Grapevine May 10 2009 Market

this week
- What's Coming To The Market This Week?
- Cooking For The New Economy
- Cooking Ideas - Crepes

Happy Mother's Day!

What a great opening weekend. Nice weather (not the predicted rainstorms), good food and happy people. It was nice to see many of our summer vendors back for the season. More will return as we move towards summer.

We have a cooking demonstration scheduled for this Sunday. Jean Johnson, author of Cooking Beyond Measure and Measure Free Recipes blog, will show us ways to leave the measuring cups behind, take back the kitchen and eat well. Jean will be demonstrating how to make a variety of sweet and savory crepes. Jean has strong beliefs about cooking which she shares in the article "Cooking For The New Economy" below. We plan on having Jean visit us throughout the season to demonstrate how to cook seasonally and have fun in the kitchen.

It took longer than we hoped but our website has a new look. We are now able to archive all the Grapevine and the availability list on our site as well as do a lot of other things. Take a look and leave a comment.

See you on Sunday!

Eamon Molloy
Market Manager

What's Coming To The Market This Week?

With the return of DeNoble Farm, you will definitely find artichokes at the market this Sunday. You will also find asparagus, radishes, lettuce, kale, chard, spinach, lettuce, raab, broccoli, cauliflower and lots of other vegetables. As for fruits, you will find apples, pears, kiwi and strawberries. For all you gardeners, there will be a wide assortment of vegetable starts, perennials and trees.

Check the availability list for the complete list of who's coming this weekend and what they expect to be selling. The list is posted Thursday afternoon and updated through the weekend. For Sunday morning updates, check Twitter feed either on our website sidebar or on our Twitter page.

IN
Ancient Heritage Dairy
DeNoble Farm
Farris Seaman Plants
Garden Color

OUT
Copper Crown (back next week)
Kookoolan Farms ( back June 28)
Vanveen Bulb (back May 17)

Cooking For The New Economy-Eat Well & Tighten Your Belt

The economy is lurking outside our doors like the big bad wolf. We want fresh ideas on thrift, yet we hope to maintain an enjoyable quality of life. It can happen. We can eat exceedingly well and tighten our belts. All it takes is lightening up and having some fun in the kitchen.

We’ve identified the problem with the Standard American Diet (SAD). These days, most know that shopping the perimeter of the grocery is a healthier, more affordable way to fill the larder than schlepping into the inner aisles for things in crinkly packages. Many more are hip to the local, seasonal buzz that has centered the delicious revolution in one’s own eco-region, if not one’s own backyard. Yet, we keep consuming more ready to eat food than our health and wealth can stand. Why?
Culinary history suggests formal recipes have put too fine a point on cooking. At the end of a long day, few of us are in the mood for doing the equivalent of a small chemistry experiment when all we want is dinner.
Besides, following rote directions from elite authorities in your own kitchen isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Here they got to have all the fun of creating the recipes, and we’re pretty much relegated to being technicians. Putting on your reading glasses to make dinner? What’s wrong with this picture?

Americans only got measuring cups in the early 1900s, and everyday cooks around the world today still go with the flow. Back in the 1950s when renowned British foodie, Elizabeth David studied Mediterranean food, the Italians welcomed her into their kitchens, but they took little interest in quantities or measurements. According to David’s official biographer, Artemis Cooper, “David marked a jug out in both imperial and metric measurements, and on occasions ‘I stood over the cooks and simply forced them to show me what they meant by a handful.’”

The late food and wine critic who loved France so much he moved there, Richard Olney, did the same thing, but with clear reservations. In his introduction to Lulu’s Provencal Table, published in 1994, Olney writes that imprisoning the art of cooking in chilly formulas is like robbing a bird of flight.

The point is, of course, that we’d probably cook more delicious, healthy, affordable food if we left our measuring cups behind. For example, here’s an approach to Roasted Parsnips and Carrots:

French fry lovers will almost always give a plate of roasted parsnips and carrots fresh from the over a big nod of approval.
Slice parsnips and carrots on the diagonal. Shine them up with some good oil. Rub with paprika, coarse salt, and cracked pepper. Roast on a tray in a medium oven, turning the roots after fifteen minutes so each side gets golden brown.

Parsnip peelings are tougher than carrot, and depending on how thick you slice your pieces can be too much chew for some. Experimenting, doing one root with the peel and another without is one way to find out what you think. (Remembering that many nutrients lie just below the skin might make you more predisposed to give the peelings a serious chance.) That’s it. Enjoy.

In other words, simple everyday cooking just isn’t that difficult and the food you’ll turn out will be right up there with Garrison Keillor’s Powdermilk Biscuits-the ones “that give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.” That’s what cooks in the world’s great ethnic traditions who cook creatively know. That’s what our ancestors knew. And that’s what we can rediscover ourselves.

Jean Johnson is the author of Cooking Beyond Measure: How to Eat Well without Formal Recipes. She has a doctorate in cultural history and lives in Portland, Oregon where she reads, writes, cooks, gardens, and bikes. Jean will be conducting a demonstration this Sunday at 11am. She will also have copies of her book available for purchase.

Cooking Ideas - Crepes

As mentioned earlier, Jean will be conducting a cooking demonstration this Sunday at 11 am. Jean kindly shared her recipe for crepes from her book Cooking Beyond Measure. Jean will show us ways to use crepes this Sunday. Enjoy!

Rolled Up Pancakes

They're called crepes today, but when I was growing up we just called them rolled ups. Mom made them on weekends because although they are easy, they do take time. If you give these a try and get some confidence going, know that they're great for corralling cooked vegetables as well.

Recipe Note

Beat in one egg for every cup of milk you use. Sprinkle in a little whole wheat pastry flour at a time and whisk. The goal is a silky batter comparable to a thin gravy. Add a pinch of salt and some vanilla, and let it set ten minutes or so.

Bring your pan up to medium heat and oil with a dab of butter. Then get ready to be quick on the draw. Ladle on some batter, very quickly lift the griddle, and swirl the batter around to coat the surface. Cook until the edges start to lift. Flip the thin pancake so the other side gets golden brown as well.

Details

Mom, and Aunt Kirsten Wilson who was also known for her rolled ups, used white flour for theirs. But once I got swept up in the late-1960s and its Appetite for Change-a phrase coined by Warren Belasco as the title for his book on "how the counterculture took on the food industry"-I've favored whole wheat pastry flour. Buckwheat flour also works as the world of blini makers well know. Actually, finely ground flours from the range of whole grains will work in rolled ups: cornmeal masa, quinoa, brown rice, millet, you name it.

The secret to rolled ups is being quick once the batter hits the griddle. It takes some practice, so expect rolled ups that look more like maps than perfect discs at first. Even these, though, will work since the edges are hidden once you roll them.

It's often the case that you have to go back and add more milk or flour to get a batter that flows just right. With patience, though, you'll find that making this special breakfast is not hard-only so time consuming that if you're cooking for a crowd you'll inevitably want to get two griddles going.


When I was young we ate rolled ups with butter and sugar, but these days a filling of warmed poached fruit and cottage cream sends me over the top. Sometimes I'll even go for pear wedges and beanpaste. Then again, there's the Scandinavian way that Aunt Kirsten favored: butter and raspberry jam-or the more traditional lingonberry.

On Learning Curves-

If rolled-ups sound daunting to you, all you have to remember is to make them the next time grandpa's around. Then just whisper to him that no matter how they turn out, he's supposed to ooh and ahh. That's what they do in Hopiland. Cooks learning to make piki bread, something much more difficult than rolled-ups, always present their first efforts to grandpa. That's the patriarch's cue to tell the fledging cook how delicious her creation is and eat the offering with great delight, even if it's thick and the ladies are teasing her about how it looks a map.

On the Griddle-

There's nothing like a cast iron griddle. Not only does it carry heat that cooks evenly and browns beautifully, all there is to cleaning is a quick wipe with a cloth. Between my griddle and cast iron wok, each of which have staked out rather permanent claims on the stove top, there is little washing of pots and pans going on in my kitchen.