Perfect Pete

I met Pete today. Pete, who was shivering because he hadn’t bundled up enough against the chill this cloudy Seattle morning, makes Pete’s Perfect Butter Toffee. After careful analysis, I can attest that his toffee is indeed buttery and about as close to perfect as any toffee I’ve ever had.

I met Pete at the University District Farmer’s Market, one of three year-round open-air markets in the Seattle area. Since the cello run already takes me over the bridge, I’m only a few minutes away from this little slice of local heaven. More than a few hardy souls joined me this morning.

I went with every intention of coming away with armloads of healthy produce, really I did. In the end, the bag did contain some very lovely lumpy potatoes (blue and red, since I couldn’t decide), curly-edged kale, apples, and still-muddy scallions, but it also had things like fresh goat cheese and fromage blanc, a dense honey whole-wheat loaf and a bottle of hard cider, and even some chicken and duck eggs. Oh, and the toffee.

The other thing I took away from the market, which cost me nothing, was inspiration. Now, I fully expect to have to restrain myself at the market in September, when truckloads of fruits and vegetables scream, “Take me home!” “No, take me!” as I stroll through. On those occasions, I need helpers to carry the bounty, and then help me process it into jams and such for the winter. I tend to come home with enough to make eight meals for the week, and even growing boys can only eat so much. But this is barely March, and though the buds are plump on the fruit trees, they are not yet blossoms, let alone ripe fruit. I expected to find turnips and kale and not much more. The foods of winter were there in abundance, offering warmth to the chill: cheeses (aged and fresh, goat and cow), meat (beef, goat and oysters), bread, eggs, preserves, along with the buds of the season to come: little baby carrots (finger-sized because they grew that way, not because they’d been lathed down to that dimension), nearly translucent in the weak sunshine, and pencil-thin scallions, fragrant bundles with long root beards and mud still attached. My head races with the possibilities: steam and mash the red-skinned potatoes with heavy cream and some scallions; pan sear the kale with some carrots and orange juice; or maybe roast it with the blue potatoes and chicken. An omelette of duck eggs and fresh goat cheese and more of those scallions, or maybe quiche, with some smoky bacon. Wash it down with the cider, or use the golden liquid to deglaze some pork chops and apple slices sautéed in butter. For dessert, maybe mix fromage blanc with some apricot preserves; or use those fresh egg whites to make a light genoise and use up the last two Meyer lemons in the bowl.

By the time I got back to the car, my canvas bag was overflowing with ideas. I couldn’t wait until I’d bitten into the quintessential Washington fruit before I called Darling Husband to pull some steak out of the freezer to thaw. Jazzed, inspired, invigorated—and I hadn’t even had a chance to dig into the bag yet.

On the way back from the market to pick up Number One from rehearsal, I noted wryly that the parking lot in front of Northgate Mall was absolutely packed with cars, shoppers no doubt in search of the perfect fashion accessory. Me, I’ll stick with my old jeans (there’s a smudge where I wiped some mud from the scallions off my hands) and take perfect toffee.

Slugfest

The rain finally came, and then the sun, and I hopped outside in my nightgown this morning to see how my little lettuces were doing. As I had suspected, last night was the night for them to slip out of their skins and push upwards. Alas, the slugs appear to have marked their calendar too, since they waited until I was snoring to snip off every little tender green top, leaving pale white stems withered on the ground. I am saddened and incensed.

As I read Barbara Kingsolver, I wish I could be part of her family. They can actually start seed indoors; my windowsill is too dark, and even adding a heat mat under the peat pots only makes the seeds mold faster. She mulches against weeds; I managed to triumph over bindweed, but slugs still have the upper hand. I have hand-picked (146 in one session), built little copper borders, scattered coffee grinds, set beer traps (and had to buy beer for them, since neither of us care for beer), left boards out overnight as a slug hotel (“slugs check in…”) and even—gasp—have resorted to Sluggo. And still, my lettuces are munched.

I have one more secret weapon: Little One has a birthday next week, and is looking a bit shaggy. Perhaps he (and maybe even his brother) will donate a few hair clippings to scatter around the garden. I’m sure they’ll do it, since the next things due to sprout are the peas that they sowed two days ago. Windowsills are not an option.

February sunshine

We emptied an overflowing rain gauge just two short weeks ago, and it remains eerily empty. For the last week, I have been enjoying puttering in a sunny spring-like garden, doing a happy dance when the seed packet reads, “sow in early spring, as soon as ground can be worked.” Spinach, lettuce, kale and peas (including some sweet peas in a container outside the kitchen door) are all in. But as I covered the rows, I hesitated. If this were anywhere else, I would have planted with a hose at hand, gently watering in my new darlings. But this is the Pacific Northwest, and I expect it to rain in February, even if the weather pundits don’t forecast it. And they keep forecasting it, but it’s just not happening. So, do I water them in or not?

I snuggle up evenings with Darling Husband and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, trying not to gobble it up in one sitting, striving for a balance that will let me finish it before the library repossesses it for the next person and making sure I get to sleep enough to make it through the next day. I’m thrilled that so many other people want to read it that there are still 132 holds on it (plus the 86 waiting for the audio CD); it means a lot more people will get to revel in her joy of seasonality, but it does put pressure on me to get through her year before next Friday.

Number One Son, delighted at the stuff pulled from the freezer last night (gotta make room for the first of the couscous lamb), was thrilled when I offered him some of Fishing Sensei’s lox to go with his bagel for his lunch. “Why do they call smoked salmon lox, Mom?” asks my spoiled-by-fresh child. Out poured the explanation: the Yiddish for salmon, from the German Lachs, refers to the smoked version because historically, it was rare to find it fresh in most places (not here, thank heavens). Smoking was the best way to preserve it, and it became the de facto norm, what you eat in the off-season. I’m wondering if it will taste good with Portobello mushroom risotto tonight.

One of the side effects of the sunny week was that once we had ticked off the list of things to do in our own garden, we could explore farther afield. For us, that means letterboxing, planned to end near Theno’s Dairy. It was there that we had ice cream on Friday afternoon, and there that the boys noticed butter from Bow, Washington in the case. That easily qualifies as local, and the ingredients label was enticing: Cream, salt. We grabbed it, along with three cones (chocolate chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip and lemon chiffon), and a quart of hand-pack ice cream for Darling Husband (banana nut, his favorite).

Not surprisingly, the big thing on the table last night was not the local pan-sautéed pork chops on a bed of black kale, deglazed with balsamic vinegar, but the potatoes. Glowing Yukon Golds from Oregon, they were simply boiled and served like that, smashed on your plate for a glob of butter and a sprinkling of salt. Potatoes and butter, heroes of the meal, disappearing quickly, removing any doubt that eating locally and in season is anything but a sacrifice.

The stick of butter that was open when we brought the real stuff home is still sitting there. When I do the sniff test, it smells a little buttery, but nothing like the heady aroma from the little Golden Glen tub, which we seem to be running through rather quickly. We clearly have to make an excuse to get to Theno’s again for some more butter (“and ice cream!” screams Little One) And maybe the weather will hold off for just one more day so I can get some potatoes in the ground too. Then we can do a rain dance.

Sunday sermon

At knitting group last week, our budding novelist recounted her adventures in researching mega churches for her book. It was incongruent, to say the least, for her Unitarian self to be seated in the midst of impersonal showmanship and speed collecting and communion.

And so it was for me, as I found myself invited to a “health lecture,” which turned out to be a thinly disguised advertisement for a line of dietary supplements. They are sold under a multi-level marketing scheme, using sophisticated marketing tactics and a network of independent distributors. The high priestess’ slick PowerPoint presentation was a quasi-sermon designed to confuse and frighten people; her message of salvation was a sales pitch.

The basic message was this: there are bad things in your foods: try to avoid them, but since that’s so hard and you’ll probably fail, you can take this supplement to be safe. The baddies were the usual suspects, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated fats, artificial sweeteners, unpronounceable additives. The good guys are the men in lab coats who tell us that fruits and vegetables are the best thing in the world for us. But, this being post-Reagan America, failure is an option: there’s just no way we can eat right. Just as we reach the depths of despair, though, she shares the Good News. The lecture sponsor’s bottle is projected on the screen, tucked in amongst beautifully styled and airbrushed produce. Here it is, she says, the only scientifically-backed answer: Our Product.

The complaint with mainstream medicine in this country has long been that it focuses on treating the symptoms rather than searching for and addressing the underlying cause(s). Even though the good doctor professed to have studied naturopathy (and the poor fellow who introduced her couldn’t pronounce it), her bedside manner was that of an MD. She presented the bulleted lists of additives that food giants can hide in our foods, mentioning in passing that labels were becoming more difficult to read, both in terms of labeling loopholes and shrinking font sizes (even as the population’s eyesight ages). But even though this clearly points a finger at a system that allows such wrongdoing, she does not encourage us to look deeper, say, to the political influence of the food manufacturing industry. Nope, her answer is not to fix the broken system, but to take a pill to cure us.

It’s a rare practitioner who will take the time and interest to follow up on a symptom that is not easily diagnosed. The nature of the dietary malaise that our society suffers from is complex to be sure, but the difficulty is compounded by the fact that it is vital to our survival and it affects our actions every day. It’s no big deal to leave our car in the garage for a day or two, but we can’t easily fast for the same period. Without a high level of commitment, it’s just not going to work. If she tells us to go home and throw out everything in the larder that contains the baddies, what will we eat for breakfast? Lucky for us, company sale reps for the supplement are present. No doubt, any supplement is an improvement over fast food, but what we are in dire need of is an understanding of the external forces at work, and what we can do to counter them. Yes, we need to look to the health of our individual bodies, but we cannot ignore the larger organism, called society. If we do not feed ourselves well, we will all suffer. The answer is not the easy to swallow (and profitable to sell) little bottles of pills, but opening our eyes to the big picture.

Our gut tells us that something just isn’t right about the whole thing. Our collective power as consumers carries far more political clout than we can imagine. If we educate ourselves about the food industry, we will realize that by buying our food as close to the source as possible, we will change the landscape for the better. Imagine if no one showed up at the mega-church, but instead gathered in small, interconnected groups to worship. Imagine if no one went to the supermarket, but instead met up with neighbors at the farmer’s market.

Life gives you lemons

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Or lemon tart. Or custard. Or lemon-blueberry muffins. Meyer lemons, those schoolbus-yellow stars of the most lemony desserts, are in season. It is a very brief season indeed, and by the end of the month, they will be impossible to find again until next year. I always buy them when I see them, and try to find ways to get them to the table. This year, we had little lemon boudini (somewhere between a custard and a soufflé), a light lemon cake dusted in powdered sugar (half went to the neighbors), and lemon-blueberry muffins (these to celebrate the beginning of midwinter break).

I understand the Meyer’s one brief shining moment, as a white pot embossed with Tuscan-looking fruit sat on our back patio during my California childhood, and in it lived a small Meyer lemon tree. Its twin pot held kumquats, but we knew which one would bring the most joy to our table. It was a small tree, so we could hope for two or three lemons at the most, but that was plenty for a sugary lemon cake.

When I moved to Germany, it was lemon season, but there were no local lemons in that northern clime. Instead, people counted the days until asparagus season. This didn’t compute for me, since the green spears were ubiquitous year-round in the Golden State. For a few brief weeks, Germans made hollandaise, steamed little new potatoes, pulled corks from green bottles, and sliced the ham thickly. And then it was over, and we were back to broccoli and pork chops.

Barbara Kingsolver’s chronicle of a year of living off local foods is on my nightstand. My evenings seems to have been preempted far too often these past two weeks, and I am only two chapters in. Still, in one of those two chapters, she has taught me the why of the wait. The plant sends up shoots that can only be harvested and eaten in a very short period of time. And more importantly, only some spears can be harvested, as the plant needs some greenery to survive its retreat underground for another winter. Maintaining the bed’s viability over the years is as much part of growing asparagus as is learning to make hollandaise.

Our family’s kumquat did not survive the cold, dark years when we lived in Portland, but we spoiled the lemon tree, wrapping it in quilts on cold nights and bringing it inside to the warmest southern window we could give it. It got scraggly over those years, but the embossed pot now sits in the California sun on my mother’s back deck, and still gives her lemons.

Corn chips calling

An end cap at Whole Foods called to me today: “Look! Corn chips! You can make chili-Frito pie!” Apparently, that was what their marketers were thinking too, as they conveniently flanked the bags of organic yellow chips with cans of chili, mild on the left, hot on the right. Lucky for me, I have some Trader Joe’s vegetarian chili in the larder. I also had to double back to the cheese section (tasting fresh mozzarella balls and goat milk gouda as we passed) to pick up some jack cheese to grate over the whole mess.

As I grate the local Beecher’s Just Jack, I reflect on what Michael Pollan might think of this quasi-food. I haven’t quite finished his latest book, but have the basic gist. (I set it aside to read Pastwatch: the Redemption of Christopher Columbus, which I stayed up too late to finish last night.) The meal barely meets Michael’s basic criteria, and though I’m positive my great-grandma didn’t put it on the table, I bet my grandmother may well have done so: she was, after all, a Californian.

Chili-Frito pie is comfort food, and in its mainstream incarnation, wildly irresponsible, from its GMO corn chips fried in hydrogenated oils, down to the petroleum- and water-intensive beef by-products mass canned in a featureless cannery somewhere many miles away, and topped with an rBST-laden cheese food. Our version is a moderate improvement, but still quite processed. Organic (and thus non-GMO) corn has been ground into masa for the chips, non-GMO soy made into tofu for the chili. We won’t overeat: two cans for four people, two of whom are growing boys, is about right. Mostly plants: a vegetarian chili manages fine on this count, and the local cheese stands alone (high-ho the Derry-o, the cheese stands alone) as the lone animal product. There’s a salad on the table too, which adds some well-needed leaves to the mix. Have you noticed that the spinach gets sweeter as the days get longer?

My menu choices bring up an interesting conundrum that Michael, for all his good intentions, does not grasp, I think because he is not a mom. The reason I was at Whole Foods instead of the co-op or the farmer’s market is because I was between violin lesson and the Post Office and parent-teacher conferences, and I knew we were out of milk and bread and salad. Whole Foods was conveniently situated (between the Post Office and home), and conveniently situated also applies to the end cap display with what is now our supper. Stopping by the store gave us a chance to have lunch at home (leftovers). Yes, I could have made this a better dinner by making the chili myself from local grass-fed beef (or making fresh tofu from the soymilk I make myself), but then I wouldn’t be writing this; I’d still be in the kitchen. And convenience food would have been on the menu for lunch. Instead of supper.

The whole truth

The sign outside Starbucks in Benaroya Hall screams, “Did you know a nonfat grande latte contains 35% of your daily calcium?” I’m reminded of a Six Chix cartoon several years ago, where a granny is being handcuffed, presumably being arrested for fixing the grammar on a billboard: “Got Do you have any milk?” I fight the urge to scour my pockets for a big red marker, and realize there’s not enough room on their snazzy reader board for the whole story. Calcium may be present in cow’s milk, yes, but it’s not in a form that is bioavailable for humans can easily absorb (it’s great for calves)—supermarket milk is fortified with vitamins A and D to help, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the animal proteins in dairy products cause calcium loss (vitamin C would be useful here too, but they didn’t add it to the carton, since it would sour the milk). Unfortunately, along with higher concentrations of calcium, nonfat dairy products also have higher concentrations of those pesky proteins, so they’re no improvement, unless you’ve been convinced that all fat is Evil.

Then there’s that little problem of the caffeine in the coffee part of the drink. The jury is still out on just how much milk you have to add to the coffee to counteract the widely-known fact that caffeine leaches calcium from the body. It would appear that a mostly-milk latte is an improvement over just a dash of milk, but there is no clear consensus—we just don’t know.

Clearly, that grande latte is not as great as the reader board makes it sound (unless you’re a very sleepy calf). So what to do? It’s not like there are no other sources of calcium out there, with better bioavailability and no calcium-leaching animal proteins. Indeed, the list is long and varied: Molasses, dark salad greens, cabbage, broccoli, green beans, cucumber, peas, soybeans, squash, beans, nuts, cocoa, kiwi, maple syrup, brown sugar, tomatoes. Did you note those foods also are a great source of other good things as well? And did you notice that cocoa was on the list?

The problem here, though, is more than the nutrients and their inner workings in our bodies. Michael Pollan Eater’s Manifesto deals with this subject extensively, noting that we have abandoned traditional diets in deference to the scientists, whom he likens to high priests on the altar of the church of nutritionism. His thesis is that by focusing our attention on the small bits—vitamins, minerals, etc.—that make up our food, we are headed down the wrong path. We blindly follow scientists who identify and sing praises for the nutrient du jour (just read the papers for the latest study on [name nutrient here] found in [put food name here]). This somehow assumes that these scientists even know what they all are, and more importantly, that they completely understand the living dynamic of how nutrients interact with other foods and in our bodies. In other words, we don’t know a lot more than we do know.

I doubt I can change the world by going door-to-door with my message that people are following the wrong religion. Which is why I shall continue to buck the trend and quietly (and not so quietly) eat food, real food, that I prepare myself whenever possible. And it shall include my morning cup of cocoa, made with a rotating selection of politically correct chocolate products and either homemade soy or almond milk. Not to mention that even with my indulgent chocolate spending habits, it’s cheaper and frankly, tastes a whole lot better. Maybe mom did know best: she certainly is a lot more forthcoming with the full story than the green mermaid.