Almonds and Olives Farm Tour ~ September 11

Take a tour with CUESA to learn about two distinctly Californian tree crops: almonds and olives. Our first stop will be G.L. Alfieri Farms in Ripon, where Gary Alfieri will show us around his almond orchard and diverse table grape vineyard, and take us to the shelling plant that processes his almonds. Our next stop will be Sciabica and Sons in Modesto, where we'll meet with two generations dedicated to bringing extra virgin olive oil to market and visit the orchard where the olives are ripening on the trees. The bus tour goes from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm and costs $25, including lunch. Sign up here (tickets are going fast!) >

Panel: The Fruits of Their Labor ~ September 10

Truly sustainable food is not only healthy, humane, and environmentally sound, it's socially just. In honor of Labor Day, CUESA is sponsoring a panel to highlight the workers who feed us. Four labor experts will tell success stories of advancing working conditions in the fields and discuss how concerned eaters can stand up for fair food. Panelists include: Sandy Brown, co-owner of Swanton Berry Farm; Alida Cantor of California Institute for Rural Studies; Alegria De La Cruz, staff attorney for Center for Race, Poverty and the Environment; and Maisie Greenawalt of Bon Appétit Management Company. The panel is free, open to the public, and will be followed by a short reception with farmers’ market snacks. Learn More >

Two sales in the market ~ tomorrow

Visit the market tomorrow for two special sales!

• Bella Viva Orchards will be selling flats of their peaches for $10 — or half off the normal $20 price.
• Mountain Ranch Organically Grown will be offering their chickens at a $1 off per pound (limited to one per customer). The Gunsells generally sell their chickens frozen, but they'll also have a new batch of fresh (non-frozen) birds tomorrow.

Next Kitchen Table Talks installment on school lunches ~ August 25

The Child Nutrition Act, which governs the National School Lunch program, is up for reauthorization this year, and there's still time to have our voices heard to ensure our children have access to healthy, quality food. Speakers Colleen Kavanaugh of Campaign for Better Nutrition and Lena Brook, a grassroots parent advocate, will discuss what can be done to get real food in our public schools. Get more details here >

San Francisco Street Food Festival ~ August 21

La Cocina and 7×7 are bringing the foods of San Francisco’s streets to Folsom Street for one day only. The day-long block party will bring together micro-entrepreneurs, informal food vendors and renowned chefs to celebrate great street food, entrepreneurial spirit and the vibrant communities of San Francisco. It’s free to attend, but if you want to avoid the lines, think about buying a passport. The event is a benefit for La Cocina's small business incubator program. Learn more >

 

Q & A with the director of "Pressure Cooker" ~ August 21 and 22

Pressure Cooker, the inspiring documentary about the culinary education of Philadelphia high school students, will be playing in Berkeley and San Francisco the last week of August. The films director will be in town to answer questions both Friday, August 21, (S.F.) and Saturday, August 22 (Berkeley). Learn more about the film here >

Mas Masumoto at Book Passage ~ August 29

Hailed by the N.Y. Times as a "poet of farming," Slow Food activist Masumoto weaves together stories of family and farming, life and death to reveal age-old wisdom that is fast disappearing and urgently needed. Hear Masumoto read from his newest book, Wisdom of the Last Farmer: Harvesting Legacies from the Land, at 1:00 PM on Saturday, August 29 at Book Passage in the Ferry Building.

Saturday, August 15 ~ Fig Festival

10:00 am - Fig-Focused Cooking Demonstration
Linda Carucci, The International Cooking School at the Art Institute of San Francisco and author of Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks

11:00 am Fig-Focused Cooking Demonstration
Marie Simmons, author of Fig Heaven

10am - 1 pm - Fig Education Booth
Learn about the history of fig cultivation and the many nutritional benefits to eating this delicious fruit. Then pick up a fig bar made by hand with Ferry Plaza Farmers Market ingredients ($1 donation). 

10 am - 1 pm - Fig Gardening Demonstration
Urban gardeners will have the chance to meet garden designer Maria Finn, who will discuss how to grow and care for fig trees in the many Bay Area micro-climates (read more in Finn's newsletter). Maria will bring fig trees for display. 

Tuesday, August 18 ~ Food Wise Booth

12:00 - 1:00 pm - CUESA's market chef Sarah Henkin will be joined by Corinne Trang, Author of Noodles Every Day highlighting Hodo Soy Beanery Tofu

Saturday, August 22 ~ Market to Table

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Chris Cosentino, Incanto

11:45 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Scott Youkilis, Maverick

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

 

While many of today’s food producers work to build up the walls between their production process and the public, Hodo Soy Beanery’s Minh Tsai is tearing them down. Literally. Hodo’s new Oakland facility, set to open this fall, was built to include a viewing room where curious visitors will watch the Hodo team in action — cutting large slabs of bean curd, pressing soy noodles, and hanging delicate yuba skins up to dry.

“For a lot of people, that white block is a mystery,” says Tsai, who believes that good tofu should be recognized for its own culinary merits, not just as a bland agent for other flavors. “We want to educate and inform people — to show them that tofu can have other qualities,” he adds.

Hodo worked with one of the oldest remaining tofu equipment producers in Asia to build custom equipment for the new facility, which will be significantly larger than the current one, and located in a building that started as a candy factory. “Everything [in the new building] has been set up for making fresh tofu and shipping it within hours, so the layout and work flow required a lot of planning and adjustments,” explains Hodo co-founder Dean Ku.

This equipment will allow Hodo to increase its volume over time (they’ll be able to produce the quantity they make in six days at the current facility in just one to two days), but much of Hodo’s process — cutting the tofu, making the yuba, etc. — will still be done by hand. More volume will also allow Hodo to explore the option of designing a product around okara (a highly nutritious, fibrous by-product of tofu-making), rather than offering it to a local farm as animal feed as they do now.

Hodo has always used organic soybeans from the midwest, but upping the scale will give the company more buying power, says Ku. “With our increased volume, we will be able to contract for crops of soybeans that we select ourselves. For example, we were able to secure our current batch of beans from an organic co-op.”

Despite being a plant-based food, most tofu has a fairly large carbon footprint (higher than that of chicken, according to www.eatlowcarbon.org). The majority of that footprint, Minh believes, is caused by the enormous amount of refrigeration and transportation required by most brands.  

“Most grocery store tofu has a 30-60 day shelf-life,” he says.  “It may have been made in one place, shipped to a storage facility hundreds of miles away in a refrigerated truck, and stored for days before it was shipped to your local store.”

Hodo has also incorporated an energy-saving approach to the building. They've added a number of skylights to the new facility, for instance, to reduce the need for electric light, and devised a way to heat the space using heat from the production equipment. The new facility will also allow Hodo to focus on bulk packaging options for some of its larger customers. And, when it comes to additional ingredients (beyond soy), Tsai still plans to source them locally.

“Even at this scale, using ingredients from local farmers' markets is still totally tangible,” he says.

Hodo hopes to set an example for other small, sustainability- focused food producers looking to scale up without losing their core values. When Tsai attended an organic soy conference earlier this year (funded by a vendor scholarship from CUESA), it brought home the fact that most tofu is either made by huge companies like Wildwood or by “mom and pop enterprises that are more focused on staying in business than on making tofu a more sustainable food.” That’s why scaling up is important to Minh — he believes there's room in the middle space, especially for companies willing to push the envelope. “The industry needs to be shaken up,” he says.

 

Come to the Ferry Plaza this Tuesday for a cooking demonstration highlighting Hodo tofu by Corinne Trang, author of Noodles Every Day.

And keep your eyes on the Hodo website for information upcoming tastings and tours of the new facility.

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, August 15

Out: Apple Farm

Tuesday, August 18

In: La Tercera

Thursday, August 20

no changes

Returning and plentiful this month (weather willing):
Grapes, tomatillos, cucumbers, apples, summer squash, Valencia oranges, nectarines, peaches, pluots, radishes, basil, sunflowers, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, Asian pears, grapes, zinnias, duck, pullet eggs, cucumbers, eggplant, mint, nopales, peppers, pears, squash blossoms, smoked fish, wheat, baby corn, onions, lettuces, okra, figs, grass-fed beef, plums, tomatoes, melons, dahlias, new potatoes, peanuts, wax beans, shelling beans and Romano beans

Winding down/limited supply:
Mulberries, fresh lavender, peas, fresh garbanzo beans

Value Added and Vendor items not to be missed:
Chicken stock from Mountain Ranch Organically Grown, fresh salsa from Happy Girl Kitchen, tayberry conserve from June Taylor, sauerkraut from Farmhouse Culture

Featured Recipes for August:

Shaved Cucumber, Radish & Bottarga Salad with Zinfandel Vinaigrette from Chris Consentino, Incanto

Fire Roasted Eggplant Soup from Sondra Bernstein, the girl and the fig

Stewed Okra, Corn & Tomatoes from Sharon L. Anderson, Purple Plum Restaurant

Summer Fruit Crostata from CUESA's Market Chef, Sarah Henkin

Cocktail ~ Midsummer Dream from Erick Castro