Saturday, March 1, 2008

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.

Friday, February 29, 2008

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.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

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, February 24, 2008

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.