Eat All About It

Check out the Sunday edition of The Seattle Times for my Q&A with Michael Pollan.

I had lunch with Pollan a few years ago, and was impressed even then with his smart, thoughtful take on what we were eating and where our country was headed. I’ve always admired his combination of shoe-leather reporting and clear thinking; how he can, for instance, cut through the endless circular arguments over whether high-fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar. (There are entirely different reasons to avoid foods containing HFCS, he says — it’s a “reliable marker for a food product that has been highly processed,” and it has some significant environmental problems.)

The issues Pollan deals with have become stunningly mainstream, and it was a treat to get to follow up on some of the topics we had talked about when they were less in the public eye. (He had this to say about health care reform and the insurance industry: “What the food movement has lacked until now is a powerful corporate ally, and it may have gotten one.”)

And, Pollan himself is now being looked to as a leader in the good-food movement as much as a reporter — not a role most journalists are comfortable juggling. I asked how he felt about that:

“This is a movement that is in need of leadership…But it’s not a role I’m well suited to. I’m not a political actor. I know how to talk to the public, I don’t know how to negotiate with the food industry, I don’t know how to move legislation in Congress, I don’t know how to write legislation. If you told me, “OK, buddy, put up or shut up, how do we write the farm bill?” I don’t know how we do that. And the movement needs people who do, people who understand the ways of Washington.

“But there are signs that these people are emerging. There are a lot of young people getting into the food movement now; they ask me how to get involved. I tell them to go to law school and do things like that. They all want to be chefs and writers, but we need other people, other roles.”

The edited interview is online here. And if you’re interested in hearing Pollan firsthand, this interview came about because he’ll be speaking at the American Cheese Society conference in Seattle in August. I’ll be writing more about the conference as it approaches, but the basic conference info is here.

You might have met farmer Joel Salatin, “America’s most celebrated pioneer of chemical-free farming,” on the page through Michael Pollan. Now, you get a chance to meet him on the screen in the movie FRESH — or in person, when he appears at the University of Washington on Tuesday, April 20.

Organizers of a week full of events to celebrate the movie’s Seattle opening are kindly offering a pair of tickets to Salatin’s $25 Kane Hall appearances to our readers. The winner can choose between Tuesday’s 6 p.m. talk on “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being A Lunatic Farmer,” and the 8 p.m. talk titled “Can You Feed The World? Answering Elitism, Production, and Choice.”

(For a closer-up conversation, you could also attend a FRESH fundraiser at Emmer & Rye earlier in the day, with attendance limited to 25 people, but that one’s $125.)

Want to play? Leave a comment on this post, and be sure I have a way to contact you if you win. Time is short, so I’ll be randomly picking a winner from the comments at 9 p.m. PST Monday. If you have time to mull it over, I’m curious to know how you would answer the question posed in Salatin’s 8 p.m. talk. How do you answer charges of elitism about what you eat?

*Updated 4/19 to say that our random number generator picked Debra E. as our ticket winner! Debra, email me at rebekahdenn at gmail.com so I can arrange to get your tickets to you! Thank you for playing, and we do have discount tickets available for other readers — the organizers will give you 20 percent off the list price by using the code “FRESHpromo” on Brown Paper Tickets.

“Goat meat can get you in at any farmers market.”

That’s just one of the interesting tidbits of information in a generally comprehensive and frank new study on farmers markets in King County. Staff from the county Agriculture Program surveyed market managers and farmers for the report, yielding a nice trove of data on the challenges markets face and some paths toward improving their long-term stability. Some of the summaries and conclusions will be no-brainers to dedicated market watchers: Farmers markets need good, long-term locations, which are in short supply. Having more vendors process debit cards and food stamp benefits would increase sales. It’s frustrating that so many shoppers believe prices are higher at farmers markets than grocery stores, and frustrating that grocery stores are now grabbing the “locally grown” label while selling a very different product. Still, the report has plenty of new information and plain-spoken advice for the future. Here’s a random sampling of points that caught my eye:

1. There were 39 farmers markets in the county last year. Ten years earlier, there had been just nine. The markets are clearly boons to communities, but they’ve grown so fast there hasn’t been time to research what makes for successful markets in different areas — or time to develop regulations and land use politicies to support them. The growth also is causing concern among some market managers that newer markets are pulling shoppers away from established markets, and some farmers are reporting that their per-market sales are dropping.”If the number of farmers markets is to continue to grow successfully, it will have to be matched with increasing the shopper base and increasing the number of farmers available to sell at them” — and there are plenty of roadblocks to both those goals.

2. Most farmers need to earn a minimum of $600 per market day. “Information from a number of county markets indicates their average vendor sales are less than $600.”

3. As more markets open or expand, it becomes harder for market managers to know all farmers personally. “Some markets have discovered vendors who claim to grow the crop they are selling, but in fact are buying it from a packing house or other farmer. Besides not complying with the market’s policies, these vendors tend to underprice the legitimate farmers at the market, who may decide to leave the market. It is extremely difficult for market managers to verify the accuracy of vendor claims…Farmers understand this is a difficult and sensitive issue and wish market managers had better tools to address it.

4. Long-time farmers with “a recognized product and an established presence” can pretty much choose the markets where they want to set up shop. New farmers find it harder to gain a spot, especially at more desirable markets with higher sales. Some immigrant farmers have a hard time getting into markets “because they tend to grow the same products which are overrepresented at many markets.” But farmers who have a specialized product in high demand can pick their market regardless of how long they’ve been in the business or how big their farm is. “As one farmer noted in a small group discussion, ‘Goat meat can get you in at any farmers market.”

Interested in seeing more? Take a look at the full study here.

One of the things that surprised me the most about the massive salmonella-related peanut recalls earlier this year was how many of the people we think of as “the good guys” got caught in the mess along with everyone else. Small, local companies, trying their best to source high-quality ingredients, wound up using the same nuts as the country’s biggest chains, from a company that reportedly knew it was sending out contaminated goods.

I wrote in the Sunday Seattle Times about how companies get caught in the national food distribution web, and how some locals are trying to disentangle themselves from it as best they can. We looked at why CB’s Nuts will never be another Peanut Corporation of America, and how Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream is making its add-in ingredients by hand, from fresh caramel sauce to cookie dough. 

The full story is online here.

If you’re wondering about all the people breaking their Whole Foods habit and searching out other markets, the answer is here. The boycott was spurred by an op-ed piece on health care reform in the Wall Street Journal, written by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. The main eyebrow-raisers in the article came here:

“While all of us can empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have any more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have an intrinsic right to food, clothing, owning their own homes, a car or a personal computer? Health care is a service which we all need at some point in our lives, but just like food, clothing, and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually-beneficial market exchanges rather than through government mandates.”

and then, here:

“Most of the diseases which are both killing us and making health care so expensive-heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, which account for about 70% of all health care spending, are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal or no alcohol consumption, and other healthy lifestyle choices.”

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Egg crack/Rebekah Denn photo

An old friend was in town Monday, and I missed the regular meetup of former P-I employees at Aster coffeehouse. I didn’t skip it because of the United Way Hunger Challenge, but it did occur to me that I’d blow an uncomfortable percentage of my challenge budget if I did scramble to make the meeting. I missed the company as well as the coffee, though. Financial planners collectively ding the daily latte, but it’s a very enjoyable social ritual. And I came in enough under my $22 budget yesterday to loosen up and make some different choices today. At my beginning photography class, for instance, where I brought this egg picture today for an assignment, students often walk to Stumptown before class or during the break, and I decided to go ahead and join in. I used $2.75 of today’s food budget on that cup of French press. I enjoyed it more than caviar.

And the eggs? I invested eight of them in tonight’s dinner. Eggs cost more than they used to cost, but they’re still admirably inexpensive  and versatile, and I was pleasantly surprised to see I didn’t have to fight my ethics to keep them on the menu this week. A dozen cage-free, Certified Humane eggs from Stiebrs Farms were on sale for $1.99 at PCC (regularly $2.39), or 17 cents apiece — no more than the cut-rate eggs I had guiltily picked up earlier for the photo shoot. Normally, I spring for organic eggs, at double the price, but I was satisfied by the description of the Stiebrs eggs to go for these. (Wilcox Farms, also local, is Certified Humane as well.) 

I’ve been flipping through Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid books for ideas, and tonight’s dinner was a from-memory adaptation of their stir-fried cellophane noodles and eggs from Hot Salty Sour Sweet. (If you’ve got that wonderful book, you can let me know if I missed any key ingredients.) I sauteed two chopped shallots and a clove of garlic in olive oil in a big skillet, added eight lightly beaten eggs, and sprinkled on a few dashes of fish sauce. When the eggs were nearly scrambled, I added about 8 ounces of soaked cellophane noodles, and stirred it all together. I squeezed a lime on top and added a sprinkle of chopped bulk-bin peanuts.

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Financially, food has always been my great luxury. My kitchen table came free from a friend and my 15-year-old couch was a gift from my grandmother; I get my clothes at consignment shops and most of my books at libraries… and yet I also jumped last week at the chance to order two jars of wonderful $14 marmalade. 

I’ve also always known I need to spend less on food, and I certainly know ways to eat frugally and still eat well. So I was glad at the invitation to join United Way of King County’s  ”Hunger Challenge,” asking participants to eat for five days on $7 per day, the maximum food stamp benefit for an individual. The challenge starts April 20, and individuals are encouraged to sign up here and share your experiences on the United Way blog. Several other bloggers will be joining in and sharing stories, including Cook and Eat, Family Friendly Food, Foodista, and GastroGnome.

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Frndly garden in south SEA, huge lot, gd sun, seeks gardener for mutual fruit+veggie fun.

Could that lot be the right match for “green mama dying to grow her own tomatoes again”? Or for “new gardener looking to cultivate food, friendship, & a productive hobby”?

Only on Urban Garden Share,  a new site hooking up homeowners who have unused garden space with gardeners who have no land. 

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A few readers have asked about the new Homegrown Sandwiches in Fremont using cured meats from The Swinery on their sandwiches. Wasn’t the whole controversy with Culinary Communion and The Swinery that owner Gabriel Claycamp didn’t have a Swinery permit yet from Public Health - Seattle and King County?

I called Homegrown today to inquire, and was told the Swinery products were off the menu. 

“We had been told that the paperwork was in order for (The Swinery), and then we found out otherwise, so we decided to stop carrying their stuff,” said Brad Gillis, who owns Homegrown with Ben Friedman.

I checked in with the health department, and was told that its staff had told Homegrown the meat was not from an approved source.

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