Epicurious in the market ~ tomorrow

Epicurious.com, the website for people who love to eat, will be at the Ferry Plaza on Saturday. San Francisco is the first stop on their 3rd annual cross-country tour of leading farmers markets. Visitors to their booth will be invited to browse online menus and recipes that showcase seasonal fruits and vegetables. Stop by for recipes featuring products from growers in our market and register with epicurious.com to get an eco-friendly tote and other free foodie gifts!

Taste Catering Benefit for CUESA ~ August 11

Taste Catering is celebrating the unveiling of their own "Taste" tomato with a dinner benefiting CUESA. This flavorful new tomato is a combination of the Maglia Rosa and Zucchero varieties and will be served as part of a three-course meal at Macy's Cellar on Wednesday, August 11. See the menu.

Peach Sale ~ August 14

On your marks, get set, can! Stop by the Bella Viva Orchards stand in the market on August 14th and you'll get a lot of yellow peaches for your dollars (twice as many, in fact). Be there or be... sad in January when you don't have home-canned local peaches to eat for breakfast!

Market Sellers in Print
Arlequin's Luis Villavelazquez and Namu's Dennis Lee make an appearance in this month's Cooking Light. Meanwhile, you can find a feature on Hapa Ramen in this month's 7x7 Magazine.

Shopping With the Chef

Every week CUESA's market manager Lulu Meyer gets an in-person peek at what the Bay Area's top chefs are buying from Ferry Plaza farmers and writes about it for the 7x7 Magazine website. This week she meandered around the market with John De Wolf, sous chef at the weekly-event-turned restaurant, Saison.

Bolivia Farm to Table Tour ~ October 7-19

Join Food First and Global Exchange for their upcoming Food Sovereignty Tour to Bolivia. The production and consumption of food in the Central Andean Highlands of Bolivia is remarkable for many reasons. The industrialized, mechanized farming we know here is practically non-existent, GMOs are virtually unknown, seed saving is commonplace, agro-biodiversity is high, synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use are limited, and most food consumed by urban populations travels a maximum of 200 kilometers from farm to table. Learn more.

Saturday, July 24 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Joanne Weir, cookbook author and host of "Joanne Weir's Cooking Class"

Tuesday, July 20 ~ Food Wise Booth

12:30 - 'til whenever the food runs out - Anastasia Hagerstrom of Sweet Revolution 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, July 31 ~ Market to Table

11:45 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration and book signing
Jennie Schacht, author of Farmers Market Desserts

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

On a recent Tuesday evening, a group of thinkers and food lovers gathered to hear a farmer and a fisherman talk about water. The occasion was the latest in the Kitchen Table Talks series, and it took place in the basement of Viracocha in the Mission district. Contrary to the how the media often portrays such things, the farmer and the fisherman were in agreement.

Like most conversations about water in California, the evening focused around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the West Coast’s largest ― and some say most important ― inland river delta and estuary.

The farmer in attendance was Brett Baker who, along with his father Chuck Baker, farms pears on a small island in the Delta called Sutter Island. He’s also a biologist and has worked as a water and agricultural policy analyst. Brett readily admits that farming on the Delta, at the scale his family does, sets him apart from many in the agriculture industry.

“It’s convenient to draw that line between farmers and fishermen,” he told the audience. “But there are several classes of agriculture in the state; there are small family farmers—my family lives on and farms around 30 acres—and on the opposite end of the spectrum you have farms, like the kind you see on I-5, that stretch for miles.” Many of these large, corporate farms, he pointed out “are set up as tax shelters for larger companies” and often see water as just another line item in the larger drive to make a profit ― rather than a precious life-giving resource.

The fisherman speaking that night, Mike Hudson, agreed. Hudson is the president of the Small Boat Commercial Salmon Fishermen’s Association and former executive director of SalmonAid. He also owns Hudson Fish Company, a company that sells fresh local fish at several East Bay farmers markets.

Like many area fishermen, Hudson believes that without leaving more water in the Delta, we're unlikely to see a healthy population of salmon return. “Just a few years ago, our fleet of fishermen went out and caught close to two million salmon, and close to a million fish went back up the river,” Mike recalled. But, as the amount of water exported from the Delta went up, the number of fish went down – dramatically. Now, he says, the number of salmon returning to the Sacramento River tributaries is down to only 50,000 fish.

“Through the 90s,” Mike said, “around 4.5 million acre-feet of water were exported every year.” [An acre-foot is acre of land covered by a foot of water.] In the early 2000s, that was ramped up to 6 million acre-feet a year.” That change, he says, is a direct cause of the lack of salmon and has put an ecosystem in danger.

Both speakers agree: it's important to keep a healthy amount of water flowing through the Delta. A recent study by the California State Water Resources Control Board echoes this sentiment. Currently around half of the snowmelt and rain that flows into the Delta watershed every year moves out into the Bay. In order for a healthy ecosystem to exist, 75% of the water should be making it out to the bay.

The two men are concerned about an 11 billion dollar water bond proposed in Proposition 18 that will be likely be voted on* this November. While the bond reads like a promising move forward in the efforts to manage water in the state, both men feel that what little conservation efforts it includes are largely outweighed by the advantages it offers to a few very large agriculture businesses.

At the center of the projects the bond would fund is a peripheral canal, or a man-made pipeline that would route water around the Delta from a more northerly section of the Sacramento River. Not only would such a canal be costly to the state, but it would allow more salt water from San Francisco Bay into the Delta. “It could have a devastating effect on all of the small farms that have existed in the Delta for generations,” said Baker.  

Another big concern both men shared was the fact that the water bond (which would cost Californians $800 million in annual debt payments for the next 30 years) sets aside $3 billion towards water storage projects – with a preference to dams. The bond would allow private corporations to be part owners of these dams and to re-sell the captured water to developers for a profit. An example the advocates point to is something called the Kern Water Bank. The water bank was initially funded publicly, and was built using public funds, but is now owned by Paramount Farms, a project of the billionaire business man Stewart Resnick and his wife Lynda (owners of POM, Fiji Water, Teleflora and millions of acres of almond and pistachio orchards).

In the end, both farmer and fisherman agreed that the issue of water in California is less about agriculture versus fishing than it is about big business versus public interest.

To learn more about the water bond, read Governor Schwarzenegger’s break down here or visit Food and Water Watch’s No on the Water Bond for the opposing view. Or read an op-ed from the United Farm Workers here.

*There’s a chance that a vote on the bill may be delayed until 2012.

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, July 24

Returning: The Apple Farm, Hunter Orchards, Little Organic Farm, Ridgecut Gristmills, Woodleaf Farm
Out: Hidden Star Orchards

Tuesday, July 27

no changes

Thursday, July 29

Out: County Line Harvest

Returning and plentiful this month (weather willing):
Cherry tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, raspberries, ollalieberries, okra, figs, plums, field grown tomatoes, melons, dahlias, new potatoes, peanuts, romano beans, tomatillos, crabapples, grapes, summer squash, pluots, radishes, basil, sunflowers, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, Rocambole garlic, onions, lettuces, French and green beans, heirloom roses, corn
 
Winding down/limited supply:
Blueberries, hot house tomatoes, apricots, cherries, dates (new crop expected in early September), rhubarb

Value-added and vendor items not to be missed:
Red Cloud apricots in rose geranium syrup from June Taylor, honeycomb from Snyders Honey, cheddar andouille sausage from 4505 Meats, Rosa de Castillo beans from Rancho Gordo

Farms/vendors that may be returning this month (weather willing):
Woodleaf Farm, Hunter Orchards, Payne Family Farm

Featured Recipes for July:
Baked Pesto Zucchini with Squash Blossoms from Anne Gingrass of Brix Restaurant. (June 12, 2010)

Fresh-Stretched Mozzarella With Marinated Summer Vegetables from Craig Stoll, Delfina

Tomato Peach Salad from Joyce Goldstein Author, Mediterranean Fresh (W.W. Norton, 2008) (August 2, 2008)

Carlon Family Blueberry Pie from John Carlon, Sierra Cascade Blueberry Farm (June 14, 2008)

Cocktail ~ Midsummer Dream from Erick Castro, Chicago Fire (May 14, 2008)