Supper entrées unveiled ~ October 5

CUESA's annual Sunday Supper is only three weeks away! Buy a ticket today and you'll be served one of the following tantalizing entrées:

• Boulevard - Pamela Mazzola, Nancy Oakes, Ravi Kapur
  Quail stuffed with braised greens, farro & pancetta
  
  
• Delfina &Pizzeria Delfina - Craig Stoll & Anthony Strong
  Turkey in porchetta with polenta and braised greens
  
  
• Fatted Calf - Taylor Boetticher & Toponia Miller
  Cider-braised pork belly with boudin noir
  
  
• Incanto - Chris Cosentino
  Braised veal breast, polenta verde & roasted baby turnips
  
  
• MarketBar - Rick Hackett
  Swordfish (sustainably sourced) with tomato fennel salsa
  
  
• One Market - Mark Dommen
  Olive oil poached local halibut, butter beans, smoked bacon vinaigrette
  
  
• Perbacco - Staffan Terje
  Slow-roasted pork shoulder with tomato & pepper stew & polenta
  
  
• Quince - Michael Tusk
  Duo of tortelli di zucca & caramelle of celery root with balsamico & amaretti
  
  
• Restaurant Two - Bridget Batson & David Gingrass
  Seafood & marvel stripe tomato risotto with basil oil
  
  
• Nate Keller
  Vegetarian option: Heirloom pumpkin pozole
  

Sponsor a table at CUESA’s Sunday Supper

Dine in style and support sustainable food systems with nine of your favorite people. Table sponsors at CUESA’s most important, most delicious annual fundraising event receive ten tickets, recognition in the program and on our website, premium wines on their table, and they get to choose one of nine different menus available that evening.
View all sponsorship options here >

Get to know your rice

It’s the world’s most widely consumed grain, yet most Americans have never seen a rice plant up close. Join us on Sunday, September 28 for CUESA’s Three Wise Farmers tour to find out more about this important California crop and how Massa Organics grows it ecologically. Then its off to Woodleaf Farm where a farmer famous for his peaches has kept his business alive by growing vegetables after his crop was destroyed by a late freeze. Come learn from wise farmers who not only bring sustainably produced food to your table, but help other growers transition to organic practices. Get more information or buy tickets here >

Last cooking class of the summer ~ Wednesday, September 17

The final cooking class in the CUESA/Parties that Cook series is set for next Wednesay. Join us from 6:00 - 8:00 pm in our Dacor kitchen as we make and then eat the following: Sweet Potato Galettes with Sage Crème Fraîche; Shiitake-Scallion Eggrolls with Sake Dipping Sauce; Grilled Shrimp with Red Bell Pepper and Cocoa Nib Romesco; Chicken Kebabs with Harissa Yogurt; and Mexican Chocolate Brownies. The class is $45 and tickets can be purchased here >

Expanded parking hours

The Golden Gateway Garage will be opening at 7:00 AM (as opposed to the current time of 8:00 am) on Saturdays starting September 27 for market workers and shoppers. The validation rate is $3 for the day, as long as you leave by 10 pm.

Bill to stop "Monsanto lawsuits"

AB 541 is a bill that would protect California farmers whose crops are contaminated by Monsanto and other big biotech companies from being sued by those same companies. It passed through the state legislature unopposed and, if signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, will be the first bill to regulate genetically engineered (GE) crops in the state. Learn more from Californians For GE-Free Agriculture or take action here >

Waste Wise volunteers are needed every Tuesday and Saturday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. E-mail ashleigh@cuesa.org for details.

Saturday, September 13 ~ Three Sisters Celebration

Note: Three Sisters planting was a Native American tradition utilizing corn, beans and squash.

10:30 am - Book talk and cooking demonstration
Patricia Klindienst, the author of The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America will demonstrate a traditional Johnnycake recipe and talk about Native American agriculture.

11:15 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration featuring squash
Chris Jones, the girl and the fig

12:00 pm - Meet the producer and bean cooking demonstration
Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo and author of Heirloom Beans: Great Recipes for Dips and Spreads, Soups and Stews, Salads and Salsas, and Much More from Rancho Gordo

10 am - 1 pm - Education booth: Where does your food dollar go?
Location: South Driveway

Tuesday, September 16 ~ Market to Table

12:00, 12:30, 1:00 pm - Three 20-minute cooking demonstrations
Leslie & Andrew Swallow, Mixt Greens

Saturday, September 20 ~ Market to Table

10:30 am - Meet the producer

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Cecilia Chiang, author of the Seventh Daughter, co-founder of the Mandarin

10 am - 1 pm - Education booth: Where does your food dollar go?
Location: South Driveway

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

“In refusing to assimilate fully to mainstream American values, ethnic gardeners keep alive, and offer back to us, viable alternatives to the habits of mind that have brought us to our current ecological crisis,” writes Patricia Klindienst, author of The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. As part of tomorrow’s Three Sisters Celebration, Klindienst will be reading from and signing the book, as well as demonstrating a traditional recipe for Native American Johnnycakes. She spoke with CUESA recently about the tradition of planting squash, beans and corn, as “companion” crops in a single bed.

Q: What is the relevance of the Three Sisters Garden today?

A: The garden was originally part of the eastern woodland tribe tradition of the Algonquin Indians. It represents the oldest gardening tradition in America and the most sacred. It’s also a very sophisticated and elegant form of companion planting. Corn, which is planted first, is a heavy feeder and takes a lot of nitrogen out of the soil. The beans that grow up the corn stalks are legumes that actually fix nitrogen in the soil. The squash plants have huge leaves and vines that grow around the base and hold moisture in the soil; they also shade the soil so it doesn’t get too hot in the summer.

By planting the three together you have this wonderful interaction between the needs of the plants. It’s also incredibly resource-efficient because what’s left of these plants can go back into the soil, i.e. the corn stalk and the remnant of the bean and squash plants, as a kind of green mulch.

It’s also worth noting that traditionally it was women who gardened, and women who were in charge of growing, processing and harvesting the corn.

Q: Are there other aspects of the history our audience might want to know?

A: When John Winthrop, Jr. (one of the early leaders of the colony of Connecticut) traveled back to England in 1660 he gave a paper to the Royal Society and provided an amazing description of the Three Sisters Gardens he had seen in North America. In it he noted that, “Indians can load the land with as much as it can bear and it will still produce.”

Ironically it had been his father, John Winthrop, Sr., who just 30 years earlier had been involved in stealing the Indians' land. He had argued that the reason the colonists had the right to take the land was because they didn’t enclose it or garden it properly.

Q: There’s an unfortunate impression that without chemical fertilizers, etc. it’s difficult to create the yields necessary to feed everyone. It sounds like the products of these native practices proved otherwise.

A: People who want to defend industrial agriculture have a stake in claiming that we cannot feed everyone without chemicals, but that’s simply not true…One thing that everyone I interviewed for the book said was, “None of us ever had fancy words like sustainable or organic for what we did; we always just did it. It was passed down orally, it was a part of people’s culture and their tradition.”

Q: Can you say something about the Johnnycakes you’ll be making at the Market on Saturday?

A: The Johnnycakes I’m planning to make are traditionally made from white flint corn. It’s a beautiful corn that came east about a thousand years ago with the people who migrated up from what is now Mexico. They were originally called “journey cakes” by the British colonists who observed how the native men, the warriors, would carry these pouches of dried white corn flour and they would mix it with water and beans or fruit and cook it in the fire. They were so nutritious, they could travel a hundred miles eating [only] them.

See the event schedule above to read about additional Three Sisters Celebration events.

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, September 13

In/returning: G&S Corn, Core Elations Wraps
Out: Bernard Ranches
Last week for the season: Capay Canyon Ranch

Tuesday, September 16

no changes

Returning and plentiful this month (weather willing): Asian pears, dates, apples, summer squash and early winter squash varieties, French prunes, artichokes, pomegranates, carrots in many colors, frisee, brown rice, Valencia oranges, radishes, basil, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, Brussels sprouts, grapes, romanesco, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, wheat, persimmons, corn, onions, lettuces, okra, grass-fed beef, tomatoes, melons, ornamental millet, potatoes, beans (wax, shelling and Romano), jujubes, jicama, radicchio, sweet potatoes, plums

Winding down/limited supply: Pawpaws, prickly pears, peas, nectarines, peaches, pluots, fresh garbanzo beans, figs

Farms that may be returning in this month (weather willing): Flying Disc Ranch, Woodleaf Farms (please note that due to extreme weather last spring, they don't have stone fruit to sell this year but will bring us some of their wonderful vegetables).

Seasonal vendor items not to be missed: Tofu jerky from Hodo Soy, Sikil P’ak from Primavera, Bread and Butter pickles from Happy Girl Kitchen, Bella Donovan coffee beans from Blue Bottle Coffee

Featured Recipes for September:

Sharlyn Melon with Boccalone Lardo and Torn Basils
from Chris Consentino of Incanto and Boccalone

Miriam’s Butternut Squash and Pear Soup
from What San Francisco Families Eat!: Favorite Family Recipes from Presidio Hill School in San Francisco

Ear-Shaped Pasta with Broccoli Rabe & Sausage
from Janet Fletcher, San Francisco Chronicle

Sweet Couscous with Fresh Pomegranates
from cookbook author Paula Wolfert