Spring Breakfast by the Bay is tomorrow, May 5!

There's still space left to join us tomorrow for a delicious Cinco de Mayo-inspired breakfast made with ingredients fresh from the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Come to Pier 1½ (just north of the Ferry Building) between 9:30 and 10:00 am for walk-in registration. Proceeds from this event support CUESA's educational projects and programs. Click here to learn more about the event >

Farewell to Fitzgerald's and Port's

We recently learned that both Fitzgerald's Farm and Port's Seafood will no longer attend the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. Fitzgerald's will instead focus their efforts on the Santa Monica Farmers' Market, which is closer to the farm. Port's Seafood, after losing their two farmers' market workers, decided to focus entirely on their much larger wholesale business. We appreciate the many years of participation that both sellers dedicated to the market. We would also like to thank Fitzgerald Kelly for his five years of service on our Board of Directors. He will now serve on our Board Advisory Committee.

Salmon Festival ~ May 19, 2007

On Saturday, May 19, the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market will celebrate the local wild salmon season with a day of activities and talks. There will be salmon cooking demonstrations, educational discussions, salmon hat coloring and gyotaku (Japanese fish printing). Organizations working to protect and restore salmon habitat will be at the market to help shoppers learn more and take action. Presenters include Larry Miyamura of Shogun Salmon, Chef Mike Weller of California Culinary Academy, and Cap'n Mike's Holy Smoke. Northern Californian wild salmon populations are in peril, and the Salmon Celebration will provide an opportunity to find out about this most important issue.

Local food book event tomorrow!

On Saturday, May 5 at 2:00 pm, Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon talk about Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally. The typical ingredient in a North American meal travels 2,000 miles before it hits the dinner plate, a fact authors Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon found alarming. Vowing to reconnect with nature and get off what they dubbed the “SUV Diet,” Smith and MacKinnon decided to spend one year eating only foods locally grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their home. Location: Book Passage, inside the Ferry Building.

Saturday, May 5 ~ Market to Table Events

10:30 am - Meet the seller
Sarah Rocklin of La Cocina

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Alexandra Lopez, The Food Diva

Saturday, May 12 ~ Market to Table Events

10:30 am - Meet the farmer and seasonal cooking demonstration
Eva Bruins of Bruins Vegetables

11:15 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Chris Borges of Taste Catering

All events take place in our Dacor teaching kitchen in the arcade north of the Ferry Building's clock tower.

This week's feature was written by CUESA's Director of Education, Julie Cummins.

Last week I participated in the Pennywise Eat Local Challenge with the goal of eating a varied and satisfying local diet on a budget. Why would I do such a thing? Because I believe in knowing where my food comes from and buying it from local farms I trust. Because people say that local food is too expensive, and I don’t think that’s true; I want to demonstrate that a local diet (by my definition, within roughly 100 miles) is within the reach of the average American. Because I like games: I love to challenge myself, experiment, and learn something in the process.

I had $68 for the week—the amount of money an average American spends on food eaten in the home and out. That may sound like a lot, but for a 9-to-5er who doesn’t always have time to cook, it can be a stretch. A convenient lunch of an $8 sandwich and $2 drink, besides not being local, would bust my entire day’s budget.

In addition to the $9.71 per day prescribed by the challenge, I took on the goal of spending no more than one hour per day preparing my food. Last year during the month-long Eat Local Challenge, I got so sick of cooking that I didn’t even want to pick up a skillet for at least a month afterwards. This time around, I wanted to see if I could eat local without spending an inordinate amount of time in the kitchen.

I didn’t worry too much about my budget; I bought what sounded good, and my end-of-the-week totals show I had $3.71 to spare. I spent five hours preparing food during the week and about two and a half hours cleaning up. That totals an hour and four minutes per day. Not an unreasonable amount of time, but more than most busy Americans want to spend: the average American spends half an hour per day on food preparation and cleanup. According to the book Fast Food Nation, the average American also consumes three hamburgers and four orders of fries per week. What’s an extra half hour of cooking in the name of health?

My meals for the week consisted of fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheeses, eggs, beans, and grains from farmers’ markets, supplemented with a few items from the local grocery (milk, yogurt, rice pasta, butter, etc.). I don’t eat much meat, but substituting some of my vegetables with chicken or ground beef would have been totally feasible within the allotted budget. I ate a varied and satisfying diet, fell in love with the spring flavors of strawberries and peas, and even made a couple of desserts to satisfy my demanding sweet tooth. I got tired of my own leftovers and ignored the occasional urge to buy takeout or indulge in a chocolate bar, but in general the challenge was easy and similar to my usual food regime. I tried new recipes, shared a lot of food with others, felt good about relying on my local foodshed for nourishment, and learned a few things.

Here are some thoughts I collected on eating local foods while saving time and money:

• When cooking with local farmers’ market ingredients, save time by keeping it simple. The raw ingredients are packed with flavor, so why mess with a good thing? A basket of strawberries needs no further preparation.
• Plan ahead! If you can avoid having to go back to the store for a forgotten item, you’ll save time and fuel.
• Double the recipe and then eat the leftovers. Prevent food boredom by doctoring up the leftovers in creative ways. For example, if you’re making a stir fry and rice, make extra, and use the leftover rice to make rice pudding or fried rice. Add a dressing to the stir fry and eat it cold as a salad for lunch the next day.
• Reduce waste by using the whole vegetable. Beet tops and chard stems are delicious! Leek tops are usable if you cook them well, such as in a soup. Save vegetable trimmings in a bag in the freezer and when the bag is full, boil them down into a broth.
• Buy things at the peak of the season. Early in the season, prices are sometimes higher.
• Shop around for the best value for your dollar. Even at the farmers’ market, prices vary, and so does flavor.
• Eating local doesn’t have to be an absolute, but when you are cooking anyway, why not use all local ingredients?
• When eating out, ask where the ingredients come from. The more we let restaurants know we care, the more they will respond by sourcing their ingredients from local farms.
  

This is the most up-to-date information about which sellers will and won't be attending the market as of Friday, when we send this letter. If there are no changes to a seller's status, they will not be listed. To find out which farmers regularly attend each market, click here. Please understand that there are often last minute changes--it's the nature of farming!

Market announcements: Shogun Fish Company will be in the market tomorrow with local wild salmon. Larry Miyamura reports that since the season opened on Tuesday, fishing has been disappointingly slow, but Shogun will have at least a little salmon, so come to the market early to get it.

Saturday, May 5

In/Returning: Shogun Fish Company, Happy Quail Farm, Bernard Ranches, Apple Farm, Juniper Ridge, Niman Ranch

Tuesday, May 8

Out: Fatted Calf