*looks around*

*drags over his soapbox*

Ahem.

*taps the mic*

Is this thing on? I’m here all week. Try the swordfish. Don’t forget to tip your waitstaff.

Today marks the start of farmers’ market season.

Which means, it’s time to get a little preachy and pretentious. Hey, at least I know it. And you’re going to suffer through it. Because you love me. And because if you avert your gaze from this blog, that metal collar around your neck will start beeping faster and faster. You have 30 seconds to continue reading. If you fail to reorient your eyes to to my blog post, well, let’s just say that collar is loaded with enough C4 to turn a city bus into an inhalable substance. Mm-hmm. That’s right. Swing those eyes right back over here, pardner. There you go.

I appreciate your loyalty.

Now, let’s talk about food.

The first day of farmers’ market season for me feels like the first day the amusement park opens. This is the ritual: wife and I go. We buy vegetables not from pretentious local buyers, but from people who look like farmers. We pay a lot less than we do at the grocery store, and we buy vegetables that come from a place within ten miles of where we are standing. Then we buy other stuff as we need it: jams from local folk, honey from the local apiary, meats from the local butcher, and so on and so forth. And then we have breakfast. We buy pastries. Or, if he’s there, we say, “Fuck it,” and we buy a sausage sandwich with peppers and onions from the sausage sandwich guy. And then we go and sit on one of the nearby picnic tables and watch the market and read the awesome profanity kids have scrawled into the table’s wood.

This first farmers’ market thereby begins the first day of the Fresh Table Experiment, Round Two.

In case you missed last year’s explanation, I’ll go over it again. The experiment was this: I say “go suck a dick” to the grocery chains and I shop semi-exclusively at local food institutions. Farmers’ markets, yes. Local farms, yes. Local butchers, ayup. Local bakers, sho’ nuff. Now, this has its limits. Some things I can’t buy locally. Honey, yes. Soy sauce, no. Some things I could probably make (chili-garlic sauce), but hell with that, I want my Sriracha. So, those kinds of things I get at chain places because I don’t have much choice.

That means I end up at the grocery store or Target buying food maybe once a month.

The rest is pure locavore behavior.

This isn’t about eating organically, really — “organic” as a term no longer means much thanks  to the lobbyists of Big Food.

It’s about eating food. And it’s about supporting the local economy.

When I say, “It’s about eating food,” what I mean is, a lot of the garbage we funnel into our greasy mouths isn’t food, per se. It’s close to food. It’s food-plus. It’s food science. It starts with a food product and then ladles atop it a world of fake flavoring, a swamp of corn-based products, a smattering of sweetness, a heap of preservatives. Now, I’m no “back to nature” type — I love the conveniences of modern life. I’m also not anti-science. And, in fact, science says that eating all this shit is pretty fucking awful for your body.

Sure, High Fructose Corn Syrup is just sugar, right? It’s all good.

Except, maybe, just maybe, because America subsidizes the unholy hell out of corn, that’s what the Big Food Lobby wants you to believe.

Maybe, just maybe, other countries say, “Hey, this shit actually hurts our kids.”

Maybe some say, “Hey, this shit causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.”

Could even be that HFCS has the potential to damage the metabolic process and some might conclude, “Wow, this is probably part of the reason we’re all fat and dying from the diabeedus.”

HFCS isn’t the only problem. We’re not just addicted to oil in this country. We’re addicted to fucking corn. (Er, we’re not addicted to having sex with corn. I mean, I guess metaphorically? CORN SEX SO HOT)

Or, hell, look at the ingredient list on any processed foods. Like, say, Cool Whip. Newsflash: you can make your own whipped cream super holy shit easy. You do not need to ingest things that are unpronounceable and flammable. (And you don’t need to ingest sexual lubricants, either, like Polysorbate 60! “More Astroglide with your dessert, sir? Ma’am?”)

To me, the logic behind not eating processed foods is easy: food is good, but food that is made to do things food’s not supposed to do is less than good. The more you put between food and your body, the harder is is for your body to actually process the things it needs to process. Your body is made to eat, digest, process and utilize food. It is not made to eat, digest, process and utilize food science.

You eat at a farmers’ market, you significantly increase the actual food you put into your body.

You eat at the grocery store, you make it a lot harder to do that.

At the farmers’ market, you have no intermediary, no third party. You have that farmer guy. You talk to him. You say, “What the hell is this?” And he says, “I grew it this morning.”

You go to the grocery store, you suffer a lot of separation from you and the food. Shipping. Packing. The store itself. The food conglomerate that produced that food. The food conglomerate that made the science behind that food. Who are you going to ask? You going to ask a question of that mopey, slack-jawed, mule-kicked lackwit who’s forever mopping up the spill from a broken pickle jar? You think he knows jack shit about what’s in those taco shells you just bought? The grocery store is just renting shelf space. They don’t give a rat’s right foot what you put in your body.

Plus, supporting your local economy is a good thing.

I’d much rather give five bucks to a guy who lives down the street or two towns over than some fat-cat food executive playing golf in his lunar colony. Fuck that dick.

In terms of food, I spend less money on farmers’ market expenditures than I do on grocery trips. So, I save money. And, all last summer I felt a helluva lot better. Farmers’ market eating coupled with daily walks lost me about 15 pounds (weight I have almost entirely put back on over the winter despite having a new gym membership that, yes, does get used).

Lighter belly, heavier wallet? Sounds like a check mark in the “win” column.

So, here’s the deal.

Last year, I did this.

This year, I want you to try it.

Even if you don’t go whole hog (pun not intended until now), try it out.

Give the middle finger to your local grocery beast.

Shake hands with a farmer, and buy what the guy is offering, and put that food into your body.

Accept the challenge of seasonal food. Enjoy local-grown meats and veggies and fruits. You want a pie, buy one from a guy who just made it an hour ago. Just try it. See if you feel better.

No moral mandate or anything — unless you have kids, at which point I’d say, have you looked at the stuff you’re putting into your kid’s body? I’m just putting that out there. When you put another life into it, the moral obligation narrows a little, doesn’t it?

I’m gonna be over here doing it. And the other great thing about farmers’ market eating is that I learn a lot of new recipes by necessity — you buy what’s there, you suddenly have to figure out what to do with it. I’ll post the results as I find them. Maybe you’ll care to do the same?

Oh.

One other mandate.

(You thought you could walk away, didn’t you? Didn’t you hear the collar beeping? Get back here.)

Try new food.

Seriously. We finally found a Vietnamese place in the Lehigh Valley (Little Saigon in Allentown), and there I had the “Pho Deluxe,” a noodle soup with a ton of beef cuts I didn’t recognize (tendon, navel, and something called “omosa”). Well, omosa is tripe. And tripe is intestine. Cow guts.

White, fringy cow guts, cut to look like the noodles in the soup.

Hot damn! Delicious. I once said I’d never really be willing to stomach tripe (pun not intended until now). Never thought I’d try it except, there it was, and I didn’t know what it was, and I put it into my mouth, and it was fantastic. As Bourdain puts it, a “textural Disneyland.” Not chewy, but pleasantly firm, and carrying a subtle beef flavor. Very nicely done, Little Saigon.

See, I’d rather eat fresh cow guts than whipped cream made from sex lube.

I’m just saying.

So, join me in this weird experiment? See how you feel after a couple months.

A couple resources to get you going:

Local Harvest is a really good way to find local markets, butchers, farms, CSAs, etc.

In fact, this whole list from Michael Pollan (whose books you should read) is a nicely comprehensive list to get you going.

Check it out. Try it out.

Join me.

Don’t make the collar go boom.

*steps off his soapbox*

*heads to the Saucon Valley Farmers’ Market*

Last week was the final of the farmer’s markets for the year, and so to buy the things I must buy (let’s just call it, ohhh, “food so I don’t perish”), I headed on down to the local supermarket.

I was instantly reminded of Don DeLillo’s White Noise:

“Apples and lemons tumbled in twos and threes to the floor when someone took a fruit from certain places in the stacked array. There were six kinds of apples, there were exotic melons in several pastels. Everything seemed to be in season, sprayed, burnished, bright. People tore filmy bags off racks and tried to figure out which end opened. I realized the place was awash in noise. The toneless systems, the jangle and skid of carts, the loudspeaker and coffee-making machines, the cries of children. And over it all, or under it all, a dull and unlocatable roar, as of some form of swarming life just outside the range of human apprehension.” (p. 36).

That book — so much a post-modern novel about the fears of, well, being post-modern — nails the alienation, the isolation, the overall sterile weirdness of shopping in this modern age. (Incidentally, my favorite thing about the book is that the protagonist is a prominent teacher in the field of “Hitler Studies.”)

The blasts of color, the endless parade of vivid consumerism — it’s pleasing, though, in its own weird way:

“That’s what I think of whenever I come in here. This place recharges us spiritually, it prepares us, it’s a gateway or pathway. Look how bright. It’s full of psychic data…. The large doors slide open, they close unbidden. Energy waves, incident radiation. All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases.”

He studied her profile. She put some yogurt in her cart….

“Here we don’t die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think.” (p.37-38)

And that’s what happened to me yesterday.

I didn’t go for much. Some Greek yogurt. Some flour for pancakes. A few other things. I still had fruit and veggies from last week’s final farmer’s market, and the meat store is still going to be open. This trip was like an advance scouting mission. I figured it a good time to recall the lay of the land.

It didn’t take me long. I did more than recall the lay of the land; I found my feet on too-familiar paths. It was like I had one robot wheel instead of feet, and that wheel was locked into a pre-programmed track. Before I knew it, I was ambling down the middle aisles, jaw slackened, eyes wide. All that color, all those products. It clubs you in the head. It’s dizzying. I found myself wanting things that I knew I’d never use. “Yak hair tea? Purple ketchup? Nuclear Winter Crunch cereal? Yes, yes, and yes!”

No, no, and no. About five minutes in, I realized I’d been seduced by the eerie consumer numbness, that my brain had gone native and mutinied against my better instincts. Realizing it, I took the 27 cans of tomato soup and the industrial jug of grape juice out of my cart and swiftly hurried toward the outskirts of the store, looking for only those things I actually needed. And, I managed. I came out with a small cart — three small bags — of goods, and outside, the cold air jarred me loose of the pulsing, throbbing comfort of the grocery store.

It is sad, though. The farmer’s market had a communal experience. Sure, you had your moneybag Yuppies with their Mercedes and their designer dogs, but you also had regular people. Talking to vendors, talking to each other, walking their dogs. Vendors would share recipes. Vendors would recommend other vendors. People knew one another’s names. The grocery store has a little of that — I’ve seen people chatting, I’ve seen the meat counter ladies knowing people’s names. But by and large, it’s alienating. Nobody talks. Everybody’s on their preprogrammed robot track, a serpentine slalom down endless shelves.

Not far from here is an indoor farmer’s market. I think I’ll go — but let’s be clear, this place is occasionally fucking creepy. It’s more than a farmer’s market, despite it’s name. It’s 50+ vendor stalls, and maybe less than half are related to food. One guy sells comics, which is cool, but for the most part, it’s people selling like, Gypsy talismans and boombox radios from the mid-80s and jewelry that won’t just turn your skin green, it’ll actually blister the flesh. Hell, half-a-dozen should just go for the honest sell and name their vendor stall, “Shit I Found Under My Couch Cushions, Inc.,” because that’s their ‘goods’ look like.

Oh, the place has a parrot, too. One of the back stores (far more than just a stall) sells questionable pet foods.

And they have a parrot.

I wish to fuck I could get you a picture of the parrot. They used to advertise on TV and the web using images of this parrot, which isn’t strange until you realize that the parrot has some kind of monster-sized goiter on the front of its colorful neck. This massive hump is growing featherless, and is about as big as a baseball.

[EDIT: No, scratch that. It's about the size of a softball -- because holy shit, I found a picture! Yay Internet! You answer all my wishes!]

There you go. That’s the goiter bird. This must be an earlier snap, because the last time I saw this parrot (last year sometime), the wretched mutant hump had lost a lot more feathers than that.

Now, I’m not knocking the parrot. He’s probably great. And I feel bad for the big guy, as that lump looks burdensome.

But –

I’m just saying, if you’re advertising food, maybe a diseased tropical bird is not your finest mascot.

Whenever the farmer’s market commercial comes on, we sing along with new lyrics: “Quakertown Farmer’s Market — we got goiter bird!”

Good times.

But it doesn’t make me hungry for produce.

Still, I’ll try it. They have guys that make unholygood sticky buns. And sure, the produce vendors have produce from California and China, but it’s at least local people selling it. (Plus, they have some more exotic fare from time to time: odd Asian fruits and the like.)

But I will lament the loss of the outdoors farmer’s market, and just chalk up one more reason why I am not at all thankful for Old Man Winter’s annual rise to prominence, sitting on his throne of ice and sadness. Attended to by his bloated, mutant parrot.

I’m sure tonight I’ll have a nightmare where that parrot’s swollen tumor explodes, and a bunch of half-parrot half-spider creatures come tumbling out. Just you wait.

Farmer’s Market still has a good bounty going — winter squash, a bevy of apples, parsnips and yams and fennel all coming to the table. But, time winds down. The farmer’s markets will soon sink back into the earth to hibernate before the snow. The farmers manning the tables will once more return to flesh-of-burlap stuffed with itchy hay, and they too will be sucked down into the mud.

So, looking back, how’d the Fresh Table Experiment go?

Here’s my watermark: if I don’t go to the farmer’s market every week, we don’t have food to eat.

That sounds bad. It’s actually good. It means we don’t have a lot of processed foods in boxes or bags hanging around. No microwavable meals. No rice or pasta that consists of a desiccated starch product and a packet of concentrated sodium-slash-uranium dust. If I don’t pick it up fresh at the market, then baby don’t eat. (Not that we have a baby — not one the government knows about, moo hoo ha ha, secret baby.)

I learned to make lots of new things. I learned to eat lots of new things. I feel healthier. I’ve lost weight despite eating “worse” foods. Food-wise, things are good.

Of course, with autumn and harvest comes the Winterpocalypse. The Big Freeze. The Snow Job.

We do have some local markets that will stay open. The produce won’t be locally harvested, obviously, but you can’t win ‘em all. I think I can transfer the Fresh Table ethos to the grocery store, albeit imperfectly. Just orbit the ring of the store, as they say — stick to the outside, veggies, fruits, meat, dairy, that sort of thing. Whenever I have to venture toward the nougaty center to, I dunno, fight the minotaur and buy rice noodles, I’ll just have to remember the basic rule: if the ingredient list has shit on it that I don’t recognize and might need a pharmacist to translate, don’t buy it.

(The theory, right or wrong, scientific or not-so-scientific, is that over-processed foods like, say, high fructose corn syrup are bad for you because the body and brain don’t necessarily recognize them as “food.” The brain wants you to keep eating, because it isn’t sure you’re really absorbing actual nutrients through actual food. That might be bunk. I suspect that some tiny mote of truth exists there, though.)

So, overall, it was a good experiment, and a success I hope to carry on year after year. After all’s said and done, shopping at the farmer’s market was cheaper than at the grocery store. I walked away from the farmer’s market the other day with a back-breaking bag of vegetables, and it cost me under $15. That is literally a week’s worth of food.

I’ll leave you with a few quick cooking tips, if’n you give a poop.

Leeks

You have to clean the hell out of leeks. They get dirty up in all their little crevices. Cut them into rings, pop them in a deep bowl of water. Clean with thumb and forefinger. The grit and dirt goes to the bottom, and you just dredge the leek-rings out of the water. Bonus points if you call them “dirty little bitches” as you wash ‘em.

Fennel

Roast it. The bulbs, at least. Is that what the bottom of the fennel is called? A bulb? I’m too lazy to look it up, but you know the part. It’s bulbous. Dice it up, slick it up with olive oil, pop it in a roasting pan with goes into a 400-degree oven for 20 minutes — maybe longer if you like that caramelization factor.

Okra

Roast that, too. You need ‘em crispier, I think. Go 450 for 20 minutes. Also, smaller okra seem to work better. The larger ones can be tough. Angry. Like troll fingers.

Cauliflower

Makes a bitchin’ soup. Here’s my version. Six cups of chicken stock, salt, pepper, pinch of thyme, dash of cayenne pepper — cook the chopped head of cauliflower until it’s soft, maybe 30 minutes. Blend it. I use an immersion blender. Get it velvety. It’ll still be a bit coarse, so if you want it silky, here’s whatcha do — while still hot, mix in a half cup of parmesan cheese, and a half cup of aged provolone (or romano, or asiago, or fomunda cheese), and then cut in cubes of butter and mix in either milk or heavy cream (a little at a time; and which you use is dependent upon how you feel about fat content) until it reaches the consistency you want.

The real magic trick is what you do with the bowl. Pack the bottom of the soup bowl with good cornbread. Pour soup over it.

Winter Squash

These are totally not in any alphabetical order. I’m just banging them out as they come to me. But here’s what you do with a winter squash. Halve it. Scoop out the brains and guts (i.e. the miscarrage of seeds that lurks within). Then, fill it with something. Butter and maple syrup is a good trick (and make sure it’s real maple syrup — take a look at the ingredients on what passes for pancake syrup at the store and shudder; plus, the real deal tastes so good, it’s downright silly). Or, sage and sausage. Or bacon and beef. Your call. Stick it in the oven. How long depends on the squash and the size. Around 350 for 45 minutes could do it. Put a little water in the pan or on the cookie sheet to stop the squash from drying out. You can drape it in a tent of foil, too, if you want. Or, you can put the foil on your head to prevent Socialist Brain Waves. Your call!

Also, spaghetti squash can be a little bland unless you get the… I think it’s called “orangetti.” Sweeter.

The End

And that’s all she wrote. Er, ate. See you next season, farmers.

Next harvest season.

Shing-shing!

The Fresh Table Experiment.

The goal there was, as Michael Pollan puts it, to eat products that are more “food” than “food science.”

Seems like a good time to update, what with summer tapering off soon enough.

How’d I do? Let’s go with a tentative “not bad.”

Over the course of the last three-and-a-half months, I think I’ve been in a grocery store a total of three times, each time to buy lunchmeat for my wife’s sandwiches. Now, yes, I’ve gone to Target and purchased the occasional food product — though always things I really couldn’t have made myself. Corn chips, okay, I could probably make, but fuck that. Soy sauce, no, I’m not fermenting soy beans in my house. Plus, anything I buy, I take a look at the ingredients. Not to see if it’s strictly “organic,” but just to check if the actual components of this food are actual food, or bizarre alchemical products scraped from lead tanks after secret government weapons tests. If a corn chip includes ingredients like “dimethylcortisone flakes” or “energon cubes,” I won’t buy ‘em. If the corn chip includes ingredients like “corn” and “chips,” then, heck yes.

The Farmers Market has therefore been my point-of purchase for stuff. Which has been equal parts fun and delicious. The Farmers Market is a hoot, actually. Down-to-earth farmers. Crazy dudes selling awesome honey. People who dress up their dogs. Historical societies, people who make their own soap, local cookie makers, and so on, and so forth.

So, let’s go over a handful of the things that we at Der Wendighaus, Inc. (a Terribleminds sister company!) have learned:

1. Raw Milk Will Not Kill You. No, really, it won’t. My wife’s been drinking it regularly. At no point did the milk represent a “loaded gun” in her mouth. It’s also tastier. Yes, pasteurization was a big awesome invention, and Louis Pasteur still deserves a trophy and a thumbs-up. But, people act like it’s the only reason milk got safer. Anyone hear of refrigeration? Funny little future science, keeps things cold? Like, say, milk? No? Not ringing a bell?
2. Raw Milk Will Not Miraculously Heal You. Trust me, the Fresh Table Experiment is woefully non-scientific. That being said, while raw milk didn’t kill anybody in this house, I don’t think it cured anybody in this house of radical ailments. I still have syphilis and a supernumerary nipple that oozes shadowy nectar, for example. Now, again, maybe raw milk had subtle gastrointestinal or mood-based effects, but I don’t think so. I do think that raw milk is tasty, and if you like milk and are in Pennsylvania, it’s worth finding a sanctioned maker of said milk.
3. It Might Be Time To Rethink Fat And Cholesterol. I’ve done some calorie and nutrition counting. In making foods that are non-processed, I also threw expected food cautions to the wind. I used a lot — no, really, a lot — of butter. Saturated fats were a bigger part of the meal; I made it less of a concern during this process (and by less, I mean no concern at all). I used to make a very strong effort to get stuff that was lower-calorie, lower-fat, lower-this, lower-that. And somehow, I got kinda fat. Now, after three-point-five months of eating stuff everybody tells you is bad, I’ve lost weight. Close to 20 pounds. The wife and I had both been told previously that we had high cholesterol (despite the fact I don’t bring a lot of high cholesterol foods into the house). I haven’t had a test yet, but she has recently, and her cholesterol was markedly down. This despite the fact that we’ve upped our cholesterol intake somewhat significantly. Lots of eggs, butter, and the raw milk is… well, a thick, full, whole milk. Oh, and a thing about eggs — eggs continue to be proof that nobody knows what the fuck they’re talking about when it comes to nutrition. A single egg contains almost the amount of cholesterol the American Heart Association says you should have in a whole day. Sounds bad. Except, as it turns out, nutrition and how our bodies process food is still an ongoing mystery, as evidenced by the constant leak of “new information” around food. For example: eggs have lots of cholesterol, but eggs also have a compound that helps you break down that cholesterol. It’s called lecithin. And yet, the myth that eggs are a karate chop to your heart persists, and will persist. (Oh, and never mind the fact that our bodies actually produce and require cholesterol to function properly, just as the body requires fat to operate properly.)
4. Vegetables Are Fun! Jesus, I sound like some kind of PSA. Shudder. Anyway. Veggies are good stuff. You can do fun things with vegetables. Fruits, too, though it’s vegetables that are more versatile at the dinner table for obvious reasons. I’ve bought a lot of vegetables I’ve never considered before. Hell, just this weekend, I bought tomatoes. Tomatoes. If any of you know me, you’ll know that me buying tomatoes is like a vampire buying bulbs of garlic. Tomatoes squick me the fuck out. I like tomatoes in things. But tomatoes raw, or on a sandwich, gives me the vapors. I’ve been able to overcome most of my food aversions by now, all excepting tomatoes and eggplants. I wouldn’t even buy or handle tomatoes. Just last night, though, I took the tomatoes I purchased, and I roasted those little red bitches in the oven with garlic, onions, oil and herbs, and then I used my immersion blender to turn it into a damn fine pasta sauce. Vegetables are some versatile critters. I bought cabbage. Okra. Hull peas. Swiss chard. Escarole. Mustard greens. Plums (fruit, I know, but so is a tomato, so shut yer trap). This is stuff I’d never buy, and never cook with. It’s been a hoot.
5. Vegetables Are Fun, Part II: Son Of Leafy Greens. You go to the grocery store, you get spoiled, because everything is in season, all the time. At the Farmers Market, you can only get what’s in season, so it varies your dinner table more than a little. I like that. I like that I can’t get asparagus now. It makes it special, then, when I do get it. (If you had told me, ten years ago, that in the future I’d get excited about fucking asparagus, I’d have kicked you square in the snack pouch. I either have a brain disease, or I’m entering adulthood. Then again, adulthood might just be a brain disease, anyway.)
6. Some Things Are Worth Buying This Way. Pasture-raised eggs taste eggier. Pork from the pork store tastes… well, porkier. Bread that someone baked today is a billionty times better than bread that came in a bag and might’ve been made in, I dunno, 1989. While I don’t know that I’ve noticed a significant difference in the taste of vegetables, I know where they’re coming from, and I know they haven’t been preserved so they survive a trip from Chile or something, and I know that buying locally means that someone local gets the cash. (Local fruits, though, do taste better than what I’ve bought in the store.)
7. Then Again, Some Things Aren’t. It’s likely that I haven’t found the proper purveyor yet, but I haven’t found chicken to be worth the overwhelming cost. Also, since I don’t have a root cellar, I’m eventually going to have to go back to buying veggies and fruits from the grocery store, but that’s okay. Stick to the margins of the store and you’re a better eater, I think. Local butter wasn’t much better than store-bought butter, taste-wise, though you might decide to stick local to try to avoid some of the potential additives.
8. Processed and Overprocessed = Different. Any food taken out of its original state is processed. Cooking is a form of food processing. I buy local-made ketchup (drool), and that’s obviously processed. So are the breads. So is the olive oil I buy locally, which uses olives from three different countries but is pressed locally (and is way more delicious than what I get in the store, f’reals). Overprocessed foods are a different matter, and are what line the shelves of your mega-super-market. People are up in arms about high fructose corn syrup, but then are happy to wolf down foods that have “hydrofecal ethyl-sodium iglootimate,” or “Nyarlathotep #9.” If your food has to go through a dark wormhole to be blessed by the Outer Gods, it’s probably overprocessed. If reciting the ingredients list on a box of cereal summons an imp and binds him to the Breakfast Aisle, it’s probably overprocessed. If one of the ingredients on the list is a bezoar that will reportedly cure the Bubonic Plague, it’s probably… well, you get the point.
9. My Farmers Market Brings All The Hoity-Toity Fuckheads To The Yard. Actually, the market we go to isn’t bad. But I went to another local one a month or so back, and I lost count when trying to tally up the Mercedes, the Audis, the Lexuses (the Lexii?). String beans were five bucks. A bunch of rich-yet-curiously-dirty hippies were selling these disgusting “raw chips” (think “taste and texture of a screen door”) for like, all the money in my wallet. Lots of khaki. Anyway. You have to know when to separate out the fuckheads from the non-fuckheads, and know that some markets will see significantly higher prices because of the faddishness surrounding the “new food consciousness.” Remember: you can always stop at one of those farm stands on the road. You will find cheap, cheap, cheap vegetables. Green beans for one dollar? Yes. Potatoes, onions, corn, for one dollar? Yes. In this way, it’s economical. Speaking of economical…
10. It Isn’t As Expensive As I Thought. Early on, it was, because I was like a kid in a candy store. I just bought and bought and bought, because — hey! So much new shit to try! I want to eat that! And that! And ye gods, that! Over time, I pared down my shopping list and developed a routine. I’m a pretty big mathtard, but from my crude finger-counting it looks like at the end of the day we’re not spending more money than I did at the grocery store in a given week.

I decided I wanted savory. I looked online for recipes, and I wasn’t sold on any one recipe, but saw lots of good individual components.

So, I set to the time-honored tradition of “Making Shit Up.”

The result? This.

Savory Blueberry Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 carton fresh blueberries (2-3 cups)
• 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup honey (I used orange blossom, locally produced)
• 1/2 cup of berry jam (I used blueberry jam, also locally produced, but I think you could use any kind of berry)
• 2 cloves garlic (minced)
• 3 Tbsp aged balsamic vinegar
• 3 Tbsp butter
• 2 Tbsp dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• pinch of salt
• pinch of rosemary
• pinch of sage
• pinch of thyme
• pinch of cayenne pepper
• pinch of salt

Preparation:

Soften the garlic in the oil (small to medium saucepan). Not long. 30 secs, minute, whatever. Don’t burn it.

Put all the kids in the pool; everything but the butter. Oh, on medium-high heat.

Let it boil.

Cut up the butter into cubes, stir it around. Melt that shit down.

Then, set to simmer. Let it reduce for 20-30 minutes. Stir often enough, don’t let it get goopy on the bottom.

The blueberries will macerate in the liquid. It’ll break down really nice, and it’ll get a really sweet, but slightly salty thing going on.

I poured it over chicken, but really, it’ll go over whatever you want. Frankly, I think it’d be better over pork chops. On the side, we had pesto quinoa, and the pesto was good, but particularly salty (a danger with Parmesan cheese, I may have used too much?). I made the pesto tonight with almonds (I’ve made it with pine nuts, walnuts, macadamia nut-cashew, and now, almonds). The best is macadamia-nut and cashew, together in the mix. Yum. Yeah.

Next time, I might throw some shallots into the mix, but I used my last one yesterday.

For the most part, this sucker counts as one of my “fresh table” experiments. Honey, local. Blueberries and the jelly, local. Olive oil, locally produced (though the olives obviously aren’t; they’re Spanish). Butter, local. Garlic, no, other spices, no, vinegars, no. Everything else counts, which is a pretty good sitch-ee-ay-shun.

(Oh, real quick: head on over to Jet Pack. New stuff there from Wood and Will you’ll wanna check out.)

So, I wanted to make dumplings.

But, I didn’t have the time to go out to the grocery store, and the grocery store is generally verboten. Generally.

So this is what I cobbled together, and I’ll note right now that I cheated a little bit– I did use prepackaged wonton wrappers, which is a no-no, I should’ve made my own. But a guy’s only got so many hours in his day for goddamn dumplings. Don’t yell. Anyway, here’s what I had on hand, and what I did with it.

Ingredients

Half pound ground pork

Half pound ground beef

Wonton wrappers

Picked peppers from the farmer’s market (enough to comprise half-a-jar, or maybe one whole pepper cut and brined)

Sesame oil

Salt, pepper, cornstarch, ginger, five-spice

What I Done Did

Take all that crap that isn’t “wonton wrapper” and chuck it in a food processor. If you want amounts, okay, fine. A “pinch” of the spices, two TB of the cornstarch, two TB of the oil. Oh, also throw in there a splash of the brine from the pickled peppers.

Blend until it makes an oogy paste.

Then, I do the Good Eats method of perfect potstickers — each wrapper gets a TB of meat-mix, wrap ‘em up like little coin purses, fry ‘em in a leetle bit of tempura oil over medium-high heat for two minutes, then toss in a splash of chicken broth or stock to loosen them up, cover and cook for another two minutes.

Pull ‘em out, and do the next batch.

What I Done Did After That

Well, ate them, obviously, but before that, you need a dipping sauce. Mine’s never as good as the Chinese restaurant’s, but oh well. Last night, I did equal parts soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine vineg — I’m sorry, what’s that? I didn’t have rice wine vinegar on hand, like an idiot? Oops. So I went ahead and used pear-flavored white balsamic. Turned out nice.

Plus, then I did asparagus and spinach in the same pan with oil, salt, pepper, a splash of soy. Not the pan for long; just until the Popeye fuel wilts.

Then, we ‘et ‘em. Chomp chomp chomp. Yeah.

• I haven’t been to a grocery store in just over a month. I have been to Target, where early on I bought some Archer Farms organic milk and their coffee. This practice will end, I think.
• Was doing the Farmer’s Market twice a week, which is (ha-ha), unsustainable. We have two easy ones locally, but it’s too much work to do both, and since both are relatively near to one another on separate days, it means I’m suffering a needless overlap in vendors. So, instead, I’m just going to hit the bigger, awesomer market on Sunday, and mid-week I’ll hit the “Blooming Glen Food Alley,” which has four places I can hit: Blooming Glen Caterers and Pork Store, Tussock Sedge Farm, Bolton Farm Market (which is a store, not an actual vendor-based farmer’s market), and Pasqualina’s Italian Market.
• Been eating whatever vegetables and fruits are local and in-season. Which means I’ve had to cook a lot of asparagus, yes. I’ve had to deal with the asparagus pee-smell, also yes. But, we’ve had some great spinach, watercress, cilantro, zen greens (a type of mustard green), and lately potatoes and hull peas. Oh, and strawberries. Farm-fresh strawberries are the way to go. Also had strawberry-rhubarb pie for the first time. High-five, strawberry-rhubarb pie. You’re a new favorite.
• I now have milk vendor options. Flint Hill Farms does raw milk. Yes, raw milk is apparently a loaded gun full of crazy bacteria. Then again, go ahead, open a store-bought jar of peanut butter, and wonder, will it punch my guts with salmonella? It might. Raw milk, after a few weeks, hasn’t harmed my wife, and it hasn’t harmed me. It’s legal, it’s certified, and the people at Flint Hill are lovely. Also: Bolton’s has milk (pasteurized) in glass jars, which is satisfying in a weird way to have that clinking, clanking sound.
• An odd thing: while at the Saucon Valley Farmer’s Market, I met Sean and Shannon of Java Queen, a coffee hut in Hellertown. They get their roasted beans from a roaster in Upper Black Eddy, which is coincidentally a guy who happens to be my mother’s first husband. Sean and Shannon are actually related to the first husband. And their coffee is some of the best I’ve ever had, no joke. So, once I’m off the Taget stuff, I’ll buy coffee from them. It’s not locally-grown, obviously; go ahead, try to grow coffee here, it’ll probably taste like someone poured burnt urine into your cup. But, it’s roasted locally, and organically, and it’s a stone’s throw from family (who knew?). (Oh, and my mother is still friendly with the first husband, it’s not like they’re mortal enemies or something.)
• Meat’s not tricky, really. Only tricky part is bouncing from vendor to vendor, store to store. Which expends gas, which increases my carbon footprint, which… well, fuck that, I’m not trying to save the earth. I’m not. That’s not my goal. I’m simply trying to eat better and pump more money into a local economy whenever possible. I’ve found pork and chicken with ease, and I’ve got access to beef but haven’t taken advantage of it, yet. I’ve bought duck. I haven’t bought bison or game meats, but have access to them.
• Now, cost. Is it more expensive? It has been, yes. By almost twice as much, I think. Now, part of that is my fault. In addition to buying produce and meat, we’ve also been dipping into other “farmer’s market” items — locally made jams, jellies, honeys, meads, barbecue sauces, breads, pies, and so forth. If I was really devoted, I’d make all this stuff myself (except me and baking, so far we don’t get along), and that would save me some green. (The stuff is really crazy delicious, though, I’ll add that.) But that’s where price is generally killer. Home-made jam is so far about twice as much as the store-bought stuff, though it’s about three times as tasty, so, worth it? Probably, but not for people on a hard budget. The stuff that matters, though, is actually cheaper. A lot of produce is cheaper at the farmer’s market — asparagus for $2.39/lb. is better than most grocery stores unless a sale is going on, and they trim the woody ends at the market so you’re paying for less weight. Strawberries are a bit pricier, but most other produce is genuinely cheaper. And the pork at the pork store is cheaper than pork at the grocery store, and really, about a hundred times tastier. I’ll have a hard time going back to grocery store meats; pork actually tastes like pork. It’s stupid, but true.
• One exception to this, and it deserves its own bullet point, is chicken. Happy Farm, a local vendor, raises pastured chickens, which is different from “free-range” chickens, because Big Ag has kind of ruined the latter term. They can legally call their chickens “free range” by basically keeping them in a little barn with a dirt floor and then opening up the barn doors to a small meadow, and the chickens don’t go, because the chickens are afraid and stupid. “Free range” legally just means “access to the outdoors.” Pastured, on the other hand, means they’re raised outdoors. Of course, Happy Farm’s pasture-raised chickens are extremely expensive. Chicken breast for $13/lb? Holy fucking fuck. I can buy ol’ Perdue for $2.99/lb on sale. Thankfully, it looks like other local purveyors might have different, lower prices–eggs, however, are awesome when pasture-raised, and while more expensive, are totally worth the small bump in price.

So, that’s that. That’s where we’re at. I’d grade us at a cool 78%, which is a nice C+, and we’re getting better. Food is more enjoyable, and cooking has oddly been less challenging, not more — paradoxical, but there you have it.

All right. Gotta run. Yard sale time.

• As you’ll see by the image, we had an oothica in the yard, affixed to one of the branches of our crepe myrtle. Yestermorn, that sucker hatched, vomiting a tiny tide of a hundred-plus praying mantids. I am hopeful that this is the Brood of Stinky, Stinky being the one name for about three mantids we had flitting around our yard last year.
• Script-work continues apace. Had a good call last week with one party, and will likely have a second call later this week with another party.
• Got in 90% of the drafts for World of Darkness: Mirrors. Happy so far with what I’m reading. Very interesting stuff. Makes me want to run a game.
• Was slapped with two rejections today. Well, strictly, I guess one isn’t formally a rejection so much as, “You did not win this short story contest,” but really, it’s the same thing. Publication is always a contest. You win by being awesome, or you lose by being less awesome than somebody else. Mostly, I take rejection in stride. Mostly, I like it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it’s like battle scars. Proof of effort. A latticework of bloodied honor. I’m good now (in part from some kind words from Filamena over Twitter), but any time you get a rejection, it’s hard not to experience that internal twist, that twinge like you have a case of Cancer of the Certainty, a slow carcinogenic nibble at your ego. Again, I’m over it. But it does make me ponder if I really feel like going through the work to get short fiction published. I like building an audience, but these days, the short fiction market is woefully ill compared to five years ago, which then was ill compared to five years before that, and so forth. The pay rates are pretty meager; equal now to what they were 10 or 20 years past. One option might be to try to build an audience by releasing this stuff free, or on a very el cheapo “buy-me-PDF” approach. Then again, I might just fall down and nap in my own sick. Wait and see! dun dun dun.
• The Fresh Table Experiment? I’d give myself a C+ so far, maybe just a C, I dunno. I’ve been good with going organic, but last week I missed both farmers’ markets locally because it was a nutty week. Plus, we have a ton of food in our pantry and fridge that remain “not-so-farm-fresh” (which sounds like an advertisement for Farmer’s Eve douche product: “Mom, do you ever feel not-so-farm-fresh down there? My vagina smells like plucked chicken!”). Tomorrow, I’ll hit a market, see if I can’t course correct a little. For our anniversary, though, we did eat at a great farm-to-table joint in Kennett Square: Sovana Bistro. They have a “100-mile” section of their menu.
• Finally, I’m making progress on the new-old novel. Five-k over two days, which is nice. I’m rewriting it to match the script adaptation I did, and, on a bit of a risk, I’m writing it in the dreaded present tense. I find that it gives the narrative a fresh sense of urgency.

• First, Blood Drive is now available. This is an SAS (Storytelling Adventure System) PDF for Hunter: The Vigil, in-theme with Hunter: Night Stalkers. You could run it as a mortals story, if you were so inclined. The story’s a bit of a departure from the expected. In it, you attempt to protect a vampire — a pain in the nuts albatross named “Dino” — from some enemies he doesn’t tell you about in an effort to carry his dead ass halfway across the country. He’s got information. He’s got what you want. Do you protect him? It’s meant to be high-intensity; something of an adrenalin rush.
• World of Darkness: Mirrors is now unformally announced. Let me continue with the unformal announcement here: the book exists! I’m developing it! Aaaand, that’s it. I can’t say more. I can only say, this’ll really get your attention if you care about that sort of thing. Plus, we have a mega-ultra-bucketload of great writers on the book. You like Wood Ingham, I know. You want to make out with Matt McFarland, apparently. You think Stew Wilson and Malcolm Sheppard should form a crime-fighting team. This is all good news gospel.
• I’d mentioned several blog posts back that I had this book that was unfinished, and I adapted the material into a screenplay. The screenplay was done, and made a number of changes to the plot. I went back and looked at the unfinished novel, and am surprised to find I actually kind of enjoyed reading it. So, I’ve begun to readapt my adaptation, er, back to novel format. So far, so good.
• Had another good call with Awesome Producers Of Mostly Unannounced Project on Monday. Sat down on Tuesday with writing partner to hammer it all out, and the ideas, they came-a-flowing. It’ll move us into what I feel will be a very strong fourth draft of the script. Kicking this shit into high gear, son. Save your children, because this script’s going to rock your face. It’s going to spit in your eyes. It’s going to stuff money in your mouth and kick you down some steps into a vat of boiling bat’s blood. It’s going to give you a handy under the table with gloves made of velvet and demon-skin. I dunno. I’m happy with it, is what I’m saying.
• Yesterday, made dinner with primary products entirely nabbed from the farmers’ market. I roasted a whole Muscovy duck at 425F for 15 minutes, then dropped down to 350F at about 15 minutes per pound. So, hour-fifteen or so. I seasoned it pretty simply: salt, pepper, Herbes de Provence, and quartered lemons stuffed inside. So, duck = good. Gravy = not so good. I had to dress it up more than I wanted, and even then, ehh. Good thing the duck was delicious all on its own.
• Next, roasted asparagus with toasted Panko breadcrumbs. Pretty easy, and ganked from a Good Eats broccoli recipe. Basically, oven at 350F, mix asparagus in a bowl with salt, pepper, olive oil and 1/2 c. Panko crumbs (toasted in oven for two mins), slap on a cookie sheet, let it go for 30 minutes. Very good.
• Finally, the real winner-winner-duckfat-dinner, sauteed watercress in chili oil. The hard part is getting all those watercress leaves without using the woody stems. But after that, get the chili oil hot, pop in diced garlic for like, 30 seconds, then watercress for a minute. Wilts like spinach. Tasty like butter dripped between an angel’s boobs. Plus, watercress has a fuck-ton of vitamins and minerals. It also makes you a superhero with laser eyes and a bulletproof chin and a hypnotic penis.
• Speak-a-duck-fat: I have duck fat. In a container. I will use it as a delicious lubricant for eggs and potatoes and other good things. Also, the house still smells of duck fat, even now, 12+ hours later. This isn’t yet a bad thing.
• We have raw milk. We will probably drink it tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow whether it kills me, or magically heals me of all my ills. Raw milk is, of course, at the center of a libertarian discussion, and is a pivot-point on the argument against factory farms and super-big agribusiness. I just want to know if it tastes good.
• I have been married for three years as of yesterday. The wife still doesn’t know what a tardcart I am, so let’s not go and tell her, okay? Keep this shit on the down-low. She has no idea that she’s way too good for me, way too hot for me, way too everything for me. Soon as she finds out she’s basically eating food out straight out of the garbage can (that’s a metaphor, in case you think I’m feeding my wife actual refuse), my goose (er, duck?) is cooked. Anyway. This weekend, we zip off to the Brandywine Valley to look at flowers and drink wine and stuff.

First, the ingredients list can be puzzling. Look deep and you’ll find ingredients that will clean rust off metal or are used to make chemical foams and plastics. Second, the FDA cannot really verify the ingredients in every single item, it being a woefully underfunded and understaffed organization (one that doesn’t really even have a legal mandate to restrict unhealthy foods other than making blanket “recommendations”). Third, the ingredient chain can be so complex that even the companies that make the products don’t really know where all the ingredients are coming from, draping a giant blanket of ignorance and unaccountability over the whole affair.

So, what to do, what to do?

Welcome to the Fresh Table Experiment.

The experiment will be this: over the next three-plus months, I plan on shopping predominantly at local farms and farmers’ markets. I’m not going to be a total Nazi about this — some foods are foods I just can’t buy locally or are foods that I am unable to produce at my home by mixing ingredients. I can’t make my own soy sauce (well, I guess I can, but I’d rather not), so that’s something I’ll have to buy at the grocery store. If I want to put jicama in a salad (like I did last night), I don’t think I’ll find any local purveyors of the so-called “Mexican Turnip” (or yam bean!). I’m not going to make my own cereal or rice noodles, much as I could.

But, this will still allow me to rove free of the grocery store more often than not. Today, I went to the Saucon Valley Farmers’ Market in Hellertown, and I came home with a big bag of ingredients there, all locally-grown: a whole Muscovy duck, watercress, arugula, locally-roasted coffee beans (though, no, the beans themselves aren’t local, shut up), stuffed hot peppers, blueberry jam, a shoo-fly pie, leeks, asparagus, and more.

That’s just a sampling. Locally, I can get pork, chicken, duck, lamb, and bison for meat. Dairy’s easy, too, and I have an order in for raw milk from Flint Hill Farms. I can get all manner of vegetables, including some you might not expect (tatsoi, for instance). Fruits are mostly what you’d expect — no citrus locally-grown, of course, but apples, strawberries, and the like. Even the stuff I can’t get locally, I can get at local, organic markets (I can buy organic oranges from various local markets).

What’s the reason for all this craziness? I’ve a handful.

Okay, one, as I’ve already stated, I don’t know what’s in the foods I buy. Hormones, pesticides, chemicals, additives, preservatives, dyes, and a mega-shit-ton of salt, probably. It can’t all be bad, and local stuff can’t all be good, either — but, in general, local generally means “organic.” I can go to the farm. I can see what’s up. They make certain claims, and they’re verifiable. I buy a can of soup from the grocery store, I have no way of verifying anything about that can of soup other than, “Is it soup?”

Two, and this leads in from one, is that more and more, we’re seeing food-borne health issues cropping up. Salmonella, e.coli, and the like are running rampant. Plus, you have a growing body of evidence that suggests that many of our health issues are the result of ingredients buried in food. I’m not crazy enough to believe with absolute certainty that the rise of autism or the obesity epidemic is somehow the result of hormone-laden beef or high-fructose corn syrup. But I do know that I’m not smart enough to know of all the potential effects, either. Now, does buying local and organic somehow end the possibility of food-borne illness? Hardly. But it does mean that, if I get sick from eating something, I can knock on somebody’s door.

Three, and this leads in from two, I don’t trust corporations. Maybe I’m nuts, but look around. The recession exists because corporations have run roughshod over the common man. I know that “business ethics” will forever be apart from “ethics in general,” but as of the last ten years, it really feels like we’ve reached a breaking point of unregulated mouthrape by big companies. Now, we know the FDA is underfunded and understaffed. We know they don’t check everything, and are actually only capable of checking a fraction of what happens. The FDA doesn’t even have any real power. So, isn’t it safe to assume that large corporations — like, say, food-producing corporations — might have their own interests at hand above and beyond the interests of the common man? Local farms are far more desperate for your dollar. They fuck up, they’re out of business.

Four, this’ll allow me to cut back on processed foods.

Five, it’ll help me get my kitchen-fu on. I’ll need to up my game to combine these ingredients in delicious ways. Yesterday, I made a mango viniagrette. Just made it up on the spot. And it was tasty. It was like an angel ejaculated on my tongue. Quick recipe:

Dice a mango

Slice up some shallots

Chippity-chop a red pepper

Toss all of that, plus a dollop of honey, a dollop of Dijon mustard, one garlic clove, and 1/3 cup of rice wine vinegar, into a food processor and puree the unmerciful shit out of it

Drizzle in 1 cup of olive oil as it purees

If it’s too thick, toss in a little water

Done, boom, game over, pour it over salad, and enjoy the sweet taste of angel semen.

Six, it pumps money into the local economy. Plus, I come from farm-stock, and farmers are good people.

Seven, it might help me lose weight (though this is not the immediate hope — I understand that by adopting some local-only foods, I actually might intake more fats, but ideally it’ll hold true that processed foods really can be a weight-gainer).

It’s funny, because up until recently, the “local food” arena was hidden in plain sight. I drive by farms, not really realizing that I can actually just… go to them, and buy things. I found a number of local farmers’ markets and their schedules and vendors. I found a site called LocalHarvest that only multiplied my awareness of what lurks around me (and you can use it too — just plug in your zip code, and go).

Again, I’m not going to be crazy about this. This is a baby-steps thing. I’m not going vegetarian or vegan, but slowly I’m making changes to the way we eat. I think it can only be healthy and economic in the long run.I recognize that the grocery store is not my enemy, but I do need to be smart when I wander, zombie-like, through its colorful labyrinth.

I’ll post updates here as they’re needed (meaning, when they’re interesting). I’m gonna cook the hot shit out of that duck later this week, for instance, so you can be sure I’ll blather on about the successes and failures of that process.

Wish me luck, readers.