Spring Farmers Market Cocktail Night ~ Wednesday

Tickets are going fast for next week's farmers market-inspired cocktail night. Join us as we collaborate with the United States Bartenders Guild (USBG) to provide guests with two full-sized signature drinks and tastes of 10 others made with seasonal produce. We'll also have snacks and recipes. Featuring food and drink from: 15 Romolo, Cantina, Gitane, Bourbon & Branch, Rose Pistola, Wexler's, Hotsy Totsy Club, Sauce, Blackbird, Il Cane Rosso, Bon Appétit Management Company, Absinthe Brasserie and Bar, and The Plant Café Organic. Buy tickets.

Spring Breakfast ~ May 29

Breakfast with your favorite farmer and food artisan at CUESA’s annual fundraiser. Our kitchen will be transformed into a bountiful, beautiful setting for a relaxed meal right in the center of the market.

What's for Breakfast:
• Farm-fresh scrambled eggs with fava beans, green garlic, and peas or wild mushrooms from Hayes Street Grill
• Roasted potatoes with fresh herbs
• Market lettuce, shaved radish, and chive blossom salad
• Blueberry pancakes
• Fresh strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries with crème fraiche, yogurt, and honey
• Breakfast pastries and bread
• Artisan cheeses, handmade jams
• Coffee, tea, and juice.

It's one of the most delicious ways to support CUESA's education programs. Buy tickets.

Kefir and Yogurt Class with Happy Girl Kitchen ~ May 20

Learn how to make homemade cow and goat's milk yogurt and kefir, a fermented milk drink. Jordan Champagne of Happy Girl Kitchen will be leading this probiotic-rich workshop where participants take home a pint each of yogurt and kefir, including enough kefir grains to start your own batch at home. Buy tickets.

 

Celebrate Urban Eats at the County Fair ~ June 20

Do you make the best jam in the city? Do you grow the sweetest carrots? At this year's Giants County Fair, CUESA is hosting a special tent celebrating homegrown and homemade food. San Francisco residents are invited to enter an array of contests, including: best garden basket, honey, and eggs, as well as best preserved and baked foods. Read the rules or download the contest application form here. Related organizations are also invited to participate. Learn more. Keep up with Urban Eats on Facebook.

Women Changing the Way We Eat ~ June 9

Join CUESA and Kitchen Table Talks for a conversation about the contributions of women farmers, producers, advocates, and activists. Temra Costa will speak about the women she interviewed for her new book, Farmer Jane, and a panel of women who work in the food system, including Sarajane Snyder from Green Gulch Farm and Il Cane Rosso’s Chef Lauren Kiino, will delve into ideas of women's work, the joy of being in the dirt, and the ways women juggle home, family, community, and other endeavors as they plant, till, sell, and promote their wares. We'll gather Wednesday night in the Port Commission Hearing Room at the Ferry Building, 2nd Floor at 6:30 pm. More details here.

From Earth to 5-Star Exhibit at the Mint ~ May 15-31

For three weekends in May, the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society (SFMHS) will open the doors of the Old Mint to San Francisco residents for a temporary exhibit on the history of food in the Bay Area. The empty vaults that once contained one-third of the nation’s gold reserves will be filled with the rich history of regional products and producers that have impacted the way our city, nation, and world think about food. In addition to the exhibit, live presentations will explore the history of food in the Bay Area and the people who have made that history. CUESA's own Dave Stockdale and Dexter Carmichael will speak about building a sustainable food system through the farmers market movement on May 21 at 1 pm. See the complete schedule.

Farm Film Night Series Kicks Off at Hayes Valley Farm ~ May 18

Hayes Valley Farm will screen DIRT! The Movie, marking the first in a series of outdoor Farm Film Nights at the 2.5-acre educational farm located on the former Central Freeway site. Farm Film Night will be a fun family-friendly event, giving city dwellers the opportunity to learn about soil ecology and enjoy the farm under the stars. For farm volunteers, it will also be a chance to sit back and relax after three months of hard work pushing wheelbarrows and shoveling mulch and manure to build new soil on the city lot. Gates will open at 7:30 pm and the screening will begin at 8:15 pm, with several dirt-themed short films by Bay Area filmmakers from How-to Homestead. The films will also be accompanied by live music from the Sk8 Sisters. Learn more.

Asian Culinary Forum Presents Filipino Flavors: Tradition & Innovation ~ May 15 and 16

Join the Asian Culinary Forum in the heart of San Francisco for an exciting, weekend-long celebration of the foods of the Philippines.  Set in the heart of San Francisco at the International Culinary School, the weekend's lively line-up of events includes: a unique master cooking class, a revelatory food and wine pairing, provocative chefs’ and scholars' panels, a literary reading of poetry and prose, live music, and, yes, a decisive adobo throw-down! As always, plenty of tasty bites will be mingled with conversation and culture.

Janet Fletcher Reads at Sur La Table ~ May 22

Sur La Table is hosting a book signing for Janet Fletcher, author of Eating Local, The Cookbook Inspired by America's Farmers. The book helps make the most of the fresh ingredients from your CSA box or farmers' market and celebrates food grown locally. The reading is at noon sharp but we recommend you get your shopping done early if you want to secure a spot.

Marion Nestle in Point Reyes ~ May 23

Marin Organic and Point Reyes Books presents Marion Nestle in conversation with Helge Hellberg, Executive Director of Marin Organic. Nestle, author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition, What to Eat? and Feed Your Pet Right, is one of the most respected nutritionists in America today. Admission to the talk is free. Tickets are also available for an intimate dinner with Nestle catered by Osteria Stellina following the talk. Learn more.

Saturday, May 15 ~ Eggstravaganza

10:00 am - 1:00 pm Education displays about egg cookery and keeping hens in San Francisco in the South Driveway. A San Francisco resident and hen keeper will also be on hand to answer questions about raising the birds and we'll have an informational flyer for you to take home.

10:00 am - 1:00 pm - Meet two-month old baby chicks from Eatwell Farm

11:00 am - Egg-centric cooking demonstration
Dmitry Elperin, Village Pub

Tuesday, May 18 ~ Food Wise Booth

12:30 - 1:30 pm - Sarah Henkin, CUESA's market chef, will give out recipe cards and samples of a simple meal made with market ingredients. She'll also be on hand to offer advice for all your seasonal meal planning.

Saturday, May 22 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Sascha Weiss, The Plant Café Organic

11:45 am - Seasonal Cooking Demonstration
Yigit Pura, Taste Catering

All programs take place in CUESA's Dacor teaching kitchen, in front of the Ferry Building on the north side.

Free range eggs. The term simply means the hens that lay them “have been allowed access to the outside.” And, in the real world of today’s egg-production, that can mean little more than a small doorway at the back of a crowded indoor henhouse.

That’s where pastured egg producers enter the picture. Pastured hens are truly free on the range; they spend the majority of their days pecking and scratching on open land, eating bugs, living like chickens are meant to.

For Shelly McMahon of Shelly’s Garden, the market’s newest egg producer, that last part is pretty crucial. She’s in the process of expanding her egg business in Brentwood and is staunchly committed to keeping the birds on pasture.

Although she and her husband grew oats on their 10 acres for a neighbor's horse for the first decade they lived there, Shelly has been actively farming the land for 11 years. She started with herbs and tomatoes and kept some laying hens for her family. Soon she started giving eggs away to friends, and slowly began to see it as a potential business. A few years back she arranged a deal with her neighbors at Knoll Farms to include her eggs in their CSA box. Today she’s managing a 1,200-bird flock.

The Girls

Shelly has chosen her egg layers carefully. “I started out with a general brown mix, now I’ve zoomed into the kinds of breeds I like: the Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Black Australorp, Black Star, and Barred Rock.” She says. These breeds have great temperaments and, she adds, they’re all around the same size, meaning no one will get picked on. “Even though they have plenty of room, they always go after the small ones. So I try and keep the size fairly even,” she says.  Shelly does raise some some Araucanas. (There’s one blue egg in just about every carton she sells.)  “They’re a little smaller, so we try to keep them off to another section.”

At the core of her process is the rotation of the hens. Every few days, she relocates them to a new part of the property. The pasture itself also needs care. In the summer months, Shelly irrigates portions of the land, corresponding with the rotation, or “just enough to ensure that there are enough worms and bugs.” She also sows an omega-rich forage blend on pasture; it’s a mix of grasses that includes flax, clover, and other plants that attract beneficial bugs.

Thanks to practices like these, pastured eggs are said to have around 10 percent less fat, 40 percent more vitamin A, and 34 percent less cholesterol than those from factory farms.

Brentwood: A Community in Flux

When Shelly and her husband moved to Brentwood, about 55 miles from San Francisco, in 1989, it was a community of six thousand. Since then they’ve watched the housing bubble expand and pop from within a designated agriculture corridor (a farming-friendly area where residents are barred from building commercially or subdividing the land into lots smaller than 40 acres). What was once clearly a rural area has become “peri-urban,” as recent development has crept to within a mile of their farm.

While Brentwood agriculture is a draw for some Bay Area foodies who come to the area for u-picks and farm trails, there’s still a shortage of good local jobs in the area. But Shelly’s optimistic. She hopes to eventually transition the farm to certified organic — once she can afford to make the switch to organic feed for the birds, which would cost around twice as much as the custom blend of blend of corn, wheat, alfalfa, and oats she feeds them now. By expanding her business to include the weekday markets at the Ferry Plaza, as well as several new retailers, she also hopes to be able to take on more acreage and more hens.

“I just want get to a point where I can offer a few full-time jobs to some people around here,” she says. “That would be good.”

 

In addition to eggs, Shelly's Garden will be offering a variety of culinary herbs (everything from stevia to cinnamon basil to cilantro Delfino) at the Tuesday market. When laying picks up for the season (by around late-May or early-June) she'll also be joining us on Thursdays.

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, May 15

Starting: Kashiwase Farms
Returning: Apple Farm
Out: Critical Edge Knife Sharpening, Juniper Ridge, Ridgecut Gristmills
Out for the Season: Little Organic Farms

Tuesday, May 18

New: Pizza Politana, Shelly's Garden
Out: Critical Edge Knife Sharpening

Thursday, May 20

Returning: County Line Harvest, Farmhouse Culture

Plentiful /returning this month (weather willing): Stockton red onions, cherries, summer squash, squash blossoms, Cippolini onions, blueberries, apricots, raspberries, basil, heirloom roses, sardines, English peas, sugar snap peas, snow peas, strawberries, baby root vegetables, lettuces, celery, fresh herbs, fava beans, fennel, artichokes, rapini, pastured eggs, cardoons, spring onions, goat cheese

Winding down/limited supply: Asparagus, potatoes, citrus, braising greens, nettles, green garlic

Farms/Vendors returning this month (weather willing): County Line Harvest, Shogun Fish Company, Triple Delight Blueberries, Paoletti Farms, Kashiwase Farm

Farmer and Vendor items not to be missed:
Goat Jaak cheese from Achadinha Cheese Company, smoked paprika from Happy Quail Farms, and chicken beer sausages from 4505 Meats

Featured Recipes for May:

Bordeaux Spinach, Fava Bean, and Basil Salad with Egg Yolk Vinaigrette and Roasted Garlic Crouton from Sarah Henkin, CUESA's Market Chef (May 26, 2009)

Chilled English Pea Soup from local chef Leif Hedendal

Spring Cassoulet with Rancho Gordo Beans from Dominique Crenn of Luce at the InterContinental San Francisco (April 3, 2010)

Cherry Limeade from Gabriel Cole, formerly of Google Cafe (May 31, 2008)