June 30, 2008

Potluck Pride

As LGBT Pride Month winds to a close, I wonder: is there an identifying food of the LGBT community? A rainbow flag of cuisine? Perhaps wedding cake, lately.

But then again, not everyone is rushing to the altar. There simply is too much diversity within this multi-faceted community - no one "lifestyle" (despite the common, inappropriate application of that word), no one ethnicity or class background, no shared academic track, no single sport, no one common link except a shared struggle towards equality.

And that is enough, most days, to create community. To build community, we share stories, music, sports, food. Nearly every gathering I have attended - whether social, religious, athletic, or political - that involve queer folk and food, has been a potluck. What other way of breaking bread together lets everyone bring something that expresses who they are (too busy to cook; a natural gourmet; vegan; carnivore; Irish; Filipino; etc) and at the same time ensures that there is something for everyone? Now there's a food culture that I can be proud of.

June 28, 2008

San Carlos Farmers Market

I try to be loyal to my local farmers market, I really do. I want it to flourish. But this week I needed some produce on a Thursday; and on my commute home I kept passing "Hot Harvest Nights" sandwich boards. So I side-tracked to San Carlos and checked out their market.

Wow. The city cordons off a good section of the main street, block-party style. A long line of stalls, back-to-back and facing the permanent storefronts along the sidewalks on either side, offer an amazing bounty. It rivals the West Seattle market!

Several vendors offer baked goods, from artisan breads to decadent desserts. Several stalls feature or include fresh cut flowers, or even potted plants. If you don't want to eat al fresco at one of the thriving restaurants on the main drag, rotisserie chicken and fresh, hand-made tamales are available to go. Only one vendor offered farmstead cheeses - but what lovely cheese it is (goat as well as cow, and hard cheeses as well as soft spreads). And one vendor provided a mix of locally caught fish and imported Alaska salmon (an exception to the California-only rule, I guess). But the produce really is the star at this market. Easily half the vendors are organic farmers; and the competition is healthy among all the stalls.

Fortunately for my wallet, my transportation limited my carrying capacity. My Zapino electric motorbike has space under the seat, and a rack on the back. Stowing my bounty - three baskets of organic strawberries, a bunch of celery, two bunches of organic basil (roots intact), two small avocados, three fingerling bananas (in-state grown!), and two ears organic sweet white corn - took all my spatial relations skills and a bungee cord. The organic sunflowers, with their three-foot stalks, had to be zipped into my riding jacket, poking out at both ends.

Next Saturday I vow to return to my home market, faithful to the vendors who give up a weekend day to bring fresh produce to our neighborhood. But I may stop on my way home on a Thursday again, too. I'll just have to eat more wonderful local food.

June 25, 2008

Outdoor Dining in the Smoking Section

With 800 fires burning in California, the whole outdoors smells like smoke. It's strange, in a place that allows cigarette smokers to light up in so few places.

Along with the tragic consequences of the fires, there are more mundane ones, like staying indoors for exercise (I knew that gym membership could still make sense in the summer). And not grilling outdoors. We could - but why add to the haze?

Instead, I borrowed a Global Sun Oven. Long a proponent of solar cooking, I have saved boxes and plans for the make-your-own solar cooker models. This weekend, I hope to set up the commercial oven and test it against the cheap and cheesy one I'll make myself. I am jones-ing for another round of ratatouille, and also some strawberry-rhubarb crumble. And while the sun bakes them for me, I'll be off to the gym, washing the smoke out of my hair.

June 18, 2008

Celiac? We'll see

For years I've had experiences I just attributed to allergies, anemia, blood sugar . . .

Like most symptoms of celiac (a condition where the person lacks an enzyme to digest the protein of certain grains, called gluten), they are easy to write off as something else.
  • Why do my hands sometimes feel like I have arthritis, when I show no other signs? Why does that soreness and stiffness come and go?
  • Why do I feel fine til bed some evenings; and other evenings feel overwhelming tired, sluggish, achy, irritable and like I can't think?
  • Why do I have mornings after enough sleep when I just can't get into gear, even after black tea?
I never heard of any of these symptoms connecting to celiac until I happened across an article featuring a food blog, Gluten Free Girl. I went and looked from curiosity, and found great recipes that celebrate joyful cooking and sharing of healthy food - my kind of food culture. And some medical basics, the authors own story, plus anecdotes about others. That combination of recognizing myself and thinking, 'wow - I could enjoy eating this way' made me willing to dump denial and get tested for the antibody that indicates a likelihood of the condition.

And then came Sunday, with its increasing raft of unpleasantness (all of the above). By late afternoon and after 3 serious servings of wheat (toast x2, waffles x2, and a pupusa), I could barely hold my head up and walk around the house, much less finish a coherent sentence. It really feels like being drugged, beaten up, and heckled. A lost evening, sleep with anti-inflammatories, and a difficult Monday morning at work, trying to keep enough focus to be productive. Right then I started figuring out what I could eat without gluten. And the rest of this week has been, if not perfect, really good.

So we'll see what the blood test says, what my doctor says, and where I go from here. High hopes!

June 14, 2008

Slow Food Day

In the media, a slow news day is a bad news day - nothing exciting happened. But for a cook, a slow food day is good news. Today was a perfect example.

For breakfast, we made fruit smoothies with local organic strawberries. Organic Earl Grey tea and crumpets topped with cream cheese and locally grown cucumbers accompanied them.

Having used up the remnants of last week's farmer's market treasures, we headed into town for this week's market. Arriving home hungry, we made Caprese from fresh basil, local tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella (from someplace in California). With a bowl of creamy guacamole made from local avocados, chips and a glass of sun tea, we felt well- fortified for afternoon chores .

For supper, we grilled lake trout locally caught by a neighbor, with a regionally produced, Meyer lemon -infused olive oil on the outside and herbs from the pots on our deck (summer savory and Italian parsley) on the inside. Local asparagus grilled well on the upper rack; and multi-grain pilaf boiled quickly on the stovetop. A green salad with goat cheese, dried cranberries, almond bits, and julienned local fennel made the perfect first course. And instead of a California wine, we enjoyed a light, crisp hard pear cider made in Sebastapol.

Not everything today was raised within 100 miles of home; but seasonal and local foods, prepared at home and shared with friends, were the highlight of the day all day long. Long may the Slow Food Movement reign.

June 8, 2008

A Greener Sunset Weekend

Sunset Magazine hosts a Celebration Weekend each year at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. We attended today for the second time. As usual, there were tours of the test kitchen, access to the beautifully landscaped grounds, tented stages with seating for lectures and demonstrations, dozens of vendor booths, and more than enough sunshine.

This year, a discernibly deeper green tinge permeated the event, both driving and responding to consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products and services. In addition to Sunset's standard practices such as discounts for transit riders, bicyclists, and shuttle users, notable new green elements included:

Healthier food samples. No instant pudding this year - Kraft's high fiber snack bars, cereals, crackers and even cheeses (an 'active' line, with probiotic fiber added); Safeway's salads, carrots with cucumber feta dip, and a light dessert of chocolate bits with fresh fruit made return visitors of many happy grazers.

On-site food waste collection. Most samples were served on paper (napkins, cups, trays) or with compostable plastic (the corn starch forks). Well-distributed throughout the grounds were clusters of clearly marked receptacles, one for recyclable bottles and cans, one for trash, and one for compost. Eyeballing the contents, it appeared that visitors got it.

A stronger emphasis on succulents, drought tolerant species, and native plants, both at the lecture stages and the demonstration gardens.

An "eco-lounge" stage, with speakers on topics such as What is a Carbon Footprint?, Compost, Solar 101, and Eating Locally.

More vendors of specifically green products and services, such as Ecofabulous, Terrapass, Solar City, and Branch (sustainable design). Most of them had booths in the far corner by the eco-lounge; but a few were sprinkled throughout the more traditional vendor areas(eg, Numi Tea and Akeena Solar).

Sponsor Chrysler worked hard at marketing its vehicles as green, exhibiting a new hybrid, a flex-fuel vehicle, and a concept car (electric with a fuel cell backup) in addition to its regular minivan and sedans.

Sunset offered an organic cotton T-shirt and a bamboo fiber cap, both as contest prizes and as event merchandise (at a large discount, comparing the event price to comparable retailers).

City chickens in the demonstration garden pecked happily in the dirt, with a sign previewing their appearance in the August magazine article, "The One-Block Feast."

My favorite green feature, however, was not new or newly packaged as eco-friendly. The California Artisan Cheese Guild provides a free tasting gallery each year with samples from some of the finest small cheesemakers of the region. Today's selection included Three Sisters Farmstead Cheese's Serena (as nutty and intense as a Dutch beemster); Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company's Original Blue; Cypress Grove Chevre; and Harley Farms goat cheeses. Nothing says sustainability to me like the best of the Slow Food movement.