Let’s All Grow This Year… Support for OR HB 2336

I’ve been reading a lot of back and forth about OR HB 2336, the state bill that would allow farmers (growers) to do a small amount of processing to ingredients they grow for sale direct to the consumer (you, at farmers markets).

Since we’re all starting to think about the markets, CSAs and what could be sprouting in our own backyard, it’s a good time to throw in some support.

One of the biggest supporters of this bill is Anthony Boutard of Ayers Creek Farms. You can read about his position, and why it makes sense from a farmer’s perspective over at our friends at Culinate. 

As some one who’s business is food processing (or, I’m not a farmer, I just work with them to procure ingredients for our own products), I think it’s a smart idea to give farmers some leeway in what they can sell.

1. Not every crop is either 100% saleable or sells out (I’m not talking about strawberries which seem to disappear in minutes after the market bell rings). Produce (or ingredients) do not grow uniformly. Not in your garden, not on acres of land. Also, what a lot shoppers don’t realize is, there’s no guarantee what a farmer brings to market is going to sell out (or at all). Giving farmers an opportunity to extend their crop by utilizing rejects, and/or unsold produce is a win for the shopper in buying something truly artisanal while allowing the farmer to recap (or extend) their profits.

2. Shoppers don’t always know what to do with ingredients. No, I am not calling you a bad or unadventurous home cook. However, I’ve spent a few market seasons next to Anthony & Ayers Creek (as well as Springwater Farms and Creative Growers) and when ever there’s an item that’s unusual - borage,  sun chokes, or an heirloom currants, more often than not I hear the question “How would you cook or prepare it?” Which many times leads to an ingredient being passed over (with the second comment being “I don’t know if my family will like it”). If these farms were able to produce small amounts of a finished product (borage chips? currant spread? Sun choke pesto?), besides landing a sale, it would provide the opportunity to expand a shopper’s horizon into a new ingredient.

3. Innovation. Perhaps there’s another great product out there. In a time where shoppers are (thankfully) becoming more aware of what’s in their food (and companies like mine strive to continue to create clean products by purchasing from farms like these), there could be larger market out there for something one of the farmers produces.

While this is my view (I don’t get to vote on the bill), I am in support of items like this that enable our local agri-economy to grow and thrive. I’m already a fan of Ayers Creek Polenta and if Springwater Farms were able to produce a wild-mushroom demi-glace… I can only imagine the dinner possibilities!

Weeknight Cooking: A Bite Off The Grill Via Bittman

After a day of all things tarts (and depending on what day it is can drive what happens in our world of tarts), there is still dinner to be made. We tend to eat dinner at home most nights, as much as I enjoy heading out and trying new places, there are very few of us these days who are comfortable floating the expense of eating out every night.

So, much like most of this country, I get home and start figuring out what’s for dinner. I try hard to be organized about meal planning, well, mostly to insure I don’t wander around the grocery store and/or farmers market aimlessly (we’ve all had those days when we’ve gotten home from buying food to only realize we’ve purchased 5 heads of lettuce from various farm stalls and not much else even to make salad with). Luckily, by the fact we’re several farmers markets gives me opportunity to pick up last minute ingredients (like for the rest of the salad).

A few weeks ago I had picked up a lovely piece of halibut and the first (!!) sungold cherry tomatoes of the season among other things at the farmers market. (Oh how we’ll be talking much more about tomatoes very soon.)

Initially I was thinking panzanella salad as a side one night and maybe an asian-ish grilled halibut another. Then I saw NYTimes Mark Bittman’s recipe for Greek Fish 

I didn’t follow it verbateum (what fun would that be?). I added a few tablespoons of capers (plus a little brine), a few dashes of hot sauce, and part of an Indian long pepper that I had sitting around in the fridge. All added an extra little snap as the flavors came together. The halibut, which I had roasted on the grill, went into the mixture while I sautéed the last of the snap peas and finished the herbed rice.

If I had been more patient I would’ve snapped the whole dish, but it was late, we were hungry and I had tomorrow’s day of tarts to think about (new fruit flavor!).

Observations from the NYC Union Square Farmers Market

When I was living in NYC, the Union Square Farmer’s Market was the only easily accessible farmer’s market. The market wasn’t nearly as large as it is today (think mostly produce and honey), and as I spend much of my summer preparing for, setting up and occasionally working at markets my company participates in locally, I was curious to see what’s changed.

Any vendor that attends a farmer’s market in NYC already deserves a lot of credit just for showing up (literally). Braving the long drives and steep traffic through the bridges and tunnels is on a good day daunting. Traffic is no joke on the east coast and you could be looking at a 2 hour (plus) back-up just to get in and out of the city. The market it’s self runs from 8am – 6pm already making it a loooong day. 

The two days I walked through the market it was over 90 degrees out, thinning out the crowds (though it did make it easier to grab a few photos). We have much of the same produce on both coasts, though some farms had early corn and (non-hothouse) tomatoes.

Prices in some cases were higher than what we find in Portland (garlic scapes were oddly expensive) and some were the same (cherries, lettuces, artisanal goat cheese). 

There is less prepared food in the Union Square Market. The baked goods I saw were from farm stands who were baking items like pies (and occasional breads & muffins) or bakery off-shoots of existing restaurants. Kitchen space rental for small food companies is tight and very expensive and/or non-existent (which was part of my own deciding factor in founding my company in Portland). Additionally, hot food vendors aren’t allowed in the market.

During one walk through the market with a good friend and our hostess we dropped off compost (those large Tupperware containers you can’t fit into your cabinet get a new life!) and picked up assorted produce, cheese and yogurt, happily making our way back to the central AC to enjoy the bounty.

A Wee Bit About Gluten-Free

In the past couple of weeks we’ve been doing a soft-launch of our new line of gluten-free tarts. This has been a learning process for us. Much like crawling before walking (then climbing the living room bookcase), my team has been testing the limits of our dough recipe and its ingredients. For all of us, it’s new territory and we’re up to the challenge.

We’ve been getting requests for gluten-free products for the past couple of years. Those of you whom I chatted with at farmers markets (or in your home kitchen, and also over the phone) were subjected to a litany of questions such as - can you eat corn? (50/50 split), do you eat dairy? (also 50/50) are you vegan? (almost everyone wasn’t). I wanted to learn more about where the boundaries of people’s intolerances lay (and learned a lot more about their personal eating preferences to boot).

Then one spring Saturday afternoon, I was sampling our tarts at a local Whole Foods and in the course of two hours, four people came up to our table and asked me if we had anything gluten-free. Hmmmm, if that wasn’t a sign it was time to test out some gluten-free crust ideas, I don’t know what was.

Thus far, we’ve been able to set aside a day to for gluten-free dough making (and rolling), when no wheat flour is in use. We have separate equipment for creating and filling the tarts. At the moment my team is producing the dough in small batches, by hand, until we can justify adding additional equipment to make their production larger and faster.

Also along with the process, we’re feeling out which of our fillings customers might be interested in (so far anything dairy-free is winning, which is interesting since most people I spoke with about being gluten-intolerant ate some dairy).

So expect more questions from us at the farmer’s markets if you purchase one of our gluten-free tarts, we’d like to hear what you think.