As I said on Friday, my Fourth of July mission was to serve a fully local meal. It’s a small, symbolic gesture, I know, but I have to say, I feel better when I know who grew the food I’m eating. (Or, if we’re talking fish or fowl or meat, who caught it, raised it, and/or slaughtered it.)
I ended up making two trips to the farmer’s market over the weekend: The first on Friday, to the Old Oakland market, which skews heavily toward stands filled with Asian varieties of herbs and vegetables, and then, on Saturday, to the Grand-Lake market, which offers a bigger variety of sustainable meat, locally grown and pressed olive oil, and a larger selection of everything from greens to stone fruit. But as it turned out, I didn’t need much from that second trip to the market…just some purple basil I picked up at the Capay Farms stand. Everything else, I acquired on Friday.
The first item on my agenda was a main course, and for that, I settled on some fresh wild mushroom ravioli from The Phoenix Pastificio in Berkeley. The woman at the stand recommended it tossed with slow roasted tomatoes, which they had available along with a variety of other sauces, but I remembered I had one last bag of slow-roasted tomatoes stashed in my freezer, the tomatoes purchased from Happy Boy Farms of Watsonville late in the season last year. I declined the sauce and left with only the pasta (and solid plans to thaw my slow-roasted tomatoes as soon as I got home), and a ginger candy offered to me by another one of the booth workers.
Next, I assembled the ingredients for a salad. I’m not going to give you many details here, but am going to use this as an opportunity to announce that, as of July, I am now a contributing editor to BlogHer in the Food & Drink area, and so my Ogen Melon Salad write-up appears over there. But the salad, which featured Ogen melon from Hamada Farms in Kingsburg, Calif.; English cucumber from Wilson Farms in Le Grande; goat’s milk feta from Spring Hill Cheese Co. in Petaluma; and that Capay Farms basil from Vacaville. If you want to learn more, head over to BlogHer and check it out.
I paired all of this with a Bonterra Vineyards Merlot made from organic grapes. Bonterra Vineyards, which is located in Mendocino County, is practicing not just organic farming, but also biodynamic agriculture, which creates something of a closed loop system that nourishes itself without requiring much by way of outside input as the grapes grow and mature. I had plans to wrap up the meal with Scream Sorbet, which is made in Emeryville, which abuts Oakland on its North side. But I got a last-minute invite to watch fireworks in the city and took advantage of that, which sent me off and running before I had a chance to eat dessert. That being said, having some Scream products in the freezer is never a bad thing. I’ll enjoy them this week, for sure.
Did you declare your Food Independence this Fourth of July? What local foods graced your holiday table?
on Jul 7th, 2009 at 7:43 am
On the Fourth itself, I made an Asian-style slaw and roasted carrots from my Live Earth Farm CSA box, grilled some lamb from my butchering class at Avedano’s, and baked an apricot cobbler from apricots I picked with Village Harvest, and flour from Pie Ranch in Pescadero.
God, that sounds so smug. No wonder localvores get a rap sometimes.
But I also wanted to tell you about another meal, one I cooked on Sunday at Veggielution. It was just zucchini, tomatoes, basil and onions (OK, and salt and oil) but they had just been picked and pulled out of the ground 50 feet away from where I was cooking with a campstove on a picnic table. It was the most satisfying thing I’ve cooked in ages; my only regret is that I ran out before every volunteer could share it.
If you’re ever down in San Jose on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday afternoon, I hope you can come to a Veggielution workday.
I enjoy your writing; are you going to be doing more at BlogHer than here from now on?
on Jul 7th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
We had about as local as you can get at this time of the year in Michigan. Radishes pulled out of the ground and the first cherry tomatoes (Sun Sugar Hybrids….yummmmyyyyyy) of the year.
on Jul 9th, 2009 at 10:56 am
What a great idea. We love it when we can pull a local meal together. Here in Wisconsin, it’s easy to do in the summer; but, we have to work at it quite a bit more at it in the winter months (although it’s quite possible with a bit of stowing away on our part).
BonTerra does quite a few of my favorite wines (I’ve been buying their organic cabernet to give with wedding gifts for over 10 years)! You’re lucky to have them in your neighborhood!
on Jul 9th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Diana, I’ll be both here and on BlogHer — definitely not abandoning this blog for their site! Just expanding my mini-empire. Your meal sounds like it was amazing…not smug, just freaking AWESOME. And your Veggielution meal sounds like both a belly- and soul-satisfying experience — so wonderful. Thanks for sharing both menus and stories! I’d love to come down to San Jose sometime — not sure when I can get it in the schedule, but it would be really fun.
Ree, FIRST CHERRY TOMATOES? You tease me. :-)
Lo, yeah — Wisconsin winters are rough on the fruits and veggies, although yes, with good preparation, it’s possible. Still…I tip my hat to you regarding that challenge, particularly after I lived in Iowa for three years!
on Jul 10th, 2009 at 11:56 am
I just have a tiny garden this year…. but I stopped buying vegetables this week, for a few weeks anyway. The markets are wonderful but gardens are better ;-))
on Jul 13th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Katie, the garden is way better…definitely. :-)