I Heart Farms

Dirty Early Girls & Oso Velloso Farm

At the end of summer every year, many people are melancholy at having to bid adieu to the perfect tomatoes we adore. I am among them.

I was delighted to see buddy Max Withers give a shout out in the Los Angeles Times to the glorious dry-farmed Early Girl tomatoes from Joe Schirmer at Dirty Girl Produce. Max took twenty pounds of the tomatoes, and made his own tomato paste. As he writes: “California farmers have outdone themselves this year: Tomatoes have been more succulent and plentiful than ever. So I armed myself with 20 pounds of my favorite, dry-farmed Early Girls from Dirty Girl Produce, an organic farm in Santa Cruz, and started working on how to preserve their intense, sweet essence through the dark winter ahead.” (Thanks for the scoop, Max, and congratulations on getting into the LA Times!)

Along those lines, another treatment for Early Girls is my recipe for slow-roasted tomatoes, which I call "Godiva Tomatoes." They aren't designed to last into the winter...ours barely last a day around the house.

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Very Important from the Vanilla Queen

Once again, we hear from Patricia Rain, known all over the world as the Vanilla Queen, whom I see about once a month at our farmers markets. In her unending desire to keep real vanilla growing in the world, she has a new project. She is seeking donations of laptop computers to send to a small group of vanilla farmers in Africa (Somalia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda), to help them stay connected to the Google group she founded: the Tropical Farmers Network.

If you have a working laptop that you could donate, you can e-mail Patricia at rain@vanilla.com. She can't give you a receipt for a tax deduction, but maybe you'd be content with feeling good about helping someone you'll never meet continue to do good work. UPDATE, noon today: Patricia told me that she found a local non-profit to provide receipts for anyone who donates.

Also, if you have a mind, send good thoughts Patricia's way: she is enduring chemotherapy for advanced breast cancer. I'm amazed at her constant smile and the unfaltering radiance she always displays, but that's Patricia.

Feel free to link to this post on your own blog to spread the word, please. Surely there are five laptops out there that want to experience life in a tiny village in Africa? (And wouldn't it be nice if they were Macs, so the poor farmers don't have to worry about getting a virus?)

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That's all for now. What am I doing up at this ungodly hour? Wait, all the farmers I know have been up for an hour at least.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.” — Henri Frederic Amiel

Thanks for visiting.

Here and There

Too busy to write much, but here are some things I recommend that you read, if you're a mind.

FED UP WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S BULLSH-T ABOUT SPINACH?

I am. Read what Alton Brown has to say about it.

“And to make matters worse, our ever-wise government has told us to eat no fresh spinach at all. They could have advised us to eat only locally grown spinach but Noooooooo.  Let’s shoot every poor farmer in America that’s doing his or her job in the foot.  And why?  Because we can’t sort out what went there when and how and what it might have touched or been near.  Here’s the news kids: when the system gets this big and out of whack, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men (and the USDA and the CDC, and the FDA) cannot keep us safe.”

Nina Planck, in The New York Times, has a startling revelation:

Where does this particularly virulent strain [of E.Coli] come from? It’s not found in the intestinal tracts of cattle raised on their natural diet of grass, hay and other fibrous forage. No, O157 thrives in a new — that is, recent in the history of animal diets — biological niche: the unnaturally acidic stomachs of beef and dairy cattle fed on grain, the typical ration on most industrial farms. It’s the infected manure from these grain-fed cattle that contaminates the groundwater and spreads the bacteria to produce, like spinach, growing on neighboring farms.

She says to give the spinach growers a break, and to look to the cattle industry to stop feeding corn to animals who are not meant to eat it.

Last but never least, Sam has a good head of steam going over at Becks & Posh, directly related to both of these issues (the spinach and the grass-fed vs. corn-fed beef). She caught CNN in a massive blunder. While you're there, read about how she nearly drenched her Kimbies at the farmers market. Sam makes me laugh.

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As Pop-Eye Would Say...

"Yukyukyukyukyuk!" (No, that's not "yuck.")

Farmer Stephen Pedersen, of Two Small Farms CSA (a partnership between Andrew Griffin's Mariquita Farm and High Ground Organics) made the news today in a great article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Read "Spinach sales going strong at one roadside stand in Watsonville":

Elissa Preston, a registered nurse at the Watsonville Community Hospital who recently moved to Santa Cruz from Sacramento, said she's sort of a "rebel" when it comes to the federal government warning her on what she should and should not do.

"If the government tells me to be scared, I'm going to try my best not to get scared," she said. "But that doesn't mean I won't use caution. The bottom line is many of us ingest E. coli on a regular basis. We just don't realize it. It's passed around constantly. As for this strain in this particular case, it seems to be affecting those who are either young, old or somebody who is immuno-compromised, so I'm not going to worry about it too much."

Heh. That, folks, is the essence of a typical Santa Cruz citizen: someone who can think for herself, someone who doesn't cry "the sky is falling," someone who doesn't buy into whatever the idiot/evil government is peddling as "truth" that week.

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That's all for now: I'm still slammed with work.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.” — Martin Luther

Thanks for visiting.

Harvest Dinner at Theo's in Soquel

Last night, Bob and I had the pleasure of returning to Theo's Restaurant in Soquel, for their second annual harvest dinner: Everett Family Farmers Appreciation Dinner for Jasmine Roohani and Michael Irving. The chef, Nicci Tripp, has appeared in these pages before: he's very talented, inventive, funny, and a real sweetheart. I recently took Justin Severino there to see if Nicci was interested in buying his sausages or salami...the answer was HELL, YES. Nicci makes his own cheeses, and cannot make sausages as they would contaminate the cheese in the coolers.

I've uploaded pictures of all five courses into the Glorious Farm Food album: unfortunately Typepad is misfiring on so many cylinders that the photos do not click through with the appropriate sequences. Grrr.

Pictured here is a fabulous group: Corn on the Horizon: Sweet corn & truffle “cappuccino”, corn & shrimp fritter with Worchestershire butter, and a roasted corn cake with smoked trout and horseradish.

Simply fantastic.

The whole meal was only $40/person exclusive of wine and tip. The wine is the only complaint I have about the service. Our server didn't inform us of any of the prices by the glass...and it turns out that five-ounce pours of all the wines by the glass were $9/each. Well, the entire bottle of the zinfandel we liked was only $31. The pours were so skimpy that you would get six or seven glasses from a bottle instead of 4, and thus the wines by the glass cost $54 a bottle. Then our server asked Cynthia if she would like port, and named a couple. Cynthia chose one, not having been informed that it was $33 a glass! Can you say "sticker shock"?

Normally Theo's is an incredible bargain. Their wines are marked up only 50% or so over retail, and the wine list is impressive. But I think it is a failing on the part of our server not to have made prices clear, so informed choices could be made.

But it was great to see so many farmers I knew, and to see the place absolutely packed to the gills. Service was family style, with ten to a table. Cynthia and Manuel arrived with Linda Butler, whom I got to introduce to Betty Van Dyke.

If you come to Santa Cruz, Theo's is one of the very best places to eat. Nicci could be anywhere in the big time, but he's a laidback guy who likes to have fun. His ambitions are not to succeed in a big city, but to be happy in the town he loves. He's all about the farms, too.

That's all for today, except for my recommendation, no, insistence that you go look at Death and Taxes. Tell me, do, what kind of case for themselves can Republicans make about being "fiscally conservative"? That graph represents the very antithesis, the Antichrist, of sustainability. Look at the percentages in red: these items have been cut. Public Broadcasting, Famine and Disaster Relief, Development Assistance, Officer Pay, Conservation...the percentage of the 953 BILLION DOLLAR budget that is military? 64%. The Department of Agriculture in general, down 7%, but farm subsidies are up 5%. Higher Education and Pell Grants: down 30%. Energy is skewed: nuclear is up, and sustainable is down. It's nauseating me to continue, so I'm going to the gym.

Yesterday I, who had not exercised hardly at all in over two years, put ten miles on the bike in twenty minutes. I am just so happy with the changes in my life.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." — Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.

(Sorry, my beloved farmer friend who happens to be a Republican. This isn't directed at you, especially since you are pro choice, pro gay rights, pro environment, and pro women's rights.)

Thanks for visiting.

More on E. Coli: Bullsh-t Alert

Back in June, I wrote about the contamination of produce that is organic, and the likelihood of it affecting people. I had seen a pretty irresponsible article in the Sacramento Bee, and it motivated me to make some phone calls. Here is what I wrote then.

By the way, if you need a username and log-in for the Bee, use BugMeNot.com: just put the link location in, and see if you get a combo that works.

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As he had done in January on the Eco-Farm tour, Jeff Larkey talked about the quest for, and the importance of, compost. He's willing to pay a lot for high-quality compost. I asked about an article I'd read in the Sacramento Bee, written somewhat irresponsibly, I think, by a writer named Gwen Schoen. Why irresponsible?  Read this:

"I do not use organic produce," says the Natomas resident [Pat Henegar]. "I haven't quite convinced myself that there are enough safety measures in place to make organic safe."

Henegar's concerns?

"Well, they use raw materials for growth fertilizers and pest control, and I am not comfortable with the processes used for cleaning and sanitizing. Particularly for things you eat raw, like strawberries. Just giving them a quick rinse isn't enough.

"I'm just fine with the regular produce I find."

What Would Pop-Eye Do?

You know who knows about spinach and the ways it can get contaminated? Not the FDA, I'll tell you that. My farmer friend, Andrew Griffith, of Mariquita Farm and Two Small Farms, that's who knows about spinach.

He says, “By fingering any spinach as suspicious, even bunched fresh spinach, the F.D.A. isn’t educating anyone, or solving the problem. They’re just spreading fear on a national scale.”

You can (and should) read the rest of the article here.

As for me, I made a major dent in my workload this week, completing the website for 4th St. Bistro in Reno. Check out their professional affiliations on the About Us page. I love this restaurant! And though I completed the other major job that was looming overhead, two more projects landed on my desk.

The happy news recently: my daughter turned 18, and is moved into her apartment at the University of California, where she is enjoying the perks of fabulous cafeterias serving organic food.

I'll be back soon, but for now, back to the grindstone.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.” —Henry Ford

Thanks for visiting.

Michael Ruhlman Weighs In: 5 Things to Eat Before You Die

Pictured here: Logan picking strawberries at Crystal Bay Farm. I posted it already in his photo album, but I just love it.

I heard back from Michael Ruhlman, who wrote his list of Five Things You Should Eat Before You Die, which is circulating the food bloggers' world now. Not surprisingly, pork and foie gras figure prominently in Mr. Ruhlman's happiest food fantasies:

1. Oysters and Pearls at The French Laundry: a truly unusual dish mixing the luxurious adult pleasures of caviar and cream with the juvenile comfort of tapioca, mediated by the Dr. Seuss element of the oyster. I never tire of this exquisite dish.

2. One whole roasted foie, eaten with friends.

3. The tomato out of my mom and dad's garden behind the garage in Cleveland, circa 1970, the first one I'd ever picked and eaten right there: it was hot from the sun, the best tomato ever, a revelation, biting into something familiar and finding something completely new.

4. Deep-fried pork belly confit, with a baguette and a big zin, as can be had at Le Pichet in Seattle or in your own home if you go to a small amount of effort, eaten in greedy solitude.

5. Home-cured bacon from an Amish hog in central Ohio, eaten with my wife Donna.

How do you know if a hog is Amish? Do non-Amish hogs have motorcycles?

Thanks, Mr. Ruhlman: I look forward to the French Laundry someday myself.

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New Tomato Album

I have added a new photo album, strictly for tomatoes. I attended the Carmel Tomato Festival yesterday, courtesy of a press pass (and the kindness of Gary Ibsen and his lovely wife, Dagma Lacey). It was wonderful, of course: 60 chefs to fill your plate, and 100 wineries to fill your glass...with so much besides. Good music, sunshine, great people, and some amazing food and wines. (There is also beer, and I saw mixed cocktails floating around.)

People asked me, "How are you?" Hey, if someone can't say, "I'm at the Tomato Festival and I'm fantastic," they should just go home. As should the women who had screaming infants in strollers in the hot sun, ignoring them while they refilled their wineglasses for the eighteenth time. (I grumbled about this when I attended two years ago: it's shocking to me how self-centered some parents are.)

I spent a considerable time last week photographing tomatoes for Cynthia, and this morning sold two of them (one pictured above) to Renée Shepherd, of Renee's Garden seed fame. (And I do mean fame: so many people I know grow her seeds!) This will be part of a new seed collection, I think, called Summer Feast. The tomatoes pictured are (top, clockwise): Persimmon, Black Krim, and Costeluto Florentine. I had all three, and they are fabulous.

The tomato photographs will also include tomato food porn, like this insalata caprese that was served in one of the tents at the festival yesterday. Which I hardly touched because I was saving room for the main event.

That's all for: back to the grindstone! (I'll post more pictures of tomatoes soon.)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.” — Brendan Behan

Thanks for visiting.

A Short Break

Just a note: I am having to take a break from writing on this site to catch up on some professional obligations with clients. I expect to be back in less than a week.

Meanwhile, I will upload some new photographs to the galleries, so peek in there occasionally if you're interested. Because, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.” — Richard Bach

Thanks for visiting.