might think it’ll go – we plan main courses, sides, and deserts, to some degree – But any given meal may need to feed 12 or 60, and everything in between.

On top of that, folks will bring stuff – some will tell you they’re bringing it, and some won’t, and their level of concern over how and when the dish gets used will vary as well. Blending all that, making enough food, and having ample contingency plans for leftovers is par for the course, and requires diplomacy, humor, and quick thinking.

Never leave home without 'em. — Never leave home without ’em.

Take the chickens that became the main dish for Saturday night. Somewhere around 20 folks who’d said they were coming didn’t, and all of a sudden, we’ve got a bunch of left overs – No problem… They found their way into frittatas the next morning, or tarts for brunch after that, and finally into incredible chicken pot pies Sunday night, (if I do say so myself – and I do…)

Chimayo, Turkish, Garlic-Lime-Dill, Lemon & Sage

Here’s some eye candy from the weekend – If anything floats your boat, drop me a line and I’ll give up the recipe for ya.

And we can’t forget the vegetarian crowd, either…

Brunch Tarts - Fruit, Mushroom, Bacon & Eggs — Brunch Tarts – Fruit, Mushroom, Bacon & Eggs

Cooking at Stringfest

Cooking at Stringfest – music, hand made instruments, and great food.

Pickin' and Sangin' — Pickin’ and Sangin’

It’s called Stringfest, but for those of us who founded it, it’s just the Gathering – An offshoot of an instrument making website owned by a few friends and I, The Luthier Community. This is the tenth anniversary of this event, a weekend that binds hand made instruments, musicians, artists, and friends, with great food as the glue.

The Gathering happens at our dear friends Grant and Christy’s place in rural northern Minnesota. As the years have passed, the compound has changed to accommodate the annual visitors. There is now a pretty swanky bunkhouse that sleeps a bunch, plus the main house, a main stage, as well as indoor and outdoor kitchens.

From humble beginnings, the event now draws quite a few folks, so the big meals during the weekend have become events in and of themselves, feeding 50 or more some years. As fate would have it, I’ve become the event Chef, which means I get to coordinate all the meals and do a bunch of cooking as well. And that has perks, I might add – Monica and I get a private suite right next to the big house – A rare treat at an event like this.

There certainly are meat eaters at this thing, and there’s plenty of proteins to appease them – most of which are hand made within a few miles of here. That said, there are a lot of vegetarian and veggie-leaning folks as well, so we do a lot for them. Frankly, that’s pretty easy when you’ve got the fixing just a short walk down to the tunnels. One of the first things we do is go tour the gardens, to see what’s looking good and ready to go – Here’s a little sample of what we found this year. I’ll share some recipes and pictures over the next few days, without a doubt, so stay tuned.

Now, when you get a bunch of artists together. There is definitely some drinking going on with all that food and music. Grant makes all the beer for the event from scratch, with hops grown right here as well. It is amazing beer, everything from a light summer ale, to a gorgeous IPA, and a stunning chocolate stout. There’s even a sparkling apple cider – I don’t know what the alcohol content of that stuff is, but I can testify that it sneaks up on ya if you’re not careful! He leaves some of each uncarbonated, making it perfect for cooking, and I take full advantage in darn near every meal.

Grant's beer kettle — Grant’s beer kettle

And then there’s the gardens…

More soon come…

Check Us Out in the Fall Boomer.

Said it before, gonna say it again – I love, LOVE seeing our stuff in glorious color, edited by the incredibly talented Alexandra Maragha, within the pages of the Boomer Magazine.

Check out our Apple piece in the Fall edition!