Sponsored by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Chicago Downtown Farmstand opens tomorrow at 66 E. Randolph.
The focus of the farmstand is to sell local products (produced within a 250-mile radius of Chicago). According to the Chicago Tribune, there will be five produce purveyors, 25 non-produce food sellers, as well as book stalls. This fall seems like it will be something of a pilot program as it will only be open for a couple (cold) months.
I have high hopes for a projects like this. Could it ultimately evolve into a full-fledged permanent public market to rival Milwaukee’s? I’ll stop by the farmstand on Wed. to check things out and report back.
Chicago Downtown Farmstand
66 E. Randolph St.
Tuesdays–Fridays, 11am – 7pm; Saturdays, 11am–4pm
Oct. 1 – Mid. December
I know this is a very crass and bad analogy, but each year as the markets wind down, I feel a bit like Oskar Schindler. Could I have eaten one more tomato, one more red pepper. Last week, as I fixed up my birthday meal, I wanted to make the classic salad combination of cucumbers and tomatoes. We still have many tomatoes in-house, but it turns out, we had no cukes. I went to the Oak Park market a bit fearful that I had blown it, that my last taste of a good cucumber had come and gone, and I hardly noticed it. Luckily, I was wrong. I left the market with a few.
I also cannot get enough basil this year. I have become quite addicted to its licorice-ish tang, and I add it to nearly all salads I make (including potato salads) as well as various pasta dishes. From the small Catalina Farm stand at Oak Park, I got some basil, some cherry tomatoes, and some peppers in odd colors (purple, brown). From Farmer Vicki’s Genesis Growers, I got my cucumber fix and more tomatoes as I know how perilous those are. From the farm known simply as the Farm, we got a big white head of cauliflower. Fruit is still in wide abundance and from Skibbes, we went crazy with peaches and raspberries and grapes (two types) and plums. Last, from Nichols, we got my wife’s favorite apple, the Macoun. At least with that, we know the season is a fleeting week or so.
Our CSA this week contained no melon, but was otherwise pretty good:
Last week’s purchases here.
The week in news and blogs in the world of local eating:
Freezing, canning, drying, pickling, and cellaring are all methods for making plentiful local foods last through the hard fall and winter months. Eating locally does not need to be a hobby during market season. Preserve and store so you can eat locally all year long. The reasons for eating local do not diminish with the temperature.
There are simple ways to make the harvest last, like throwing some food in the freezer. There are also complicated ways to preserve summer’s bounty (have you ever tried canning tomatoes?). Some methods take investment and space, like buying a spare freezer. Other methods require ingenuity, like finding a cold spot for a root cellar. In this article we’ll introduce the concepts, techniques and issues related to food preservation and storage. Look forward to future features on these topics as well as blog posts and forum discussions. We look forward to your questions and comments, and we want you to share your experiences.
Mother Nature does not fool around with Chicago. The calendar flips a page, the weather flips a switch. Oppressive humidity leaves while clouds and rain move in. The end of the summer is harvest time, the peak of local food supplies. As consumers, we can find local food as accessible and as affordable as it will be all year in mid September. Likewise, the farmer’s markets are so full you cannot eat all that is there. As harvest time ends, we enter an extended period, from November through to May, where the Chicago-based locavore will need to draw upon storage in order to stay local. You’re at an advantage if you can do something with the seasonal bounty to make it last throughout the colder months.
Preservation and storage need not begin at harvest time. Peas, broccoli, blueberries, available mid-summer, freeze well. Nevertheless, the bulk of saving starts as summer ends. Local is more accessible and affordable during peak times. Take advantage of the $16 bushel of tomatoes. It is also at this time of year that the best keeping crops, the apples and potatoes and onions meant for the long-term, come into the markets. Plus, you probably don’t have a cool spot in your house the middle of summer. Thus, now is the time to focus on preservation and storage.
Good storage and preservation begins with the right produce. Certain varieties of fruits and vegetables are bred for storage. In addition, potatoes and onions need to be “cured” to enable them to last. Ensure you start with the right stuff. Summer apples like Lodi and Transparents are not meant to keep (unless made into sauce), while colder-weather apples like Rome Beauties or Granny Smiths store very well. Likewise, some tomatoes, especially the plum types, are better for canning. Talk to your farmer about storage. Ask them about which apples, pears and onions are best for storing and preserving. No one knows what foods keep in storage better than the person growing them.
There are several methods to preserve and store the harvest. Different methods work best for different types of foods and different methods produce different kinds of dishes. A pickled green bean is very different from a frozen green bean. Don’t pickle everything unless that’s what you want to be eating.
Some methods require specialized equipment, skills, space, or simply an investment of time. The desire to freeze is tempered only by the amount of freezer space you own. The desire to can is often tempered by free time.
Food can last two ways: It can be kept at the right temperature and humidity to slow it from spoiling or it can be treated in a way to eliminate the bacteria that cause spoilage. Listed below are the most common methods of food preservation and storage.
The US Department of Agriculture sums up freezing with this statement, “You can freeze almost any food.” They also add that freezing works because “freezing to 0 F inactivates any microbes–bacteria, yeasts and molds–present”. Finally, the USDA notes that freezing “prevents the growth of microorganisms that cause both food spoilage and food borne illness.” Not only does freezing work, it is easy. After minimal processing, the freezer does all the work. On top of all that, vegetables frozen at the peak of their freshness have more nutrients than many vegetables on the grocer’s shelves in Winter.
Freezing keeps fruits and vegetables closer to fresh than through canning. Compare a canned green bean to a properly frozen green bean and you will taste a difference. While any fruit or vegetable can be frozen, the best vegetables to freeze are those that are eaten cooked. Vegetables eaten raw like cucumbers and lettuces are not good candidates for freezing, although you can freeze something like a cucumber after juicing it. A few vegetables like onions and potatoes are better stored than frozen. The rule here would be, if you can store in a cellar (so to speak), store it there. On the other hand, there are certain vegetables that are especially suited to freezing including peas, sweet corn and various beans. Corn frozen immediately is generally going to taste fresher and sweeter than corn left around for days. Most fruits freeze well too.
Freezing is an excellent tool for preservation but for one key fact, it requires freezer space and electricity. The ability to freeze much depends on the ability to invest in freezer capacity, and just as important, having space for freezer capacity. Room for a freezer may be especially limited for apartment dwellers. The good news, freezers themselves are not exorbitant. Chest style freezers can be had for less than $300 and full size freezers can be had for less that $500 based on a recent visit to Sears.com. Energy-effiicent models will not introduce a significant increase to your energy bill.
Freezing vegetables require one small bit of preparation. Vegetables must be blanched, a process of quickly boiling and then cooling the vegetables. Blanching deactivates enzymes in vegetables that cause vegetables to mature, i.e., get tough or otherwise have off-flavors. (Instead of blanching, vegetables may also be briefly nuked in your microwave.) Fruits do not need to be blanched, but can be packed by themselves: “dry pack” or in a sugar syrup. Packing in syrup may lessen freezer burn, but it is not necessary. Fruits can be frozen with their skin on, even whole. Two good rules to follow when freezing anything : 1)spread items on trays to initially freeze; the flow of cold air over the food will enable the items to freeze faster and prevent them from freezing in blocks. 2) do not put hot foods straight in the freezer, such as just blanched veg; this will warm up your freezer.
Do not forget that another way to store items in the freezer is to convert them to ice creams, sorbets and ices. It is not much work to make a watermelon granita. This can provide nearly the experience of eating watermelon long after summer ends.
Other freezing resources:
Cold storage, whether in true root cellars or not, is the another way to store food. We use “cold storage” as a catch-all phrase to cover foods that can last with decent care and not much else. Cold storage may seem the easiest step of all as no processing is required–in fact many foods for storage, like onions and potatoes, are processed or “cured” for storage by the farmer. The apparent drawback to cold storage, obviously is: who the hell has a root cellar these days? There are ways around that, and besides, there are some items that do not need real cool conditions to last. Food can last a surprisingly long time with good storage habits.
There are two classes of foods that can be stored. First, there are foods that need a cold setting (ideally between 32 and 40 F) and moist environment to stay vital. Then, their are foods that need a dry environment and generally should be kept around 50 F (or higher). Onions, garlic and winter, or hard squash, fall into the latter category. They need to be kept dry. Onions should also be kept dark to prevent sprouting. Fruits and vegetables to be stored the other way, the cold way, include most root vegetables (turnips, rutabagas, carrots, parsnips, horseradish, beets, etc.); cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, sunchokes, apples, celery and grapes. As discussed, make sure to choose the right types of apples and potatoes for storage. If in doubt ask the farmer. Many sources suggest wrapping tomatoes in newspaper for storage. Also, items like celery and grapes will last a long time in good cold conditions, but taken up a few degrees will quickly fade. Other items, like apples and potatoes have more wiggle-room when it comes to conditions.
Finding storage for onions and squash is easy because they do not require cool air. Most homes in the North are plenty dry for these things. It’s the other fruits and veg that are harder to store. The first step to home storage is to identify a place or a way to keep food in that 32 to 40 range. The obvious location that stays in that range is a refrigerator, an excellent tool for long term storage. There may be other places in your house or apartment. An un-heated attic works very well. Food can also be placed in containers just outside the house such as in a window well, the stairs leading to a basement or an apartment porch. The residual heat of the house is usually enough to keep food from freezing, but if food is kept in containers, it can also be moved inside on truly cold days. A little ingenuity can find the cool spot.
A cool spot works only so well. The other critical step to keeping foods edible is to keep them moist. Traditional root cellars were dank. Modern takes on root cellars need the dankness added. This can be done by keeping pans of water in your improvised cellar, using wet burlap, or by placing the items in sand. Items kept in the refrigerator are especially vulnerable to dry conditions.
If there is one step to cold storage it is to visit your food. The best storage methods will not protect all. An apple here, a potato there, will spoil, and as the cliche knows, one bad apple will spoil the whole bunch. It important to keep a vigilant eye on the food put-away in cold storage.
Cold storage resources:
Canning is the antithesis of freezing. It requires a significant amount work. Foods for canning must be chopped and peeled and stemmed and seeded. Before getting to canning, recipes must be followed, food prepared. Then, there is the work creating a good and clean environment. Jars must be sterilized. It seems scary and mysterious. Those recipes have to be followed or canning can produce un-wanted results. Canning, however, also allows for storage without the investment and space of a freezer. A few items like tomatoes may come out better canned than froze. Canning also allows the Chef to extend their harvest with all sorts of pickles, relishes, chutneys, jams and jellies. These foods add variety and vigor to a bland winter diet.
Food can be stored in cans (glass jars) because of steps taken to inhibit bacteria growth and steps taken to seal food off from all the bad things floating unseen in the air. There are two ways of canning: hot water canning and pressure canning.
Bacteria growth can be inhibited by the acids in foods or by introducing acids such as the vinegar in pickling solutions. In high acid situations, a hot water can is enough. When foods are low in acid, typically most vegetables, something else is needed to control bacteria: heat. The pressure in a pressure-canner makes water boil at a temperature over 212 F. This higher temperature kills bacteria. After this, proper use of hot water or pressure-canners will produce sealed jars. What started safe will remain safe.
Canning resources:
Drying allows food to last by making it harder for bacteria to prosper. Bacteria needs water. Dried foods are not fully safe from spoilage. After drying it might still be necessary to freeze or seal the foods or at least kept in good storage conditions. Good candidates for drying are tomatoes, plums, and hot peppers. Many herbs can be dried for future use.
Home drying can be done with a dehydrator, a microwave or an oven. Like canning, dried foods, at least some dried foods, need some work before the actual preservation. Dried tomatoes should be cored and halved, although opinions differ on the need to seed tomatoes when drying. Fruits need to be pitted. Fruit leathers take more work.
Drying resources:
Canners and freezers are wonders of modern innovation. Traditionally, many foods were preserved through fermentation. Fermentation flips the principles already discussed on their head. Canning, drying and freezing thwart microorganisms. Fermentation fosters them. Good bacteria’s and yeasts that can make food last. Fermentation is used to create products like pickles, kimchi and sauerkraut. Still, once fermented, products are often then processed, via canning or freezing, for additional storage.
Like fermentation, there are other ways to prolong food life without fully preserving it. In other words, if you pickle or jam, the new food will last a good long time in the refrigerator, but it will not last outside the fridge, let alone forever in the fridge. There are traditional cooked dishes that also serve to semi-preserve foods. For instance, the Sicilian caponata mixes eggplants and other summer vegetables in a sweet-sour-salty recipe that can be used in various ways on the table. Pestos, combining herbs, nuts and cheeses, are another way of making things last.
Other ancient methods for preserving foods used oils or vinegars. Oil makes a decent barrier to spoilage. In older times, meat was often preserved under fat. Now, we can keep roasted peppers or dried tomatoes around for longer periods by keeping them in oil. Flavored oils and vinegars may not keep a food, but they will keep the essence of a food. Likewise, fruits can be kept in alcohol. The most treasured method of saving fruit is to juice it and then make that juice last by making wine.
There are many ways to preserve the bounty of the harvest. Which way you chose will depend on what you want to preserve as well as the ways you have to save it. The more you eat local, the more you are going to want to eat local after the harvest ends. Over time, you will find preservation methods that work for you. You will invariably learn new ones. It is impossible to know how much to store and preserve without living through a Fall, Winter, and Spring with limited fresh foods. Try. Try using the methods discussed here. The reasons that have you eating local now, should have you eating local then. So give it a try.
Robert Gardner is Editor at Large for the Localbeet.com. Melissa Graham is the President and founder of Purple Asparagus and blogs at having-company.blogspot.com.
One key way this local family, at least the local children component of the local family, can manage local eating is by never tiring of apples. Because apples both grow plentifully around here and store easily, the supply remains ample from Fall through Spring. When there is no other local fruit, there are local apples. And no matter how many apples a day the children get, they seem capable of eating another, a real boon to our localism. Luckily, they are applying this same commitment to the fruit of the moment, watermelon.
Last week our CSA box included a watermelon. This gave us two un-opened melon and a third about two-thirds gone. With another melon/feta salad on Sunday, we got down to only two full melons. So, as with last week, the melons are going in the kid’s lunches each day. If their ability to eat the same thing endlessly helps greatly their ability to eat local, their new found maturity in returning tupperware seals the deal, as each day’s melon allotment must be properly boxed so as not to get the rest of the lunch soggy. After today’s lunch, I would guess about half of the dark green seedless melon remains. When that is gone, we will tackle the vollyball sized striped melon. Last in, first out.
The rest of our CSA box last week (previous week here):
From the Oak Park Farmer’s Market we made the following additional purchases:
Opening today in Hyde Park is Open Produce, a store dedicated to providing fresh, sustainably produced produce to the community at affordable prices:
We focus on sustainable food production, whether that be organic growing methods, local production, or efficient transportation.
The interesting twist with Open Produce is not that they’re an independent store, but rather that they’ve made a commitment to be completely transparent with all aspects of their business:
Our company also strives to set new standards of transparency and accountability to the community; everything about our operation, from our financial data to where our produce was grown, will be available on this website or in our store.
As movements towards eating sustainably gain momentum, price concerns come to the forefront. I love Open Produce’s consumer-oriented approach and I hope it means a lot of success for them.
Follow their blog at: http://www.openproduce.org/blog/ and visit Open Produce (after 4pm on 9/24) at 1635 E 55th Street.
Congratulations to Will Allen, founder and chief of Growing Power, on receiving a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant”. For 15 years, Mr. Allen and Growing Power has supported urban communities through sustainable agriculture, education, and outreach. Mr. Allen started farming with Milwaukee teenagers and growing food directly for their communities. Today, Growing Power has expanded to urban farms in Chicago, as well as agricultural education centers throughout the U.S.
This grant is a significant acknowledgement of the strong bond between a community and agriculture. Mr. Allen and Growing Power have used that bond to feed, educate, and inspire. With this $500,000 grant, we can continue to look for great things from Growing Power for years to come.
Any food system that advertises fresher, tastier and more delicious food while simultaneously saving the earth and rescuing communities is bound to provoke a backlash. Smart people have tried to rip apart the locavore idea(lism). David Tamarkin in this week’s Time Out Chicago is one of the latest to go after a movement he calls “completely ill-conceived.” Editor in Chief, Michael Morowtitz does a nice job tackling Tamarkin’s arguments, and Michael Gebert cleans up any rhetorical scrapes left-over. Given that, I feel it is my duty to put up a better argument against local food.
Take this telling anecdote from my wife who’s been helping out a bit in the Kitchen at Mado. She asked Chef Rob Levitt why he had been on the phone so long. “Farmer”, he said. See anyone who spends more than a bit of time with farmers, whether at markets or whatnot, knows that farmers love to chat. My children dislike farmer’s markets just for the fact that I spend too much time, seeming in their opinion, talking. It’s not my fault I say, “the farmers.” Since most local eaters find themselves so often at farmer’s markets, this chattiness issue can be a real problem.
Local eaters can try to skip the difficulty of farmer’s markets by finding shops like Cassie’s Green Grocer. Not only is Cassie friendly, but local-skeptical web sites like Gaper’s Block find her downright charismatic. That’s a scary factor about local eating, no? That charisma might lure the wayward shopper into buying more local salsa, cultivated mushrooms, and Bruno’s pastries than they need. Is not it true that local food is too expensive to begin with; what happens in in the face of such charisma? Straight to the poor house.
Expensive. Local food is expensive. No lie, a farmer, who I shall not name, offered a variety of red pepper at the market yesterday for $2 each. Not even a big pepper. $2! Who buys $2 peppers? I mean every week I look at the weekly inserts in the Chicago Tribune and I find local food that is accessible and affordable, but I am only looking at the inserts in the Oak Park edition. I bolster my case by visiting the Angelo Caputo’s near me, with all sorts of local foods priced at under $1/lb, but do you have an Angelo Caputo’s near you. Let’s just say local food is all about $2 peppers.
Want to know what else sucks about local eating? Cooking. There’s nothing that puts a damper in the spirit of local eating than the need to have to cook it. Believe me, I know. I started out in love with local food. I kept on buying it. It forced me not only to eat it, but have to cook it too. I mean I am into local food, not raw food. You mock this argument. Have you ever tried to cook. When you watch Emeril or Iron Chef or Nigella Lawson (if you watch that one for the cooking), you rarely see the peeling, seeding, stemming, washing, spinning and otherwise ‘ing that it takes to make food ready to eat. And time, do you really think it’s all thirty minute meals?Localvores point to the the sensual pleasures of eating their food, but do they ever point out that it has to be cooked too?
I could go on. People who subscribe to CSAs get things like collard greens and celery. Who eats anything green these days, and if that’s bad enough, have you ever tried local celery? It’s bad enough to find chickens that taste like chickens, eggs that taste like eggs, but what about celery that tastes like celery. Were not some things meant to change.
David Tamarkin tries to explain a bit of his argument (while saying nice things about this site!) on Time Out’s Blog. He confesses that his anti-local comes after trying a localvore challenge last year. David, myself and my family, we’ve been trying it for several years. Want to know the arguments against local. Ask me. I got plenty more.
In a recent article, David Tamarkin of TimeOut Chicago joins the ranks of pundits launching full-fledged attacks at the concept of eating locally. His hypothesis rests on a fallacy where he states that people who choose to eat locally “choose to eat locally for two main reasons”, economic and environmental. He then goes on to attempt to trash these two motivations.
I list five reasons on this site which include cultural reasons and simple taste as well. Eat Local Challenge links to ten reasons for eating local. On this site, I list my main reason for eating local as a pure love of “seasonality and small-batch, locally-produced foods”, a love I found through travel. By ignoring these primary motivations behind many locavores that I know, Tamarkin is guilty of two logical fallacies right off the bat: hasty generalization and cherry-picking.
First he re-hashes Will Wilkinson’s argument that we should first buy from the neediest if we are economically well-intentioned. Nichol’s farm doesn’t need my five bucks that I spent on tomatoes today. By Tamarkin’s logic, the Mexican farmers need it more so I should buy Mexican. How far does this logic extend? Clothing? Cars? The workers in the U.S. manufacturing industry get significantly better wages and benefits than Chinese workers. Should I turn all my buying power towards Chinese-made products to ensure they continue to receive their wages? Or is it more ethical for me to withhold my purchase and say that I do not support a corrupt system that profits on the backs of its impoverished workers? These decisions are not as simple as saying, “They’re poor over there. Buy from them first.” Just as Wilkinson (and Tamarkin) state, it’s very complicated. Ultimately, I think it’s simply foolish to suggest that we out-source our food supply on a moral basis.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with the moral desire to support struggling farmers in other far-flung locales. Equally, there is nothing wrong with the moral desire to support your own local economy where your friends, family, and neighbors all live and work.
When it comes to economics, Tamarkin is appealing to emotion, effectively saying, “but what about the starving babies overseas?” This is not proof, but an appeal that doesn’t hold much water. I would still be interested in evidence that a percentage reduction in the import of Australian-grown oranges or Chilean-grown grapes would adversely affect the quality of life in those countries.
Secondly, Tamarkin attacks the environmental argument that locally-grown food does not necessarily have a smaller carbon footprint than imported food. He points to an oft-quoted study that shows efficiencies in New Zealand-grown lamb are greater than that grown in England, a large lamb importer. Perhaps this makes sense if the British chose lamb to replace lamb, or never decided to implement any efficiencies locally. All things being equal, it may make sense to keep importing lamb. But a local eater will tell you to substitute some of your lamb eating with something efficient and bountiful from your own backyard.
Finally, Tamarkin sets up a wild hypothetical as reason to question eating locally in Chicago:
A similar situation in Chicago might look like this: While a tomato that was organically grown on an Illinois farm has a low impact on the environment, an organically grown tomato raised in an Illinois greenhouse—like some of the tomatoes sold in June at the Wicker Park Farmers’ Market—can be deceiving. They may be locally grown, but that term fails to reveal they were grown in a heavily heated, gas-guzzling greenhouse.
I would like to know exactly which farms use gas-guzzling greenhouses. Even if he can come up with one, which I doubt he can, I would say that there are dozens and dozens who use nothing more than a heat-efficient, zero-energy hoop-house. The movement toward eating local goes beyond blindly choosing something with a “local” sticker on it, but getting to know your food and your farmer. Pointing out a pitfall doesn’t invalidate the path taken. Should a vegetarian give up their eating choice because it’s hard to tell which foods might have used chicken stock in a sauce? Or should they learn more about what they’re eating? I say the latter. Make informed choices.
The fact of the matter is, and I dare anyone to dispute this, that if I choose to bring home Michigan peaches and Wisconsin cheese and Illinois beer from the market, that food didn’t travel nearly as far as Chilean grapes, California cheese, and New York wine. If it travels less, it uses less fuel. Even if those Chilean grapes are efficiently shipped in large containers, they still have to be grown, harvested, shipped to port, shipped, brought from port to distribution, and stocked. My peaches have to do the same thing, except you can cut out the entire trans-oceanic shipping process. Even Wal-Mart has recognized the fuel and cost savings in sourcing their food closer to their stores.
Overall, Tamarkin’s attack borders on vitriolic at times, which is disappointing, painting locavores as selfish and lacking reason. Unfortunately his arguments are completely devoid of reason. To attack with such anger with hypotheicals and appeals to emotion is specious at best. His argument is flawed from the beginning by making a false statement about the motivations of locavores and he does a poor job of knocking down the motivations that he picked like ripe Michigan cherries.
Mr. Tamarkin, to use your words, this article was “completely ill-conceived”.
Yes. Yes, yes, especially if you like apples, but yes, based on the inserts in the Oak Park Edition of the Chicago Tribune and visits to the Angelo Caputo’s location in Elmwood Park, there remains local food to be found around town. Let’s go to the papers.
Before hitting the whats, let me say that the how much works too. All of the local mentioned below is priced at under $1/lb, and there are big bargains, like apples at Caputo’s for 59 cents/lb. Affordable? Check.
For Dominicks, with many area stores, and Tony’s Finer Foods, with four locations; local means Michigan apples. For Ultra Foods, with six area locations, local also means apples but also green beans and Michigan peaches. Ultra ties reigning Champion Angelo Caputo’s, with six area stores, for local this week. Caputo’s advertises local cabbage, apples and string beans. Total losers this week are Jewel and Food4Less, with no local food advertised. On a whole, though, accessible holds.
That’s the scorecard based on the inserts, what about in-store. I can gladly report that the local remains very high at Caputo’s. They are still selling Michigan tomatoes, by the pound and by the bushel. They sell local eggplant, summer squash, cucumbers, various peppers, grapes and peaches–at least. I would look for these types of items at your neighborhood grocery. In addition, there is an excellent chance that you will find Wisconsin potatoes and local onions around. Do start stocking up.
This is the time for reaping and storing. The Local Beet should have its guide up soon. Even before you read the guide, note that green beans freeze well, cucumbers and eggplants make excellent pickles and relishes, and apples, potatoes and onions can be easily stored in someplace cool and dark. For those a bit more capable or at least more adventurous, tomatoes can be canned or dried. Additional instruction and insight is available at Cassie’s Green Grocer, where Melissa Graham will teach a class on preserving the harvest tonight ( September 17) at 6 PM.
There will come a time when local will not be quite as accessible and affordable. The easiest way to deal with those times is to shop heavily now.
The Chicago Tribune’s Stew reports today that a modified [ed., very!] version of a public market will be opening downtown, in the same building now hosting the latest incarnation of the Block 57 art projects (66 E. Randolph, across from the Cultural Center).
The current plan is to have an ever-changing roster with at least 5 growers of produce, 25 non-produce products and 10 books, plus special items and Chicago favorites. Expect the mix to evolve.
I have mixed feelings about said effort. I have been long encouraging a public market in Chicago. One not as, well, real as Cleveland’s or Seattle’s, but at least in the vein of what they are trying in Minneapolis and Milwaukee. It would be good for the locavore and the farmer to have a fixed, year round, market. One featuring not just produce but an array of local products such as meat and milk. It would especially solve the issue of fresh meat for the local consumer.
My misgivings with this project are that it is both incomplete and in competition with private efforts such as Cassie’s Green Grocer and Marion Street Cheese. I want something grand. What exactly will be on offer here. The press release (as reported) makes it sound more like a mini-farmer’s market. We are the city of Daniel Burnham, no? Make no small markets. Then, make it fair and real. A real public market has an equal system that allows vendors to sign-up at market rates. Who has the skin in this game. You have people, like Cassie, who have made investments. This hardly seems fair.
Like I say, there’s a lot of me that is happy about this; happy to have something, a start, a market there all the time. Yet there is another part of me that does not like much of what is happening here.
As part of their long-running Chicago Matters series, Chicago Public Radio reports today on a pilot program to bring fresh (and in some cases, local) fruits and vegetables to Chicago Public School lunches.
It’s an interesting and comprehensive piece that touches on nutrition and health standards, fuel costs, food supply, tastes of children, and even simple food preparation issues. It all stems from this simple statement:
Last year the district and its main food service company Chartwells Thompson Hospitality decided to put fresh fruits and vegetables on the menu twice a week.
I applaud CPS for taking on this challenge and confronting the associated issues head on. Systemic changes, especially related to eating, are not easy and often find resistance from surprising forces.
For anyone interested in how social services close to home are confronting issues related to food, this Chicago Public Radio piece is worth a listen (or read).
I hope your challenge is coming along fine. Were your plans, like mine, to visit a farmer’s market this weekend lost to rain? To some extent, the last few days, we have been living off of the existing bounty in the Bungalow. We still have tons of tomatoes. We dipped into the bag of sweet potatoes we purchased a few weeks ago at the Evanston Farmer’s Market and also dipped into a bag of white potatoes picked up earlier this summer. We cut into a watermelon that has been on the dining room for several (don’t ask) weeks. It was fine. It shows how you cannot just jump into local eating. Also, luckily for me and my family, we have a CSA box to ensure a new supply of local food. From Farmer Vicki’s Genesis Growers:
I have always tout Cas for their ancillary benefits. They put you in touch with a farmer, allowing farm visits and whatnot. You get inside to make deals such as for off-season products or limited edition products like Vicki’s eggs. There are other obvious points to a CSA, mainly the idea of providing money to a farmer when he or she most needs it, balancing out the books and sharing the risks. Still, at the end of the day, there is the key point that regardless of the weather, regardless of anything else, there will be local food waiting for you each week.
Our other purchase this week was more Michigan tomatoes from Caputo’s for canning, about 20 lbs worth. We bought local milk at Whole Foods. Finally, our local haul was enhanced by a generous donation from the garden of David C. Hammond. From there we got hot peppers, celery, sage, parsley, kale, carrots, and leeks.
Last week’s local here.
How is your challenge going? Did your shopping get rained out yesterday? You might be able to find a dry spell today to do some market shopping. As always, the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s Agrihappenings site is the best place to find area markets. I am well familiar with the Logan Square Market and the Wicker Park market, and both can meet your fruit and vegetable needs for the ongoing challenge. What can you do otherwise.
If you expected to find Jessica Volpe’s fresh pastas at the Edgewater Green Market on Saturday, how about instead RP Pasta made in Madison, Wisconsin and sold at Whole Foods.
If you love the Blue Marble Dairy sold at Green City Market, you will probably just as much like the equally shakeable Farmer’s All Natural Creamery milk widely sold around town, including any decent Polish market.
If you love the Sugar River yogurt from Wisconsin (my wife and I surely do) and usually carried along by the Blue Marble guys, then you will also love what my wife calls her crack, the Trader’s Point Creamery yogurt sold at Cassie’s Green Grocer.
If you were proud of Joe Burns for having one of his cheeses included in Wine Spectator’s 100 Great Cheeses but really wanted to get a slab of his Brun-uusto “bread cheese”, you can find a similar product from Carr Valley, called just bread cheese, at Costcos.
If you want local apples, peaches, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, cabbage, peppers, celery, lettuce and probably a few other local things, you can visit the six outlets of Angelo Caputo.
And if all else fails, you have Monday’s Farm Dinner at Lula’s [linked menu is last week's farm meal].
On the eve of the “soft opening” of the expanded and more elegant Marion Street Cheese Market in Oak Park, I walk into a tempest of activity: shelves being stocked, sales reps on the hunt, curious neighbors nosing around. Chatting with owner Erik Larson, I cut straight to the chow:
What kind of food do you plan to serve in your new café?
LARSON: Our chef, Mike Pivoney, has a mantra: “don’t fuss with the food.” We let high-quality ingredients do most of the work; our job is to enhance and highlight the inherent deliciousness of local food. We’re very excited, for instance, about offering cheese platters featuring any of our almost 100 artisanal cheeses with house-made chutneys and jellies and flights of wine or regional draft beers.
Deliciousness is primary, but do customers care about where food comes from?
LARSON: People right now do care a lot about where their food comes from, and not just for reasons of taste or health; people want a connection. We work very hard to build relationships with local producers. We connect consumer and farmer. We create a community where good food and information can be shared.
Do you feel that part of your role as cheese monger, and now restaurateur, is to “educate” the consumer?
LARSON: Oh, absolutely, and customers crave education. They want to know more about their food. That’s why we’ve set up a stage, screen and podium in our café – we’ll bring in farmers, vintners, and of course cheese makers, to talk about their craft, so that people can learn more and eat better.
A view of the cheese case at Marion Street
By bringing together producers and consumers, you’re actually shortening the food chain, but ironically now you’ve become the only middle man standing between producers and consumers. So couldn’t customers simply go around you and create a one-to-one relationship with those who grow their food?
LARSON: It’s very hard for producers to sell directly to consumers, and my feeling is that the more people who get excited about fresh food from local farms, the more they’ll value what we’re doing. We’re all part of the same community, and we’re after the same thing: good-tasting regional food.
Who are your food philosophers?
LARSON: Well, one person who’s influenced me a lot is Carlo Petrini, and in keeping with Slow Food principles, I’m serving vegetables and herbs I grow in my own garden –you can’t get more local than that! Later this year, Leslie Cooperband of Prairie Fruits Farm will be doing a few classes on container gardening and urban agriculture. Now, you might think that if people grow their own food, then that also cuts into my business, but I don’t agree. If people are growing their food, and developing relationships with the land, then we’re all part of a shared community of interests. We all want good food.
One of Slow Food’s central tenets is that food should be buono, pulito e giusto: good, clean and fair. How do cleanliness and fairness play into your buying decisions?
LARSON: If producers treat their people poorly, they cannot be relied upon to treat their products well. If farm hands are treated like dirt, it’s likely you’ll get a dirty product. We want our producers to treat their staff well, so we visit farms, we see how they’re run, and if people and animals are treated unfairly, we walk. A producer’s ethics extend throughout theirbusiness. We want to be fair too, and a lot of bigger operations would say we’re crazy, but we never ask for volume discounts: producers tell us what they need to run a sustainable operation, and we try to make it work because we’re in this together.
How else do you pull through the green theme?
LARSON: We doing as much as we can. For instance, we give employees a discount at Green Home Experts (an eco-conscious store in Oak Park) so they can bring good, clean and just practices home with them in the form of environmentally friendly cleaning products and other household goods. Most of our furniture here is made of sustainable or recycled raw materials; our kitchen appliances carry Energy Star ratings, and we’re working with local grade schools on a composting program to help us achieve a zero-waste kitchen.
Would you say your restaurant is a model for green living?
LARSON: I hope it is. Customers have asked us where they can source local and sustainable products for their homes. I’d like to think that, as a part of this community, we’re setting a good example. We believe in what we’re doing, and we’re hoping that others share that belief.
Not to sound pretentious and preposterous, but how will the Marion Street Cheese Market change the world?
LARSON (laughing): We want to provide a forum for people who enjoy getting together to share ideas and food, and that could be a lecture or an organized discussion, or maybe it’s just a casual conversation over wine and one of Chef Mike’s pizzas. In our humble way, we’re building community – a community of people who love good food – with every customer we talk to and every cheese we slice.
Marion Street Cheese Market
100 S. Marion
Oak Park, IL
Phone 708.725.7200
Hours: M-Th 6:30a-10:30a
Fri 6:30a – 11:30
Sat 8a-11:30p
Sun 9a-9p
www.marionstreetcheesemarket.com
