A Year of Produce: May

In April, I posted my first month tracking fresh produce expenditures—comparing local versus non-local produce. See May below or download a high-res PDF of May. To paraphrase a saying, eat the colors of the rainbow and you’ll be fine. May is already looking more colorful.

Two things I’m struggling with:

• Defining local: If I were to use the 100-mile radius rule, then I would have to find out if the Washington apple I buy at grocery store is from a farm within 100 miles. My very loose definition of local is Oregon and Washington. Given that a big percentage of my local produce costs are from the farmers market, I’m fine with my definition.

• Including garden costs: This project isn’t about tracking garden costs. Here is an example of a couple who tracked all input costs, labor and output from their garden. This is far too ambitious for me. An excellent read is Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Her family existed for a year on what they grew or could buy within a 50-mile radius. I am only tracking what I harvest (visually) and the cost of seeds or starts, but not compost or fertilizer. However, I haven’t devised a strategy for tracking every sprig of thyme! I’m a big proponent of having an herb garden. Given the cost of fresh herbs and the flavor boost your cooking, herb gardening is where I would put my effort if I had very little space. See this culinary herb primer on Culinate.com.

Maybe you’re wondering what I do with all this. Here are a few links or suggestions:

• Radishes and Fennel went into a Radish, Fennel, Orange Salad. The watermelon radish, if you can find it, is a visual delight—white on the outside, hot pink on the inside. Radishes make my stomach burn but my mother loves them. It was Mother’s Day. What can you do? The sweetness of the fennel and orange balance the peppery radishes. Plus the salad looks kick ass.

• In an earlier post, I wrote about Rabes (Raabs), and offer up a quick way to cook broccoli rabe. You can also download a recipe for Orecchiette con Cime di Rapa, a signature dish of the Puglia region in Italy.

• May continues to give us rhubarb. If you missed April, here’s another chance to download a recipe for a Rosemary Rhubarb Galette. Top with goat cheese and serve with a salad for a lovely spring lunch.

• Chef in the Market, Jeremy Eckel of Bar Avignon in Portland, OR, made a wonderful farro (This has become my favorite grain. Stay tuned for another post.) salad with grilled asparagus and spring sweet onions. Add some olive oil, fresh lemon juice and zest, and chopped hazelnuts for a great Spring BBQ salad.

• New Seasons market has a nice kale and carrot salad that I’ve recreated at home. It uses an Asian-inspired dressing of cumin, canola oil, fresh ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sesami oil. No need to cook the kale first; the vinegar breaks it down so make it a little ahead. I also use the Italian kale in minestrone soup. Sadly, it is still soup season in Portland!

If you have any questions and comments, let me know! Share some of your favorite seasonal recipe ideas. Cheers!

<< Go to April or go to June >>

Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two

(Download thisWhite paper: Good, Fast, Cheap as a PDF.)

Google the phrase “Good Fast Cheap Pick Two” and you get over 78 million search results. There are only 1.7 million for “Fountain of Youth.” Apparently people desire good, fast and cheap more than they do the secret to staying young. I see requests like this posted in online venues like LinkedIn. Is it the economy? Is there a growing sense of entitlement? Or is it more benign than that—businesses don’t realize that asking for good, fast and cheap will hinder their ability to be effective? Read more

Familiar Strangers

Speaking to a friend, chef and creator of Lovejoy Food, about her first day back at the OHSU farmers market, I asked her how her day went, given the tremendous downpour we’d had. “Were there a lot of people you recognized from last year?” I asked her. There were, and she said it was a bit surreal, seeing all these familiar strangers.

The term was coined by Stanley Milgram in the 1972 paper The Familiar Stranger: An Aspect of Urban Anonymity. He is also credited with developing the concept of six degrees of separation.

The true definition of a familiar stranger is someone who is seen regularly (like a person on your morning bus commute) and one with whom you don’t interact. Intel did a study using mobile devices to connect strangers, not necessarily to be friends but, to explore how strangers interact. The concept of familiar strangers is that they are an important link that bridges the gap between friends/family and total strangers. They play an essential role in fixing us in a community and providing us context. We wouldn’t want everyone to be a friend, and nor could we tolerate only strangers and people we know. The familiar strangers act as a buffer.

In my friend’s case, her customers aren’t true familiar strangers. But one friend has been creative with her daily commute (fodder for another post—ways to make the mundane more interesting) by documenting via her iPhone, her fellow commuters’ tattoos, pets, fashion statements and books. She has a non-judgemental, endearing way about her daily documentary. There’s a richness about it because she’s bringing strangers to life and making us look at these people closely, whom none of us know!

An interesting aspect of familiar strangers is that we have an unspoken agreement to not communicate. But we are much more likely to interact if we find ourselves in an unfamiliar setting, like bumping into the person you see each week at the farmers market while on vacation in Rome.

Has this happened to you? Did you introduce yourself? How long should a familiar stranger remain a stranger? Do you ever want to acknowledge your shared presence, especially if your lives seem to overlap in more than a couple places?

In a city as small as Portland, there are people you see over and over in more than one place you frequent, even if there doesn’t seem to be a significant connection among the locations. Maybe this person should be part of your social or business circle.

What do you give away?

People give away advice, time, sex, clothing, brides, secrets, pieces of their soul, professional services, to name a few. But these aren’t all equal. Any of these given away in excess can be a problem. But so can never giving them away (except maybe a bride, in my case).

So, how do you decide when giving something away is a good thing or a bad thing? Do you give the wrong stuff away, say, sex or advice, too easily? And maybe not enough of the good stuff, like your free time or excess veggies from your garden? Does giving away stuff make you feel proud or righteous? Or does giving something away make you feel crummy?

In life, there are few right and wrongs, which guarantees that life stays interesting, if uncertain. Giving away advice is only wrong if it’s unwanted, and if you never take it yourself. But giving away excess garlic presses is nearly always a good thing. Freeing yourself of unused and unwanted items doesn’t create only physical space but psychological space as well. It leaves you with a feeling of lightness of mind that didn’t exist. That space is now a vessel that can be filled with something more nourishing than stuff. It also reminds us that we don’t need as much, not to mention that others may need them more than we do.

Motives play a big role in giving things away. Some of us give pieces of ourselves away too freely and are left resentful. We do that because we’re insecure or fearful. We viewed a gesture as kind or maybe even a sacrifice, only to not get something in return. Is it the recipient’s fault? Or is it ours for giving it away with a motive attached (a motive we may not have realized was there)? A consultant can give away their proprietary services in the hopes of paying work down the road. Is that an act of generosity, a good tactic or a strategy that can backfire because it’s motivated by fear of loss?

Giving something away seems easier when we’re feeling abundant. But spiritual wisdom suggests the reverse—that giving something away creates a feeling of abundance. This is difficult if you operate as though there is not enough love, stuff, time, food or friendship to go around.

Are there things you give away out of fear? Are there things you don’t give away out of fear?

Art of Surrender Redux: The Garden

One must embrace irony. There is a lot of it in life, after all. Consider the garden if you will. In an effort to control my food source, I found a place to live where I could (in theory) enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of my labor by having a garden.

Instead, it is a daily practice of surrender to a host of elements out of my control. My plants are gracious hosts to a wide variety of critters from nearly invisible to purring.

No book by the Dalai Lama or Eckhart Tolle will teach an essential lesson in letting go more than having a garden. Tending a garden requires relinquishing the foolish notion that you will reap a product at the end. Each morning, coffee in hand, I make my rounds to the plants like a nurse visiting her ICU patients, inspecting limbs, peering at their wounds, unleashing a few expletives (me, not the nurse most likely).

As a woman said to her husband who complained of flea beetles, “There’s a good way to get rid of the pests. Go to the grocery store and buy eggplant.”

Where’s the fun if you can’t suffer a little? Who learns anything if you can’t experience your hard work wither away one tiny bitefull at a time? The truly strong among us are strong, not for our victories but, for our losses. The truly wise among us are wise, not for the tomato we ate at the end but, for the garden path we walked.

Though a tomato would be nice.

When Life Gives You Rhubarb…

…you better do something with it. Like asparagus, rhubarb does not have long enough a season for one to ponder buying it another day—unlike potatoes, greens or onions, for example. But ask your market vendors. They usually know how much longer something will be available.

One look at these ruby stalks and you think “Making a pie sounds like a lovely idea, doesn’t it?” And then the poor things go limp because your culinary intentions were just that, intentions. But I’ll say this about not only rhubarb: Just cook it while it’s available. Don’t wait for a special occasion or more time or the right mood. The doing of it inspires more of the same. This is true of just about anything.

I say, forget the pie! You can download my Rosemary Rhubarb Galette recipe, which is like pie, only more wabi sabi, and therefore, more fun to make. Not to mention easier.

Former host of Splendid Table , Lynne Rossetto Kasper, offers a Rhubarbarita recipe for when a regular margarita just won’t do. Now I’ve got a quart of this syrupy garnet goodness in my freezer, ready for the next party.

The easiest thing to do is chop it up and cook it with a little water and sugar (like you would for cranberry sauce), till the rhubarb is tender. Eat it with a pork chop or for breakfast with granola and yogurt. Couldn’t be easier. It freezes well, too. Just chop it up and put it in a freezer bag. It’ll keep for a year.