Farm to Table Panel Discussion ~ Tuesday

This panel at the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library will investigate how local and organically grown produce shapes San Francisco cooking and dining. Panelists include: Mark Sullivan, chef, Spruce; Dave Stockdale, CUESA's own Executive Director; Sam Mogannam, owner of Bi-Rite Market; and Jeannette Ferrary, food writer and historian. The moderator will be Dava Guthmiller of Slow Food San Francisco. Speakers explore current food trends and how these trends shape and influence future dining in San Francisco and on a national scale. Learn more.

Good Food Awards Marketplace ~ January 15

The Good Food Awards — the first national awards platform to recognize American food crafters — celebrate the kind of food we all want to eat: tasty, authentic and responsibly produced. Taste, buy, and meet the producers behind the 71 winning products from across the country. The inaugural Good Food Awards Marketplace is free to the public, and will be held against the backdrop of the San Francisco Plaza Building Farmers Market on Saturday, January 15th from 8am to 2pm. Learn more at www.goodfoodawards.org. There will also be a month of related events around the Bay Area from January 16 to February 20.

Local Chefs' Favorite Winter Fruits & Veggies

It's the chefs' best kept secret: the January farmers market is full of hidden gems. Chris Kronner of Bar Tartine buys breakfast radishes while Local Mission Eatery’s Jake DesVoignes stocks up on pomegranates. Read more about these chefs finds in CUESA Market Manager Lulu Meyer's column on 7x7.

Happy Girl Kitchen Preservation and Fermentation Classes

Happy Girl Kitchen workshops are very hands-on and all equipment is provided along with expert instruction from Todd or Jordan Champagne. Participants will enjoy an organic lunch made from fresh, local produce and take home an assortment of canned goods. Happy Girl offers a variety of classes in Oakland, including a recently-added winter citrus fruits class on January 23, a pickling class on February 6, and a sauerkraut, kimchee and kombucha class on February 5.

Marmalade Classes with June Taylor

This intimate hands-on class concentrates on the principles and processes of marmalade making and the experiential nature of preserving fruit. Topics include evaluation and selection of fruit, stages of preparation, making natural pectin from the fruit, and cooking and jarring. Students will also have the chance to taste and evaluate of a variety of winter citrus and local artisan marmalades. The one-day class is offered twice this winter, on January 15 and February 16. Register here.

Green Sidewalk Classes

The San Francisco Department of Public Works has teamed up with the SF Botanical Garden Society and SF Parks Trust to bring you free Saturday workshops on greening your sidewalk. Participants will be given step-by-step instructions on how to transform sidewalks into gardens including permitting, maintenance, recommended trees and drought tolerant plants, and design ideas. Classes will be held Saturday mornings from February to November. Learn more.

Growing Food and Wisdom: Joan Gussow and Novella Carpenter in Conversation ~ January 25

Hear from Joan Gussow, the author of Growing, Older and Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City at the Commonwealth Club. A young farmer and an older one will speak about the joys and frustrations of food production in the wilds of Oakland and in a Hudson River village. From chard and soybeans to chicken and hogs; death lessons, life lessons, and growing lessons. Learn more.

Food Justice Book Talk ~ February 9

In today’s food system, farm workers face hazardous conditions, low-income neighborhoods lack supermarkets but abound in fast food franchises, and food products sometimes resemble more of a high-calorie chemical mash than a wholesome and healthy product. Meanwhile, a movement for food justice has emerged. Robert Gottlieb, a professor at Occidental College and the author of a new book called Food Justice, tells the story of this emerging movement. See Gottlieb speak about the book at the Commonwealth Club.

The Food Wise Booth is Back ~ Tuesdays

Our Saturday cooking demonstrations resume in February. In the meantime Tuesday market visitors can stop by the Food Wise booth from 12:30 - 1:00 pm. Sarah Henkin, CUESA's market chef, will give out recipe cards and samples of a simple meal made with market ingredients (this week it's a winter slaw!). She'll also be on hand to offer advice for all your seasonal meal planning.

Only 20% of people who seek out kosher foods are Jewish; the rest look for the label because they believe it signals food that is healthy, safe, and generally high in quality. The reality is that many kosher meats and processed foods — like their conventional non-kosher counterparts — are made in large, industrial facilities. Today’s kosher standards are focused mainly on religious ritual and do not account for aspects of the production process that might impact the environment* or food system workers.

If Rabbi Morris Allen and the team behind a soon-to-be-introduced seal and certification process called Magen Tzedek (or "seal of justice") have their way, however, this won’t always be the case. Through Magen Tzedek, Allen hopes to give food producers a chance to incorporate social justice, corporate transparency, and environmental stewardship into the world of kosher food. And, while Jewish people make up only 2% of the U.S. population, the movement to create a complementary label for sustainable kosher food has significant implications for the wider food world. Forty percent of all products sold in the US are certified kosher and the market is growing. When they were last measured in 2008, sales of kosher foods totaled $12.5 billion. We spoke with Rabbi Allen recently about his motivation and the challenges he's facing in advancing this new frontier for kosher food.  

CUESA: How did you (and your congregation, Beth Jacob Congregation in Minnesota) arrive at the idea for Magen Tzedek?

Rabbi Morris Allen: In 2006 I was helping to source fresh kosher meat for a supermarket in St. Paul through an Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa. We were very successful for a few months, until a national news story was released detailing horrible labor practices at the plant. Having sort of staked my reputation on being able to work with them, I was distressed. When a national commission of people went to Postville, we discovered many things that were troubling and we made suggestions for changes they could make. [Editor's note: when the plant was raided by immigration officials in 2008, they found 57 under-age workers. Many worked 12-hour days with harsh chemicals and very sharp tools.] 

It was around that time that I decided we could wait to see if they figure out all these issues, or we could use the model of how food was certified as ritually kosher to create a way to certify food that had been produced in a manner that was consistent with Jewish ethical values.

Q: A number of people buy kosher because they perceive it to be safer; are there aspects of the current kosher certification process that do make it any safer?

Not necessarily at all, unfortunately. People believe that it is more healthy, safer, etc. and I think that is part of the appeal to food producers. The fact is, you can have kosher food that is really unhealthy for you but is kosher.

Q: Where is the process today?

Beginning this month, we hope to begin beta testing our standards with three companies. If they all participate fully, we will be certifying over a billion dollars' worth of food production. Let’s just say they’re all significant players in food production in America. Once we know it’s working we can begin taking applications from companies interested in being certified.

Q: Do you think there are there many companies already able to meet your current standards?

Yes. There are a number that are already doing the right thing, and they need to know that people take note of that fact. It’s the first time that a religious community has essentially decided to demonstrate that good corporate citizenship is a religious issue.

The standards are in five areas: Labor Concerns, Animal Welfare, Environmental Impact, Consumer Trust and Corporate Integrity [Read a draft of the standards].

Q: There’s an increased cost when you treat workers well and respect the environment. Have you gotten pushback from the kosher industry about those costs?

The major complaint is that this is an unnecessary [certification] that will punish people who keep kosher because their costs will go up. In the first place, many people are already doing the right thing and won’t see their costs go up. On the other hand, the food industry is the only one in the world where we walk into a store and say "I always want to buy the least expensive product." You wouldn’t walk into a car dealership and say that.

We can buy the head of broccoli that is $1.99, or the locally grown, organic one for $2.50 — and we might actually be spending $1.99 for the product and 50 cents for the community or to benefit us in other ways. Those kinds of equations aren’t necessarily thought through in the grocery store. But if eating, and in particular eating kosher food, is an act of the sacred, then you have to think about those things.

People don’t want to pay more for food, but we have to make the argument that it’s not about paying more, it’s about doing right.

Q: So, just for clarity, you see Magen Tzedek going alongside the standard kosher label?

Yes. We’re also speaking with some people in the Halal community about ways they might be able to adopt our standards down the road. Of course, you can have too many labels, and the key is to make sure our food products don’t start looking like Nascar vehicles.

Keep up with the Magen Tzedek process on Morris Allen's blog.

Read a related article, Kosher Wars, about the contemporary take on kosher slaughter and other ritual-based dietary rules.

* A number of companies now adopt the kosher label alongside organic certification, but the national organic standards do not include labor practices.

Market Update

This is the most up-to-date information about which sellers will be attending the market as of Friday. If there are no changes to a seller's status, they will not be listed. You'll find a list of which farmers regularly attend each market here. Please understand that there are often last-minute changes — it's the nature of farming!

Saturday, January 8

In: Hapa Ramen (special appearance, one week only), Happy Quail Farms, Alive!, Rose Pistola, Hayes St. Grill, Noe Valley Bakery
New: Scream Sorbet
Out: Shogun (for the season), Andante Dairy, Core Elations (until Spring), Knoll Farm (until February)

Tuesday, January 11

In: McGinnis Ranch
Out: Blossom Bluff Orchards, Bella Viva Orchards

Thursday, January 23

In: Everything Under the Sun

Seasonality Synopsis for January 2011