Ferry Building Culinary Fungus Festival ~ Tomorrow

The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, Ferry Building Marketplace, and Far West Fungi celebrate culinary mushrooms at the third annual Fungus Festival. Festivities begin on Saturday at 10 am with a range of free events, including a mushroom cultivation table, mushroom displays and more. Merchants inside the Marketplace will be offering special mushroom fare. CUESA will also host a talk by mushroom grower John Garrone from Far West Fungi and two mushroom-related cooking demonstrations. The event will benefit the Mycological Society of San Francisco.

Clark Wolf presents a wine extravaganza with the authors of The Wine Snob's Dictionary ~ November 10

Witness the vibrant intersection of the country’s top sommelier, David Lynch, wine director of Babbo in NYC, with David Kamp, renowned editor, food writer and humorist, as they explore a vastly changed and charged wine world. The event will be at Book Passage in the Ferry Building and a portion of the proceeds go to support CUESA. Learn more or buy tickets here >

Swanton Berry Farm benefit for Farms Not Arms ~ November 15

Enjoy special dinner at Swanton Berry Farm benefiting Farms not Arms and the Farmer Veteran Coalition. All funds raised will go to help recent Iraq and Afghanistan war vets become organic farmers. Tickets are $75 and seating is limited so reserve your spot today.

Food safety teach-in ~ November 20

The Wild Farm Alliance presents Plowing the Fields of Change: E. Coli, the War on Wildlife and the Future of Safe Food, an all day teach-in for media, decision makers, and stakeholders. Speakers will present the latest research on critical US food safety issues since the 2006 E.coli outbreak in spinach. They will also reveal how agribusiness practices conducted in the name of “food safety” may in fact be counterproductive to keeping our food safe. Guests include Robert S. Lawrence, MD, Director of the Center for a Livable Future/Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Andrew Kimbrell, Director of the Center for Food Safety; and Dave Runsten, Director of Community Alliance with Family Farmers. Learn more or register here >

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

Saturday, November 8 ~ Fungus Festival

10 am - 2 pm - Mushroom displays, tastings, and activities inside and outside the Ferry Building including a mushroom cultivation table in the south driveway and deep-fried mushrooms for sale.

10:30 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Allison Morgan of Spring Hill Jersey Cheese will prepare a recipe using mushrooms and Spring Hill cheese.

11:15 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Daniel Clayton of Nibblers Eatery will be preparing a mushroom recipe.

12:00 pm - Meet the farmer
John Garrone, Far West Fungi

Tuesday November 11 ~ Book Release Party

12:00 pm - 1:30 pm - Join the Les Dames d'Escoffier SF Chapter for appearances and/or recipe demos by Joyce Goldstein, Jerry Anne DiVecchio, Joyce Jue, Duskie Estes, Alice Medrich, and Linda Lau Anusasananan. Demo tastings and apple cider will be served. The Dames will also be available to autograph Cooking with Les Dames d'Escoffier: At Home with the Women Who Shape the Way We Eat and Drink.

Saturday, November 15 ~ Market to Table

10:30 am - Meet the seller
Thomas Odermatt of Roli Roti

11:00 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Carlo Middione of Vivande Porte Via and author of Panini and Pasta

11:45 am - Seasonal cooking demonstration
Mark Godron of Terzo

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

Here at CUESA, we’ve spent the last year making our market increasingly waste wise. First we gave away 10,000 re-usable bags and asked shoppers to pledge to use them. Then we developed and honed a recycling and composting system that diverts 90% of the waste generated at the market away from landfills (and developed a handbook to help other markets do the same). Now, we’re preparing for another vital change: the end of plastic bags at Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.*

Why ask our sellers to stop dispensing traditional plastic bags? In 2007 alone, the market dispensed 1.1 million bags. These nearly weightless, ubiquitous objects are made of polyethylene, a petroleum product. They're not included in curbside recycling in San Francisco and they don't biodegrade; when they do break down, they create toxic substances that leach into the soil and enter the food chain. And, despite a city-wide ban on plastic checkout bags in major chain grocery and drug stores, and a world-wide trend away from them (China, Ireland, Denmark, Australia, the UK have all banned them and many cities around the US – from Portland, to New York, Seattle are considering bans) it’s still remarkably easy to find a free plastic bag in San Francisco. We think this needs to change, so we’re starting with our own market.  

One Ferry Plaza seller, Green Gulch Farm, has already made the transition to compostable and recyclable alternatives. Last year, when Qayyum Johnson became market manager for Green Gulch, he learned that the farm was distributing 1500 bags to their customers every week. It wasn't the cost that bothered Johnson, per se, but he says he was amazed by “the one-timeyness of it all and the way that people would unthinkingly put one item in each bag, which meant that one sale involved a person meandering off with 3-10 bags!”

Green Gulch specializes in greens and other coastal vegetables that are generally too wet to transport in paper bags, so the farm chose to offer two options: re-usable organic cotton bags and disposable biobags sold at cost.

The farm distributed informational flyers for several weeks before making the switch, explaining the effort and asking for their customers’ support. The result? Many market shoppers were surprised, but the majority of Green Gulch’s many loyal shoppers began recognizing they were using a valuable resource. Now, they are much more likely to bring their own bags and to use what they do get from the stall more carefully. Now, the farm distributes around 500 bio bags and an average of 25-35 cotton bags on Saturdays.

Farmers’ markets all over the country are beginning to put plastic bags behind them. The city of Chicago is moving toward a ban in all of its 22 farmers’ markets within the next 2 years; the Orange County Farm Bureau has begun piloting a “green market” model that began with the Irvine market, where they made a switch to biodegradable plastic bags; and the 95-vendor Old Monterey Farmers’ Market asked all its vendors to switch to paper earlier this year.  

Rick Johnson of the Old Monterey Business Association says it wasn’t as difficult a transition as he expected it might be. “The first couple weeks we had a lot of concern from vendors about where they could find the bags, etc. But they got on board because they figured out that other markets would be following suit.” Explaining the potential hazards to wildlife posed by plastic in an area known for its ocean conservation efforts made it an easy sell, Johnson adds. “We’d tell people to look out at Monterey Bay, and we’d say, ‘Because of that blue, we’re going green.’ It sounds cheesy, but it really worked.”   

* In early 2009, vendors at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market will begin offering biobags (made from biodegradable plant-based starch) and paper bags, which cost more than the cheap but environmentally unsound plastic bags most sellers currently dispense. Shoppers should anticipate paying the additional cost, or bringing their own reusable or recycled bags.

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, November 8

In/returning: Elston Farm (hot house tomatoes)
Out: Juniper Ridge
Out for the Season: White Crane Springs Ranch

Tuesday, November 11

In: County Line Harvest (new seller)
Out: Happy Quail Farms

Returning, Plentiful and/or at their peak this month (weather willing): raw olives, chestnuts, rutabagas, dates, apples, turnips, winter squash, artichokes, pomegranates, carrots, Meyer lemons, grapefruit, oranges, radishes, Brussels sprouts, grapes, broccoli, rapini, persimmons, limes, lettuces, potatoes, cardoons, puntarella, radicchio, sweet potatoes, leeks, fennel, cabbage, kiwi, chicories, Christmas trees, salsify, mushrooms, walnuts, clementines

Winding down/limited supply: basil, berries, tomatoes, plums, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, dahlias, pastured eggs (production will be slowing down), pears and apples (many varieties of both these fruits will still be available from cold storage throughout the winter)

Farms/Vendors that may be returning this month (weather willing): Olsen Organic Farms, Double K Christmas Tree Farms

Vendor and value added farm products not to be missed: Smoked cider-brined pork chops from Fatted Calf; French plum, mustard seed and onion chutney from The Apple Farm; organic almond butter from Massa Organics

Featured recipes for November:

Potato Cress Soup from Sarah Henkin, CUESA’s Market Chef

Roasted Leg of Lamb With Garlic, Anchovies and Rosemary from Fabrice Marcon, Mistral Rotisserie

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, adapted from Recipes from Bon Appetit-Too Busy to Cook, Volume Two (Knapp, 1981)

Featured cocktail recipe:
Kentucky Pilgrim, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Square One Vodka