Obscure Farmer's Markets of Illinois - An Ongoing Vital Information Feature

Hillside, LaGrange Park

I am an invariant picker-upper of free magazines, handouts, fliers, guides, directories, community newspapers and the what-not, as long as its (mostly) (almost always) free. My wife is forever now a believer in this practice after I grabbed a Jewish community paper once in LA and found an ad:

"To our Jewish Friends, Get 50% off admission to Universal Studios"

Or something like that. This free thing saved us nearly 100 bucks on a family outing. Some kinda local news thing introduced us to Danny's neck bones in Melrose Park and Danny's got us to Abruzzo's, and now we eat at Abruzzo's about once a week, and now my wife is picking stuff up too. The stuff she found yesterday, I cannot even remember what type of organ it was, some West Suburban version of Grit, had an ad for the Hillside Farmer's Market. And since our best attempts on Saturday and Sunday did not yield any strawberries, we decided to make the short trek from Oak Park to Hillside for the market.

Vital Information is here to report back this was not one of our area's better markets. There was one vendor. I actually know this operation, or I have seen it before at other desperate-ish suburban farmer's markets. I'm have not performed a very detailed background investigation, but there is some type enterprise that purports to sell produce from "Southern Illinois". I can recognize them by their signs. They have a range of produce that is not fully seasonal to our area, the stand in Hillside had both tomatoes and jalepenos today amongst other fruits and veg. The quality is such that it has the look of an actual, non-industrial outfit, but not the look of a farmer with a passion like Farmer Vicki of Genesis Growers. If this was not enough to scare me away, the prices were pretty high too. Want more, after all of that, they did not have strawberries either. The only selling point of this market, really, was the chance to buy food outdoors. To be nice, I did buy, a box of sugar snaps and a box of grape tomatoes, together for $5. I will not go back, but if you do want to see for yourself, the web info is here.

My wife and I were market un-sated, let alone bereft of strawberries. I grabbed the Blackberry and whipped to my handy-dandy every day a market guide. I had thought there was a market in LaGrange Park or LaGrange not too far from where we stood, and the Agrihappenings page confirmed--anyone know the qualitative difference between LaGrange and LaGrange Park? I expected a bigger market. LaGrange is an upscale, older community, kinda like Oak Park with a bit less enthusiasm for Obama. I expected a Nichol's. I did not expect a Skibbes. Or just a Skibbes. Still, if it was gonna be one farmer manning one stand, I'm glad it's Mr. Skibbe, one of my go-to guys at the Oak Park Farmer's Market. Truth be told, it was one woman manning one stand for Mr. Skibbe, but she had all of Mr. Skibbe's produce: several types of lettuces, green onions, rhubarb, asparagus and gosh darn yes, strawberries. (For the sake of completeness I will also note that they had clearly marked Kentucky tomatoes.) We purchased two quarts of strawberries.

If I was in need of Michigan fruit, as I happened to be today, and I was in LaGrange Park, as I happened to be today, I would stop by this market--location and other info here. Otherwise, there's a reason these places remain obscure.

How to Keep Your Food For the Week

So, You Wanna Eat Local

So, you wanna eat local. Most likely, your food came over the weekend when most farmer's markets operate, CSA boxes show up and Pollanesque Peapoders like Irv and Shelly's Fresh Picks make their deliveries. For most budding locavores, this will be your only shot at locally grown food for the week. Make it last. Last year, my friend Farmer Vicki of Genesis Grower's let me re-publish her insight into storing fresh vegetables. It's been my most popular post. I've expanded that post for this year--note, this post deals with storing the fruits and vegetables of the general farmer's market season; I will cover winter storage in another post later on this year.

First Things First

The goal is to make your store of food last until at least your next food arrives, to ensure that you have local food to eat all week. To do this, you need a food plan, an eating plan. It's not so much as laying out your menus for the week, but taking heed of which of your foods you need to eat first. Eat first the foods that will not last. Put better, eat the foods that need to be eaten first. These are foods that lose quality soon after harvest, and the quicker you can get them from ground to table, the happier you palate will be.

• Asparagus
• Corn
• Peas in all forms, but especially shelling or English peas
• Fava or broad beans
• Strawberries
• True "new potatoes", recognized by their peeling skins

Second

Will you eat all your food this week? For one thing, let's hope your local-ism extends beyond the farm fresh season; for another thing, many CSA boxes are meant to give more produce than you can eat during the week, with the idea that you will store. I'm not gonna make a treatise now on food preservation. In the short term, remember that freezing is generally easy. Fruits can be frozen with no processing; vegetables need a short blanch before freezing. Also, coincidentally or not, the foods that need to be eaten then fastest are also the foods that freeze the best.

The Burden of Local

Get it and forget it is not the mantra of the localvore. Stuff must be done to a lot of local food after its purchase to ensure its vigor for the week. DO remove all leafy tops from root vegetables: carrots, radishes, turnips, beets, kohlrabi; DO NOT wash other fruits and vegetables if possible. Dirtier food will generally stay better. If you cannot produce your meals Rachael Ray style, you will at least be rewarded with better tasting food.

In or Out

Most but not all of your local food will go in your fridge. Do not refrigerator the following foods

• Keeper onions a/k/a dry onions - Before storage, make sure that the onions are dry. Often in CSA boxes, the onions get wet inter-mingling with the other produce. If I find damp onions, I keep them on some old newspaper for a bit. Store these in as a cool and dry a spot as you can.
• All potatoes except true new potatoes - Like onions, make sure the potatoes are dry before storage. Potatoes stay best in the dark as well as the cool.
• Peaches and their variants such as nectarines*
• Plums*
• Apricots*
• Winter squash
• Tomatoes !!

*Put these in the fridge if they appear to be getting too ripe/mature

Berries including strawberries and cherries stay best in the refrigerator but taste best if served at room temperature.

Do refrigerate the following foods:

• Spring onions, scallions, knob onions and the like
• Sweet onions/summer onions - These are onions characterized by a flimsy and moist skin; these types of onions are often also sold with their stems attached.
• New potatoes
• Green garlic and other fresh garlics

Battle Your Fridge

Cold storage makes it possible for your food to last all week. Cold storage can also ruin your supply of local food. Here's a couple of tips to best use your fridge.

• Bag your food - Little local food comes pre-bagged, and the smart market shopper refuses any bags from their vendors. Still, just because you got the food that way, does not mean you have to keep it that way. If you can put the food in your refrigerator's designated vegetable bins, it will generally be safe. For foods not in the bins, in my experience, the harshness of the refrigerator can be mitigated by keeping your food in bags or containers. For many items like root vegetables, the bags can be sealed to provide a bit of necessary moisture.
• Hydrate your food - Space permitting, some foods benefit from being kept in water (standing in water, not submerged). These include asparagus, watercress and all herbs.
• Know your cold zones. In most refrigerators, the top shelf will be the coldest, and the coldest part of the top shelf will be the back corner. Only put foods up there that can withstand the chill, maybe even some frost.

Eat Well, Eat Local

My parting thought is that regardless of how well you tend for you food, the great thing about local food is that it will last much longer than conventional food. My family's experience is that produce will stay viable and taste great for much longer than predicted in your typical cook book or produce guide. This is obviously, because food is arriving at the Bungalow so much sooner than it would arrive at most people's houses.

Psst, Wanna Buy a Fresh Porcini

Saturday!

The word on the street is that fresh porcini's will be at the Lincoln Park Farmer's Market located at Lincoln Park High School, Armitage and Orchard (7 AM to 2 PM). My peeps tell me that there might also be some at Oak Park (Pilgrim Church located on Lake between Scolville and Elmwood, 7 AM until 1 PM). The sources say that porcini will NOT be at Green City. Good luck mushroom shopping this Saturday.

All information confidential and subject to change. Caveat emptor.

Every Day a Market

Happenings in Ag

By this weekend, a good amount of farmer's markets are going. Several media organizations have put out lists of farmer's markets. The best one remains the Illinois Department of Agriculture's calender of "Agrihappenings." It includes markets in Chicago, the suburbs and downstate. Moreover, it includes, markets run by a variety of groups. You get what for a lack of better word I'd call real farmer's markets as well as French Markets and their ilk. There are the markets run by the city as well as markets run on their own, such as the Logan Square Farmer's Market. You might be surprised how many markets operate each day around the state. This calender will help you find out.

And if you want to call out your favorite market, want to taut an unsung market, or otherwise let the world know about a market other than Chicago's Green City, drop me an e-mail (address to the right) or leave a comment.

Eat Frozen Meat

Rick Bayless Sez So

I think this is gonna be the week of blessings and curses on the blog. Which is it, then when it comes to local meat? Except for some Amish raised chickens I can find here and there, my family and I are pretty much restricted to getting our meats frozen to stay committed to local meats. A...a curse angle, at least, as I have said many a-time, is the hassle of frozen meat. It puts a bit of a damper on spur of the moment meals, and means we plan our Friday night dinners by mid-week. Are for losing quality, I've not found it, and now Mike Sula has got Rick Bayless to weigh in:

"I think the freezer is a really good tool," he says. "We went through this period back in the seventies, eighties, when people would say if you had anything frozen in your place, you were an awful restaurant. And if you're talking about frozen prepared foods, or choosing frozen ingredients when you could get the best stuff fresh, then, yeah, that is awful. But we have huge freezers. . . .If you know how to use a freezer and you understand that you can only freeze certain things, and you know how to defrost slowly at the right temperature, you can serve great local food all year-round."

They Send Out E-mails

Sustainable Table E-mail 6/4/08

New York City, May 30, 2008—Sustainable Table, the creator of the animated short film series, The Meatrix, is going on the road again, headed to this year’s Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. Founder/Director, Diane Hatz, and Moopheus, the larger than life, trench-coat-clad cow and superhero star of The Meatrix, will bring festival goers an urgent message—“Eat locally grown, sustainably raised foods to help save the environment.” 2008 is emerging as the year of ethical eating. Local food is becoming an important part of the consumer food market as consumers want to know more about their food -- where it was grown, what ingredients it contains, how it was packaged, and the footprint its production left on the earth.

By purchasing sustainable, local foods in-season, you eliminate the environmental damage caused by shipping foods thousands of miles, your food dollar goes directly to the farmer, and your family will be able to enjoy the health benefits of eating fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. Buying seasonal produce also provides an exciting opportunity to try new foods and to experiment with seasonal recipes. And it simply tastes better!” said Diane Hatz, Founder/Director of Sustainable Table.

See here for more about Sustainable Table.

What's Local at Cassie's Green Grocer

Locavoreitis

Just the other day I was telling you how good it was to be a locavore. A bag of fresh porcini mushrooms, lettuce that tasted like something, damnit red strawberries. What I did not mention is that locavorism is a curse too. I have a disease and I have it bad.

See when I walk into Cassie's Green Grocer and find something new, in this case, lamb's quarters; well, I barely pause to look at the price. They'd be in my bag if I was smart enough to bring some of our bags in from the car, but since my wife and I left them all in to go shopping, we just wrapped our arms around the greens to take them out (along with our arugula, cilantro, Trader's Creamery ice cream, baby turnips, peanut butter and Bennison's bread).

Lamb's quarters also go by wild spinach, which rather means it is a weed on farms around here that cooks and tastes a bit like spinach. It's thicker than spinach, with that same velvety quality as nettles that somewhat negates its use raw. They don't need a long cook though. Through the food chain of local, Robin, who I introduced to Cassie, who introduced Cassie to Floyd of the Midwest Organic Farmer's Cooperative, who hooked Cassie up with lamb's quarters from Ackerman Farm of Chenoa, Illinois; who sold them back to me because I have a house full of kale and beet greens and radish tops and 3 forms of lettuce and spinach too I believe, but I must, I absolutely must have some lamb's quarters. I am diseased.

Eat Local Cheese

The Cheeses of Wisconsin: A Culinary Travel Guide by Jeanette Hurt

The Chicago Tribune's food blog, the Stew, points me to what will soon be a key part of the VI library.

How to Eat a Strawberry

Oh, there are ways to eat a strawberry. Array bowls of sour cream and brown sugar, dip. Splattered with fresh made whipped cream. With a tiny drop of the most expensive balsamic vinegar you can afford. These are ways to eat a strawberry. They are not, however, what is vital. Let me tell you.

Foremost, use a local strawberry. Yes! Yes, these harbingers have arrived in our Chicago area markets. There is no comparison to what you can find at an area farmer's market to Well-Pic/Driscoll stuff found at the supermarkets. For a bit of background on this, read Russ Parson's How to Pick a Peach. Supermarket strawberries are bred for a few reasons, mostly shipability and extended growing seasons. Local strawberries just are. They are here when they grow, picked when they are ripe, bleed red like they are supposed to, and taste, yes, taste, like you remember. Vital rule number one: eat a local strawberry.

Now, to fully enhance your local strawberry, pay attention to this rule. Ditch the fridge. Vital rule number two: don't eat a cold strawberry. If your strawberry can never hit the fridge, you are in the best shape. If you have to hold your strawberries for a day or so, refrigerate them, but take them out well, well before you plan to eat them. Think of them like you might think of cheese. When the strawberries come to room temperature, like cheese, you start picking up flavors, nuance, that is deadened with cold. Perhaps, a Driscoll strawberry would have some taste if served at room temperature.

Nah.

Things They Don't Show You on TV Cooking Shows - Part 1

Fresh Pasta, Key Limes



First, when making fresh pasta, using the Mario Batali enforced well method, dig that well deep. I measured out my flour, 3 1/2 cups, formed my mountain, pressed down a crater and starting cracking the necessary five eggs. About at egg three, they were running down the sides, like a Hawaiian volcano. I had as much egg on the sides of my board as I had within the flour. I tried spreading the flour over that way to catch the stray egg. That did not work too well. Eventually, as the dough was hardly coming together, I I trenched a new hole and fitted a beaten egg in that. By a lot of folding from there, I managed to wet things up. Still, next time, I believe I will follow Lidia B's directions and make the pasta in a big bowl.

For a first attempt at fresh pasta, I was mostly pleased with my efforts. I'm a snob in these type of things, and every thing I have read about fresh pasta is that there is a significant better-ness to pasta rolled by hand on a wooden board than pasta rolled with a machine. So, I was gonna be a rollin' stone of a pasta maker. My wife warned me. "It's really hard", she said. She warned me off. We argued. We agreed that she could be brutally honest in her assessment of the pasta if she said it in a nice way. "Good first try."

Second, did you know how intense key limes could be? As I mentioned last week, we found these gloriously yellow key limes on Maxwell Street. We have been using them in our recipes but it's taken some adjusting. Last Friday, my wife needed some citrus for her carrot kugel (pudding). She used what she thought was the equivalent amount of these key limes. The color was carrot but the flavor was all Joe's Stone Crab. Deborah Madison has a recipe for asparagus with citrus butter. She notes the affinity between asparagus coming into season and citrus just ending its season. I squeezed three key limes for the recipe, much less juice that was called for, yet I still had to add an extra tablespoon of butter to achieve some type of balance.

Anyways, I am out here cooking, letting you know what they don't tell you on your TV.

Vital Book

Local Flavors - Deborah Madison

Mike Sula in last week's Reader highlights several new cook books (with one, Terrine by Stephane Reynaud high on my list as I just ordered a 1/2 hog from the Wettstein's farm). Sula needed to add a few more favorites and used his blog to enhance his list. (My guru, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall makes the supplemental list; Sula cites his River Cottage Cookbook, although the one that I'm liking more right now is the River Cottage Family Cookbook, also out.)

Must be a hot media item, as the New York Times also reviewed new cookbooks this weekend. They too felt it necessary to include a web-extra list of books. And buried in there, for the computer savvy, one can find the most important, the most vital book of the season, Local Flavors by Deborah Madison.

The New York Times does not waste a lot of words on this tome:

"A paperback edition of an influential cookbook first published in 2002. "

Me, what I would say first is "thank god this thing is back in print." See a while back we gave a way our edition as a present before we even made use of the book, with the promise that I would buy a new one. Then, for over a year at least, we found it outta circulation. We picked up the new edition over the weekend. As far as I can tell, there is no new editorial content. Yet, for a book six years old, it remains more current than ever.

Three reasons: a natural organization of foods that is not tied to the ideal California-Tuscan notion of seasonality; recipes that are simple, useful and based on accessible ingredients; and bits of wisdom sprinkled throughout its pages. Any time I open the book, I find something that I wanna make. Something I can make. The nuggets interspersed, I feel like I could have written those myself, although my wife thinks it insulting that I dare compare myself to Ms. Madison.

Randomly, I open the book. On page 67, an herb salad, the recipe like so many in the book is not so much an order but a request. You can mimic the combination she presents or follow her general directions to make an herb salad with whatever you have around. Page 98, she reveals that Alaska can produce a farmer's market as good as anywhere warmer. Page 116, she finds that Birmingham, Alabama can be as limited in offerings in late September as Chicago can be in early May. Page 201, 3 beet caviar with goat cheese; page 267, Concord grape tart.

This book is filled with the type of things my wife and I cook, how our family eats. As you put more local on your table, use Local Flavors to guide you.

It's Good to be a Locavore

Oak Park Farmer's Market - May 31, 2008

It's good to be a locavore because it's going to be a very good year at the Oak Park Farmer's Market. I chatted briefly with the River Valley Mushroom people, and they echoed my beliefs. They were very happy to put a stand up in Oak Park this year.

Know what that is? Unami central. Genuine porcini mushrooms, with a few morels in the back. I mean morels are pretty darn cool, but fresh porcini's. See those that often. I had to spring for all of them, that's about $20 worth of glutamatial glory. I'm thinking fresh pasta, Wisconsin Parmesian (Antigo) and the porcinin's sliced thin.

I did not see Sandhill Organics last week. I was a bit worried with our new mushroom bounty and the woman farming Forest Park that we left these guys to fend for themselves. Nope. A lot of lettuces that looked like this today at $2.50 each as well as chards and radishes both in rainbow assortments.








Farmer Vicki's Genesis Grower's was not gonna let you ignore her and her stuff.

Neither was Nichol's Farm who applied their trademark variety to the green onion business, kept on pushing the old 'tatoes and caught up on the wild watercress craze.













Of course rhubarb and asparagus were everywhere.









A very good year indeed. See you next week, when the market opens at its regular time, 7 AM; Pilgrim Church, 460 Lake Street (between Elmwood and Scoville) and runs until 1 PM.

Be a Locavore, Put More Local on Your Table

Discussion at Kendall College, June 14 2008 - 10 AM

The Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance was kind enough to provide me a lectern on June 14 to discuss all things local. Details of the event can be found here. Hope to see you all there!

Eat Seasonal

Rhubarb

The Epicurious map of seasonal foods got a few things right, for Illinois. Rhubarb is in season. Be trendy, make sweets from vegetables. Things eaten recently in the bungalow made with the season's finest.

Rhubarb Muffins

Pre-heat oven to 375

1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 cup white sugar (we used vanilla sugar)
6 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
2 1/2 cups rhubarb, finely chopped
3/4 cup dried cranberries
3 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs vanilla
Turbinado Sugar

Cream butter, sugar, eggs and buttermilk. Add rhubarb and cranberries, do not over-mix. Whisk together dry ingredients in another bowl. Slowly add dry mixture to wet mixture. Scoop into greased muffin tins. Sprinkle turbinado sugar on top. Bake at 375 for approximately 25 minutes.

Rhubarb Shlump or You may call it Grunt

First, make a rhubarb compote:

3 cups rhubarb, chopped
1 quart sour cherries (frozen)
1 1/2 cup blueberries (frozen)
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
Juice of 2 limes
Pinch of salt and cinnamon
Shake of fresh ground pepper
1/2 Cup of water

Combine all ingredients but for the blueberries in a large saucepan. Cook over medium heat until rhubarb starts to breakdown. Add blueberries cook for a few more minutes.

Make a batter:

1 cup flour
2 tbs sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbs melted butter
1/2 cup buttermilk

Combine dry ingredients. Add melted butter. Slowly add buttermilk to form a wet but not too wet batter.

Grunt while you do this:

Have the compote at a gentle simmer. With a teaspoon, form walnut sized dumplings from the batter. Drop into compote. Cover tightly with foil. Cook approximately 15 minutes until dumplings are firm.

With Shakey-Shakey

Pre-heat oven to 350. Put how ever many stalks of rhubarb you have in a baking pan. Cover with a good amount of sugar, probably 1 cup. Pour in enough water but not enough to drown rhubarb. Bake at 350 until very soft, about 30 minutes. Parcel out rhubarb into bowls while still hot. Pour over shakey-shakey (condensed milk).

Everything You Read About Seasonality is Wrong

Epicurious's Seasonal Ingredient Map

I'm sure Gemma at Gaper's Block had the best of intentions when she directed her readers to this Epicurious guide to what's in season. And not every guide to seasonality is wrong. I mean I think this one has it pretty close. I have not, however, seen the mainstream food press ever get it right. The people who put together these guides typically get two things wrong. First, they assume stuff is in season around here well before it is. Second, they miss things that are in season when they are in season. Epicurious and about every other such guide does not guide the Chicago area locavore very well.

The Epicurious guide has the following in season in Illinois NOW, May: cherries, peas, cucumbers (!) and potatoes. Of these the only ones you'll find in Chicago area markets now are potatoes, and those potatoes you might see are last year's potatoes, still viable from good storage. Of course, for Wisconsin, the guide states for May:

The growing season is currently dormant here;
opt for items from storage, such as apples, pears, and root vegetables.

Funny when I was in Madison a few weeks ago things hardly seemed dormant (and not a pear in site).

Our guardians of foodie discourse do not pay attention to the neat things popping up on our lands in the Spring such as nettles, morels, ramps, watercress, sunchokes and scallions. Likewise, they forget that farmer's can grab their over-wintered crops for us such as parsnips, spinach and carrots. Most glaring, they have no idea that farmer's around here use just a wee bit of technology to goad Mother Earth into all sorts of crops such as Farmer Vicki's baby bok choy (gosh that was good), beets and kale. They make you look for what's not here and fail to see what is there.

The other problem, obviously, is that Illinois is a long and varied state and the climate in Little Egypt hardly matches what is here in Chicago. For all I know, farmer's markets in Cairo are awash in peaches right now. Still, a map such as presented by Epicurious should be representative of the entire state, certainly where most of the people are. Most of the people shopping farmer's markets right now, in this state will not find a cherry, not a local cherry.

They Write Press Releases

Chicago & Midwest Wine Show

Did you hear that Paul Virant will be on Iron Chef America? Well, how about this, Virant's restaurant Vie features Illinois wines on its list. Wanna know more about local wine?

Prospect Expositions, LLC is answering the need for a comprehensive wine exposition serving the vast and affluent Chicagoland marketplace by launching the 2008 Chicago & Midwest Wine Show this fall.

In cooperation with the Illinois Grape Growers & Vintners Association, the show will be Sept. 27 – 29, 2008 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, 5555 River Rd., Rosemont, Illinois. The event will cater to both individual wine lovers and those in the trade such as retailers, restaurant/bar owners, caterers, food and beverage directors, chefs, sommeliers, and others.

Show hours will be: Saturday, Sept. 27 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. for public and trade
Sunday, Sept. 28 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. for public and trade
Monday, Sept. 29 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. for trade only

“We have found wine shows to be successful in other markets but no one is serving the Midwest like we plan to with our unique event,” says Lawrence Skaja, President and Founder, Prospect Expositions, LLC. “Our Saturday through Monday event will give wine lovers and those in the business of selling or distributing wines an excellent opportunity to experience an expansive assortment of vintages from around the world and talk with producers. This will all be done in an upscale ballroom setting with a complement of accessories and equipment of all types.”

The Saturday and Sunday events will have special highlights including live music, food tastings from area restaurants, and other hors d’oeuvres. Individual tickets will be sold in advance via the event website and through beverage retailers, restaurants, and other sources throughout the Midwest. Advance tickets are $55/per day for regular admission and $145 for VIP admission which includes Saturday-Sunday admission plus complimentary valet parking both days. On-site prices will be an additional $10 for one-day tickets and $20 for VIP tickets.

Individual tickets will be available online starting around July 1 and at participating wine retailers throughout the Midwest. Discounted group tickets are available by calling 847-759-6900 around the same time.

Qualified trade attendees will have complimentary admission on all three days with exclusive access on Monday. Proof of a valid state liquor license will be required to register.

"IGGVA is pleased to be a Participating Sponsor of the 2008 Chicago and Midwest Wine Show to help increase the awareness of the consuming public on the varieties and qualities of wines available from Illinois," says William W. "Bill" McCartney, Executive Director of the Illinois Grape Growers & Vintners Association.

For general inquiries, please call 847-759-6900 or email info@chicagomidwestwineshow.com. Complete event details including exhibit and sponsorship opportunities are now available on the official website http://www.chicagomidwestwineshow.com/.

What Is and Is Not Local, Maxwell Street Market - May 25, 2008

The Lime That's Key

I figure any show that's good enough for Paul Virant should be good enough for me, so I've watched a few episodes of Iron Chef America. A Judge Jeffrey Steingarten comment irked me. It was something along the lines of "everyone knows the best pistachios come from Sicily." Maybe great pistachios come from Sicily, but one thing I have learned in local is that great anything come producers who care, who work for it. I bet, I bet for sure, that there's some farmer in California growing "local" pistachios that are as good as anything just plain ol' Sicilian. What I'm getting at, is that when I'm making the occasional non-local purchase, I want to get something that's more than just standard accepted foodie blather, the everyone knows stuff. Or put it this way, I may buy limes all the time, but I rarely blog about limes.

At Maxwell Street, last Sunday, I got limes worth blogging about. Yellow limes. As my wife, the native Floridian will tell you, "everyone knows that key limes are yellow." She, after all, had a key lime tree in her front yard. Yet, you rarely, if ever see yellow limes in the markets around here. And I'm talking about key limes that will show up at Mexican markets and even Trader Joe's. See most of the limes that hit are markets are pulled from the tree so far before ripe you never see their true colors. That's what I'm looking for in my non-local. At Maxwell, they were $1 per basket, about 15 limes per basket. Hopefully you can find them next week at the market, but given the seasonality of these limons, I wonder if you will.

I also wonder if you will be able to walk into the Whole Foods there, on Canal, and find some local asparagus. Local just aint easy to find at Whole Foods these days. Still, this Whole Foods on this Sunday was selling Michigan asparagus for $3.49/lb; I thought that seemed pricey, but at checkout my bundle came to less than a pound. They made a great addition to that night's fried rice.

New Maxwell Street Market run up and down Canal, near Roosevelt from 7 AM until 3 PM every Sunday.

What Took So Long

Oak Park Farmer's Market - May 24, 2008

Oak Parker's love a block party. I have no actual statistics to base this on, but I believe that every block in Oak Park (but for the main streets) has a block party. Some have more than one. I have no statistics to base this on, but I bet you that at every block party at some point, talk amongst the neighbors (some who only talk this one time per year) will be about Village government. It won't be pretty. Me, my pet complaint used to be the gobs of money we spent on our recent library. I've changed that to the gobs of money spent on our recent Public Works building. Still, for all the complaints, I love my Village because as my family and I walked back to the parking lot on Saturday morning, we saw the Village Clerk, who we know well. We asked, is their free parking today (we had not paid the box), and she said, "I have no idea."

I had no idea how the pre-season market would hold. Oak Park had decided to open a limited market two weeks earlier than they normally opened. I saw one of the Nichol's guys a few weeks ago and he seemed psyched about the earlier market. Then, I read somewhere that it was for the sale of bedding plants. Me, I go to the Oak Park Market for donuts. I go for food to eat now. I no want no bedding plants. I can report back. Yes, there were bedding plants. Tomato plants galore. Food too. Donuts three. In fact the donuts were selling so fast that powdered sugar was out. See, when the donuts are too hot, the powdered sugar melts. High demand negates powedered sugar. When you're down to plain and cinnamon, you know your donut will be warm. Good I think.

Most but not all the vendors showed for this trial-run. All brought food beyond plants even if most of the food was rhubarb or asparagus. Nichol's also had old potatoes (more on that anon), some arugula, green garlic that I wanted more than anything this day and spinach. My pal Vicki was at another market, but her Genesis Growers had a full table with baby bok choy and mint and rosemary and scallions, which surprisingly have not been in the CSA box. I ordered a 1/2 hog (farmer talk) from the Wettstein's and was wowed by the new-to-the market Catalina Farm, which is farm in name only as she is putting the local in local, farming a small plot in Forest Park. She had a name for it. Swib or something like that. I'll take better notes next week.

There will be a next week, this abridged market that did not seem so abridged. Then, it's on to about twelve weeks of the best market in the Chicago area. You should find me there most Saturdays, usually before 8 AM. I hope to see you there too. The Oak Park Farmer's Market meets at Pilgrim Church 460 Lake Street (between Elmwood and Scoville). Market hours are 8 AM until noon for one more week and then 7 AM until 1 PM the rest of the season.

What's Local at Cassie's Green Grocer

Back From the Honeymoon and Better Than Ever

It was about when Cassie was done ringing me up that I mentioned that I had come in just for some herbs. Cassie replied by snipping me some parsley and cilantro from the plants growing in her window. I would have still blogged 'bout Green Grocer. I mean the herbs came after she told me to help myself to a few edible flowers that were surprisingly not selling that fast but before she also filled a (compostable!) bag with a sample of baby mustard greens. I would have blogged. What a great place Cassie has going.

I mean can you walk into any other store in, and or near Chicago these days and find bunches of wild ramps, giant stuffer morels, deep green watercress? All local. Or French breakfast radishes, the size of D batteries, 1/2 red, 1/2 white; asparagus successfully kept fresh through vertical enclosure in a water bath? Local. Now, I skipped all of that but for the radishes. I did get strands of sage and chive, both with their flowers; a tub of rosemary (quite generous for the price) and baby arugula that bites like its teething. I at least admired the other salad greens.

I did not take a full inventory of all the cool products there yesterday, but I espied plenty of cool. Cool included local eggs, Trader's Point Creamery cottage cheese, and local/artisianal tempeh from Mu Tofu.

See, Cassie's local includes much that is not at Green City Market or any other farmer's market. Yet, even if you are a farmer's market junkie like me, you have to welcome and appreciate a shop like this. I really want local to be there when I need it. I really want to be able to supplement with a thing or two that I need now. Green Grocer is servicing these needs. Go visit.

Eat Local Cheese

"Not that he’s trying to discourage mold. Inside the cave, resting on cedar shelves, 11- and 38-pound wheels of English-style cheddar wrapped tightly in muslin are covered with splotchy, gray microbial colonies that after months of aging help the cheddar develop the exquisite caramelly flavors that can send chills jolting down the back of your legs."

There are a lot of great cheeses from the Midwest, but gosh darn if I had to pick an absolute top-top favorite, a first amongst a lot of firsts, I would probably go with BluMont Dairy's Lil' Wil raw milk cheddar from cheese master, Willi Lehner. Mike Sula tells Willi's story in this week's Chicago Reader. Willi is easy to find nearly weekly at the Dane County Farmer's Market just around the corner from where the State Street carnival hits the capital square at the BluMont stand. Have him autograph a block of cheese.

I will add, or stress, or whatever, that as good at the cheese can be outta the fridge, it can only fully be appreciated if you let it come to room temperature.

Listen to Me

More Thoughts for the Illinois Food and Farm Task Force

To paraphrase a great local writer, will this VI guy ever shut up.

• Turn locally grown beans into commercially sold dried beans
• Turn locally cured/smoked hams into deli ham
• Turn locally raised turkeys into deli turky
• Create incentives for local food companies like Vienna, Mars, etc. to use local raw materials

Listen to Me

Scroll Down

On Tuesday, I went to a Listening Session for the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force at Hull House (props to Hull House too, btw). I started my report of the event early Wednesday but got distracted. I saved what I started as a blog/draft. I did not realize that the post, when done, would go below the other post I had made yesterday. Readers who go to the top of the blog may not see the newer post. Since getting a better local food system matters a bunch to me, here's the post. Read.

Farmer's Market News

Assorted tidbits of note:

• The hardest woman in forage, the sidekick to the superheros who hang at the AquaRanch, the person who was one of the few things between me and a diet relying mostly on potatoes this winter, Robin "Winter" herself, is running a stand this market season for the Midwest Organic Farmers Co-op. She'll have frozen (Illinois) farm-raised tilapia and cheeses and vegetables grown in this state. See her Thursday's at the Daley Plaza Farmer's Market. What she has leftover she'll be selling at the new Woodlawn market. Tell her I said to stop by and say hi.
  
  
• Also at Woodlawn are my latest heroes, the farmers from Windy City Harvest. The best advertisement for their work on the West side of Chicago is the fruits of their work. I mean the vegetables of their work. Picture-perfect, tastes even better.
  
  
• It's Farmtastic. That's the clever tag for the new multi-cultural farmer's market running this year in Maywood on the first and third Saturdays from June through October at St. Eulalia Church 1851 S. 9th Avenue, Maywood. They have a nifty color flyer that I'll post as soon as I get a computer ready version.
  
  
• Jim Vitalo, who many farmer's market denizens know as the "Vinegar Guy", is spearheading a new market this season, on Thursdays. The market will be at the Maywood VA Hospital. I'll have more news on this market soon.

Listen to Me

Report from the Soupbox

As I previously posted, the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force held "listening sessions" yesterday. The session leaders informed us that only a small fraction of the food grown in Illinois went directly to consumers in Illinois. Moreover, Illinois consumers were spending a host on organic foods and about none of that came from from food grown within the state either. The result, as we were told, the real ghettos around here were the boarded up and declining rural communities of Illinois. The Task Force hopes to rectify that by ramping up, tremendously, the local food system. Eat local.

The listening session gave a bowl of soup, a delicuous fresh baked roll and a soap box of 120 seconds to who ever wanted. Beyond the time limit, there were no rules. One person read a poem that turned soup into sex. Another person had a poem, with no connection, as far as I could tell, to food, period. Jason Hammel, from Lula's in Logan Square made some very good points. Others railed against GMO's and wanted to give it to the Man. I planed on just being a listener myself, but when most of the talkers seemed 10,000 feet in the air, I thought it would help for someone to speak from the ground. I wanted them to hear from someone eating local. I asked for non-frozen meat and better hours and more available food. If I really had myself collected, and perhaps could talk fast, I would have given this list:

• A central, year-round, daily market, somewhere triangulated between Milwaukee's recent Public Market, the Ferry-Terminal Market in San Francisco and Cleveland's Westside Market.
• Markets open in the afternoon and evening
• More winter markets
• Farmers growing for winter markets. In other words, producing surplus quantities of potatoes, root vegetables, apples, pears, onions and the lot then storing them at optimum conditions. These crops will be released over the course of the Winter.
• Farmers growing in the winter using hoop-houses and other technology--lettuces, greens, herbs, maybe even berries.
• Fruits and vegetables grown for ethnic markets.
• Local food served in schools.
• Mills grinding local grains into the full range of desired grains including white flour.
• A viable commercial fishing industry, including river fish and Lake Michigan fish.
• Pecans grown at one tip of the state and hazelnuts grown at the other; in between a revitalization of the native black walnut crop.
• Artisanal consumer (that's consumer) products derived from local corn and soy including tofu and cooking oils.
• Clearly marked sugar derived from locally grown sugar beets.
• Efforts to ensure the survival of our honeybees.
• Marketeers selling a range of foraged crops including watercress, ramps, paw-paws, wild burdock, dandelions and plenty of mushrooms.
• And last but not least, local meat that is not frozen when I go to buy it!

Today's Iron Chef Hype

Another Vie Review

Good example of why Paul Virant was asked to compete on Iron Chef America at this Flickr site. Well done Renka!

LAST MINUTE - CHANCE TO BE HEARD - TODAY (MAY 20)

Sorry for the last minute-ness of this, but I only got the word on this late yesterday.

The Illinois General Assembly created a "Food & Farms Task Force to further the cause of local eating in this state. In other words, trying to better hook up non-commodity farmers in the state with consumers of their food. The Task Force has scheduled “Listening sessions” at various locations statewide to gather recommendations from the public on production, infrastructure, public access, public education, and economic benefits that can be derived from Illinois farmers directly serving the needs of their neighbors. They need input!

There are two listening sessions TODAY May 20, 2008.

- Hull House Museum on the UIC campus, 800 S. Halsted, 12noon to 1:30pm, as part of their Rethinking Soup series (free soup!)

- DePaul Center, 1 E. Jackson Blvd., Room 8005, 3pm to 5pm, http://www.chicagofoodpolicy.org/events.htm

My wife and I are going to attend the session at Hull House. And a trip to Hull House is never complete, no, with a trip to nearby Manny's. We plan on being at Manny's around 11 AM and then walking to Hull House. We would love for anyone to join us at this last minute call to action (or for an early sandwich).

Here's the link to the Task Force for more info. Those who cannot attend in person can submit written comments at any time prior to July 15, 2008 to Debbie Hillman, dlhillman@sbcglobal.net (or call 847-328-7175 for mailing address).

Eat Good Bread

Bennison's at Pastoral

I asked a food savvy friend recently where you could get good bread downtown. His response:

"Where can you get good bread anywhere in Chicago?"

I'm not fully in agreement on that. There is a list, not a long list, but a list of good bread in Chicago. At or near the top of that list is Bennison's. Anyone in the Loop should know that Pastoral, 53 E. Lake, sells Bennison's bread. Become French, take home a baguette tonight.

Pastoral carries a pretty good selection of local cheeses. Today they had a wide array of Brenda Jensen's Hidden Springs Creamery products, both the aged cheeses and the fresh tubs. They are also now carrying Trader's Point Creamery yogurts, but not the one my wife craves/needs, the low-fat vanilla.

Latest in Iron Chef News

Fine Take on Vie

Want some Iron Chef news. Cora beat Faulkner last night. See, in anticipation of my culinary hero being on Iron Chef, I watched Iron Chef America last night (that and the fact that there was nothing on the DVR or the TV that my wife and I could agree on, why she was not interested in an old Minnesota Fats video I recorded beats the heck outta me...). I'll say this, most of the food they made looked awfully good.

Anyways, in other Vie news, Gary Fine, takes his excellent keyboard to Vie this week. He brings up the noise factor and it's a legit point for sure. My wife and I have commented to ourselves that Virant and his family did a wonderful job at Vie making the place appear posh without throwing a huge amount of $$ into the design/decor. We always thought of it as money well spent as his resources have been used otherwise quite well.

Eat Local is Green

Go Green Team

Over the weekend, my family and I volunteered for the Green Team at this year's Green Fest at Navy Pier. An outfit from North Carolina called Seven-Star marshaled the forces. Our mission: keep the landfill bound dumpster at Navy Pier to the barest. Our tactics: Mom and Dad went with the frontline troops, guarding four sets of garbage bins (and God help anyone who put compostable* material in my solid waste bin); the kidz went with the brigade in the rear. Although us frontliners tried to ensure that all garbage got neatly divided, those in the rear followed up to ensure it fully happened. Together, the Green Team/Seven Star put dry paper one place, metals and plastics 1-6 (although there was one number I believe that even we could not take-on) in another place; all food waste, plus all manner of bio-containers, plus soiled paper went to a third place (to be composed by some master industrial composter) (fact: Green Fest only served vegan food so that all food waste could be composted--meat in compost piles attracts the wrong kind). We did not stop there. We stacked and bundled the cardboard. We reconned for Cliff bar wrappers that would be sent back to Cliff, same with the juice boxes from Honest Juices. We isolated E-waste, with those dreaded heavy metals, for render-safe procedures (fact: yes there was some). We succeeded brilliantly, we can proudly proclaim mission accomplished.

And this has to do with eating local. Well, there's nothing like being knee deep in goo-goo muck to get you hep on waste. Clearly, the best way to reduce and eliminate landfill bound material is to compost. Remember, space is not the only landfill issue. Food waste, rotting away in landfills, produces huge amounts of methane gas, gas that's just plain horrible for the world. (Wanna whiff, drive the Eisenhower around Hillside, IL). Compost your food waste.

And...and, now we get to the local part. What's left after the food waste. How 'bout the packaging? the bags, especially the dreaded plastic bags? It's not that eating local necessarily reduces packaging, it's the nature of the way that one shops and buys if you are a locavore that reduces packaging. For instance, the bulk of my produce this week came from my Farmer Vicki's CSA box. That's one re-usable box. A few of the products come wrapped. Who wants a CSA portion with leaves of baby spinach spewed all over the place. Still, it is the barest of extra packaging. Compare greatly to the packaging at a supermarket or worse Costco where everything is packaged. Shop the farmer's markets, you'll find the same sort of thing (bring your own bags to schlep the stuff home!).

Want more? Snazzy packaging technology just does not seem to have reached the type of people you buy from when you buy local. I have tons of local jellies in the Bungalow. Not a single one is packaged in a PVC upside down squeezable container. When I buy berries or the like, it nearly always in cardboard, and when it's not, it's in balsa wood. (Fact: the farmers gladly will take back your used containers.) The actions of buying local encourage green.

The Green Team marches on.

*Leading candidate for 2008 word of the year?

Overflowing with Local

The Inventory Update

So, I was walking over to the Green City Market the other day, and who should also be pulling up. None other than market celebrity #1, Paul Virant. I say, "congratulations on the Iron Chef thing." He sez thanks, sez he does not know the exact air date. We both buy a lot of stuff.

OK, now that I mentioned that (hehehe), let's get to the inventory. Last December, I started tracking our inventory of food in the bungalow. The exercise was mostly to show how me and my family were able to eat local all winter through a combination of stored foods and winter shopping. Now, I need to write down the inventory just to keep track of all the food we have.


(Last inventory here)

Ramps - As I mentioned the other day, we have a lot of ramps right now. This on top of ramps in 3 meals last week: spring vegetable ragout, grilled, and in pasta with morels and asparagus.

Watercress - Used as a bed for grilled chicken, some remain.

Nettles - Purchased from a few farmers in Madison. Went into the ragout, some remain--I planed on using some in a stuffing for morels until we ran out of meals.

Mushrooms - Speaking of morels, we got a several good handfuls in Madison, both larger stuffers and other sizes. Also went into the above mentioned ragout and pasta, some also remain, ostensible to be stuffed. In addition to the wild morels, we have cultivated cremini's and oysters from Madison.

Herbs - Cilantro, lovage, rosemary, chervil, mint

Asparagus - Several stalks purchased/provided in the CSA and eaten this week, we still have a bit left.

Keeper onions - 2 more in our CSA box this week; keeping us in stock of onions required for cooking.

Garlic - Like onions, a locavore needs to stock enough garlic for not-so-bland-cooking, and we were able to do that. We still have plenty of garlic. To this store of garlic, we added about six stalks of green garlic purchased in Madison. I love the taste of green garlic, and it contributes strongly to the "spring" flavors in our current cooking.

Dried hot peppers - In talking about the need for stored garlic and onions in cooking, I remembered that I have never noted that our inventory has always included a stock of dried hot peppers, local peppers. Some of these we have dried ourselves, some have come from Farmer Vicki, and some we have purchased in Madison.

Cabbage - There is a head of red cabbage from the winter lying somewhere in the basement fridge; I doubt it will be eaten. On the other hand, from Farmer Vicki's hoophouses, we got two lovely heads of red cabbage this week. These will be eaten soon.

Carrots - Yes

Parsnips - See last report

Potatoes - Used a bunch of red potatoes last week in the spring vegetable stew and grill roasted our remaining La Ratte; that leaves us with about 3 lbs of russets and about 5 lbs of reds. Nicholl's Farm is selling last year's potatoes now in their market stands and I may or may not add some potatoes if we run out.

Apples - There may be crops coming to market but no fruit yet. We have bags of red and yellow local apples, but last week we only ate non-local fruit.

Lettuce - As I mentioned, we bought a big head of butter lettuce in Madison. We ate this during the week. At present, we have last week's CSA head of lettuce and this week's head of CSA lettuce.

Spinach - We bought a bag at one place in Madison then at another place and then we got a bag in our CSA. Lotso spinach.

Arugula - From Madison

Burdock root - 1 lb - No change

Beets - OK, here it comes: we got the beet. God, do we have the beet. We used last week's beet greens, but we did not use the bottoms. Several more beets in this week's CSA, greens included. Many beet.

Kale - No change

Radishes - No new ones, but a few leftover

Turnips - I believe I have been forgetting turnips in the last reports, but we have received several turnips in our Spring CSA.

Misc. - One small bok choi, one large bok choi; sunchokes (just when we threw out the last, we pull some in).

Local Pantry - Cheeses (tons of cheese as a result of being in Madison), yogurt, eggs, noodles, pork, beef, lamb, bacon, granola, grains, milk

What's Local Whole Foods Hamamntashen for Passover Location (River Forest, IL)

Fire Sale

I'm not always thinking about food. Sometimes I'm thinking about blogging about food. Or just plain eating. Or playing computer poker. We had spent a bit of time hanging out at Blue Max Cafe in River Forest waiting for our Farmer Vicki CSA box to arrive. As we were driving away, I announced to my wife that tonight's dinner would include a radish/raw asparagus spread like Bruce Sherman did at Green City yesterday. ( I thought he made the spread with butter but it seems the base was cheese.) Then, she seemed surprised when I pulled into the Whole Foods on Lake in River Forest. "We need bread."

We always need ramps. Their days are fleeting first of all, and second of all, they're pretty hard to find around here anyways. Surely not a ramp at yesterday's Green City Market (if you want to start cataloguing its faults, there's one). Of all places, Whole Foods was our ramp source last year. This year we had not seen any, at least at our standard place. Today, I had the keen idea of asking. It turns out there is a box in the back. They are selling them for 99 cents a bunch!!

We got $19 worth. Some probably will go on the grill; some in meatloaf, my kidz in an act that nearly brings me to tears, have asked for my ramp crusted version again, and the rest my wife is promising to pickle. I have a very good family.

And I'm lucky I was thinking about food today.

PS
In other eat local news at this Whole Foods, they had morels from Minnesota. Not the same bargain, but not that badly priced at $15 for a quart sized package.

Eat Good Food

Green City Farmer's Market 5/14/08, etc.

"It's been eight years since I've eaten fruit"

The League of Woman Voters of Glen Ellyn inaugerated a book club last year. They picked Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle as their book. When it came time for their annual meeting, they needed a speaker. After several reach-outs, the Women became convinced that Ms. Kingsolver would not be available. From who knows how many other choices they found me. I gladly jumped at the chance to provide my eat local, not on the farm, experiences to these recepative ladies. The best line of the night, however, did not come from me. It came from one of the organziers of the event, and it came as we were wrapping up. This woman revealed that for over eight years she had not eaten any fruit. She realized she was not eating fruit because the fruit she was buying just did not taste very good.

When I lectured, I lectured on the benefits of eating local. I talked about food miles, proliferating the 1,500 to your table mantra. I talked about how most local farmers were stewards of their land, using better-than-organic, sustainable practices. How local food, purchased in a CSA or at a farmer's market reduced solid waste because of the lack of packaging. I told how I wanted to support my farmer friends and support the farm economy. Still, at the end of the day, I implored, I wanted to eat better.

This is farmer's market fanfare time of year across the media. The Tribune has their spread and directory today. Gapers Block beat them to the punch a few days ago, but the Chicago Reader was hot to the top over a week ago and should have more eat local stories soon. I know Time Out Chicago's got something brewing. Follow the buzz.

The buzz generally will lead you to Chicago's Green City Market. Honestly, it's not my favorite farmer's market. I mean if nothing else the dulcimer music drives me batty. It's hard to bottle feel for a market, but the Green City Market just does not quite have it. Without cataloguing all my slights and quibbles, let me say this, the feel of the market would be a lot better if the vendors were either lined up all in a row, ala a Parisian street market, say with one collective canopy, or if the vendors made a circle or square of something. It would provide cohesion at least. Maybe it would remind me a bit more of the Dane County market even if that's an unfair comparison. This one aint even close. Still, at the end of the day, it is the most complete market around Chicago.

The vendors are good. Bennison's bakes some of the best breads in Chicago. I related the story to them today of what I heard from an Evanstonian who I had regaled about how good is Bennison's bread. Surprise. Shock. It seems like a lot of Evanstonian's associate Bennison's with mediocre birthday cakes, and the woman selling bread said she's heard the same thing. If the ciabatta I got from them was crisp and short lasting and hardly healthful, the sunflower rye from Dobra's aptly named Delightful Pastries balanced things. Great eating should start with great bread and Green City has you covered there. The fruit and veg people are some of the best in the area. Surely, you should start first with my pal, Farmer Vicki, who today had spinach and baby bok choi's (that caught the eye of the Penisula Hotel) and the long, skinny, early season allium that her and her son argued over which would sell it better "scallion" or "green onion" (Mom gave in and changed the sign to the latter). Nichol's Farm and Green Acres can load you up with the new and the varied. Beth Eccles at Green Acres can provide you with your own watercress motivations, but sadly, she was out of fiddlehead ferns by the time I arrived. Oh, and please do not forget Growing Power who is doing great things in Milwaukee parking lots. I got some edible flowers from them today. If the cheese selection cannot even come close to Madison, the cheeses that are there are very good, especially from Brunkow. The meat counters vary. I had to buy actual spring lamb (a shoulder) today from Mint Creek Farm. I passed on the elk although I liked the tiny taste, and I have more than enough meat still to bypass Heartland.

Don't go to Green City expecting the greatest farmer's market. Do go to begin your eat local quest. It will get you very well started. You would not have found any fruit today but as soon as the strawberries appear, in a few weeks, I guarantee you won't go another eight years.

The Green City Market will run outdoors on Wednesdays and Saturdays until October 29, 2008, 7-1:30. It is located just north of the Chicago History Museum on Clark Street, around 1700 N.

With Watercreess

Let me get a housekeeping matter out of the way. If any of you are coming to this blog for solicitous food porn, you are gonna have to wait. Sure, I did not put up that many pics, and few would qualify as food porn, but there were some. Not for a while. At Looptopia a few weeks ago, while older daughter had the camera, someone stole it. All the text you have to suffer now, until I can spring for a new camera, blame on some all-nighting miscreant.

Too bad too. Last night's dinner would have made a show stopper. Two platters to film. First, a smaller, elongated, octogon-ish, white plate neatly framing about twelve spears of asparagus. A nearly un-natural shade of intense green contrasted with neat ribbons of black grill marks. If this frame would be orderly, composed, the second frame would be a jumble, abstract-expressionist. One of our large wooden, gullied platters overflowing with food. At the rims, logs of La Ratte fingerling potatoes, the grill bringing out their latent yellow properties. In the body of the platter, a mess of locally-raised chicken, grilled to deep golden, with splotches of black here and there. From the photo, you would notice those burnished colors but not really make out the chicken because the chicken was covered with grilled ramps, which themselves were shades of burning green and white. And off to the side of the chicken on the platter, in a little fox-hole I dug for it, the star of the show, the reason for the rest of the food, the watercress.

If it's not egg salad I am working my watercress around, it's a grilled chicken dinner. So French right, watercress with grilled meats. The dripping juices on the platter do make for a nice dressing for the watercress. This watercress, a month into its season, was not nearly as mustardy as last time but had a very pronounced licorice flavor. We will be eating a lot of asparagus in the next several weeks. Before I got too deep into that, I needed at least one more watercress meal. Wish I could have shown you it.

There are No Bad Farmer's Markets

FEDERAL (NOT) Daley Plaza Market May 13, 2008

Update: Good comment the other day about putting in some market basics, and I tried to do that with my report on Green City, but God, I never paid enough attention to the fact that I mis-wrote the name of the market on this post. For the record, the Federal Plaza market is on Tuesdays and the Daley Plaza is on Thursdays.

It's time to bring on the maiden Oak Park Farmer's Market story again. About how when we moved to Oak Park in the Spring of 2000; hit the market as soon as it opened; great donut scare, etc. The punch line, as always, is that the market left us unimpressed and almost lost us to the path we follow today.

Granted the market back then was not what it is like today. No Farmer Vicki. Stands with supermarket produce (how one of these places survives I do not know). One thing, though, has been pretty constant. Little produce at the beginning. It bothered me then. Not now. There are no bad markets.

If a few vendors withstanding below zero in Ann Arbor can make a market, then what was at Federal Plaza today was down right splendid. Asparagus, a lot of asparagus, including expensive stalks from Nichols Farm and purple stalks from Mick Klug, where Chef Virant gets his 'sparagus(maybe Chef Virant will have Mick Klug with him on Iron Chef) [ed. Are you going to stick your Vie Iron Chef scoop in every post?]. It was not all asparagus. Nichol's had last year's potatoes holding up quite well and a few other green things. This market has honey and two bakeries and Stovers canned goods and River Valley mushrooms who were long sold out of morels at 1:30, and Chicago Coalition for the Homeless coffee, which is everything I want in coffee: organic, fair trade and for a great cause; and there were two guys selling cheese, not cheese they made or farmed or had any special connection to, but rather cheese they thought would sell at a market. They had Pleasant Ridge Reserve and a few cheddars. Still, these were all side shows to the asparagus.

What really does a market need about now beyond asparagus. Eat it now. I'd say buy some from each farmer, but that does not really work with asparagus. Asparagus is one of those crops that needs to be eaten fast, now. So, unless some is going into the freezer, don't buy too much. It does, however, freeze pretty well after a short blanch. Makes a nice pasta in January. Get your asparagus. Eat local. Eat seasonally. There are no bad markets.

Mad About Madtown

Mad About Spring

Yes I'm mad. Mad about Spring, mad about Spring shopping; mad over Madison and its farmer's market, mad that I have to venture the two plus hours to Madison; mad over our haul of Spring, the morels small(ish) and the morels large for stuffing; the nettles and then more nettles because the price seemed so good--make money selling your weeds you farmers; mad for asparagus finally here. Mad enough that after finishing my transaction with on of my favorite Dane County meat vendors (for chops), I turned right around and bought a fluffy head of Boston lettuce because I heard him tell someone how this was the ideal time of year for his lettuce. Mad, of course, that Madison is a month in and markets in, and near Chicago we are just about to begun.

The Dane County Farmers Market in Madison went outdoors on April 23. We had plans that day. The following Saturday we had plans and then the one after that too. May 11 was finally a plan-less day. So we made a plan. To Madtown. We like to head out the day before, we get such a deal at the downtown Concourse Hotel through Priceline. Quick aside, I'll tell you another thing that keeps me on the madly in love side of mad in Madtown, the parking. We always pull into a public lot 1/2 block from the Concourse when we get in, then we can leave the car there all the way through Saturday after the shopping--there's been times when I've had to run to the car to drop off the bags weighing us down--and when we leave, $7.

Getting to Madison the night before, we have less must-do's for dinner but too many options for breakfast the next day. A fish-fry is mostly in order at night, all you need to know about Madison and fish fries is that the 'net has both Madisonfishfry.com and Fishfrymadison.com (and the not exclusively but mostly Madison, Wisconsinfishfry.Madison.com) After the highly disappointing Avenue Bar last visit, we hit Kavanaugh's Esquire Club, a Wikipedia version of Wisconsin supper club if there ever was one for this fry. There is only one site devoted to Madison brunch, but we already have so many favorites here. Could it be the piles of food at Mickey's Dairy Bar, Old Fashioned, which I wholly disagree with Mike Sula on it's rated-ness; crispy pastries at Cafe Soliel, Madison even has a better bagel place than Chicago gosh darn-it. The problem is, we can never get past the market.

My wife lasers, always, on Ingrid's LunchBox. She gets the breakfast sandwich with farm egg and horseradish hollandaise. I am advised, don't eat the first pastry I espy. I don't, but the potato donut I finally settle on, about three bakeries in, turns out to be a poor choice, too cold. I really make my breakfast of samples of cheese. Here they are, America's top team of cheese-ists. Willi of Bleu Mont Dairy and Julie Hook and her old, old cheeses and Anne Topham snarls that her knee replacement did not come from stooping to milk the goats ("I don't stoop"). She does, however, make the best fresh goat cheese you can find at her Fantome Farms. You could fall madly in love with this market just for the cheeses.

I am, as always, never fully satisfied. Not satisfied with the lack of farmer's markets in Spring around Chicago. It was not just cheese we bought the other day. It was spinach, the market had lots and lots of spinach, a crop that can be over-wintered and frost-kissed to lovely Northern sweetness. Take that bagged-ifornia. And ramps, that harbinger that's near impossible to actually buy in the Chicago area, the cool weather was keeping them in supply at Harmony Valley Farms. We got 4 for $10. Please, please Sarah and Rick and Abby and the rest of our market maker powers that be, we need markets much earlier. We will probably never get a market like Madison (and I am satisfied with that), but can we get one a little bit more like Madison? At least one with a schedule like that?

I'm mad about Madison. Take the short drive. You'll find yourself getting oh so mad too.

What's Local -- Fresh Farms, Wheeling

Which Supermarket Would You Save

My wife agreed to drive home yesterday from our activities so I could make a few notes in my new beloved toy, the Blackberry. A few notes turned into some fixation, and between me and that, one daughter reading and the other daughter napping, the driver got a bit perturbed. To make up, to make needed conversation, I asked, "what's your favorite grocery store?" It did not work. She stayed mostly perturbed for the rest of the ride home. It was not until this morning that I remembered the right way to phrase the question. "Which, if you had one grocery (or supermarket) in Chicago (area) would you save?"

We love the which can you save game. If you only could eat one sandwich; if you only could eat from one type (e.g., Italian, Jewish) of food; if you could only go to one other state...invariably our, if only one questions lead to which five (at least), but this one was pretty straight forward. See, I was in the thrall of Fresh Farms of Wheeling. I could see some advantages to Fox & Obel as "the one", but because I was, yesterday at Fresh Farms ( especially) it was the one. My wife answered back, "Whole Foods."

I pishawed her. "Whole Foods." Clearly, for all our bitchin', we shop there a fair amount; surely for milk and soy milk and yogurt. Yet, there was nothing that I can think of that is at Whole Foods that is not at other places that we also frequent, at least nothing really necessary so to speak. Moreover, is there anything Whole Foods really does better beyond being convenient to the Bungalow.

"How could you pick Whole Foods over Fresh Farms" I asked incredulously. "Seasonal produce," she justified. "Ah" I snorted. I think she'd even concede she was hasty today. I mean can you walk into Whole Foods this week and get Michigan apples, Wisconsin potatoes?

Fresh Farms, to backtrack, is a Russian geared store, or I should say better, it is a food store geared toward Russian food habits. These habits include a need for zaruska (plural zaruski) appetizers/food to be eaten with vodka or tea/food for light meals. This habit is fulfilled in stores like Fresh Farms with ample stocks of smoked, salted, dried and cured fishes. Fresh Farms has a large selection, although not quite as good as the infrequently opened Renee Gourmet with its slabs of salmon, captain, etc. The habit also means an array of sausages I could never get around to trying en total unless this really was the one grocery store. I tend to get the beef sausage called, with no irony, Jewish Dry Salami on most visits. The habit includes plenty of pickles and yesterday there were two types of cucumber pickles, marinated apples and pickled green tomatoes. Finally, and most important to this post, there is the habit for outstanding dairy. The Russians, like other Eastern Europeans, like their milk. In fact the one thing we had to stop for on the way home yesterday, was milk. I was reasonably confident Fresh Farms would have our kinda milk.

They did. Beyond Farmer's All Natural Creamery milk and buttermilk, they had Farmers All Natural Creamery cheese (first I've seen of that); sour cream (no ingredients!), and cottage cheese (likewise without extra ingredients). They had the Cultural Revolution yogurts from another dairy in Kaldona, Iowa, and the yogurt my wife likes best, Trader's Point Creamery. She really appreciated that they had low-fat vanilla. Butters included Wüthrich European Style made by Grassland Dairy and the best, Clarendon Hills. Those Russians know what I know, to get the best in dairy, get local.

Until I hit some other favorite food market, the one to keep is Fresh Farms, 291 E. Dundee, Wheeling, IL (intersection of Milwaukee and Dundee).

Benefits of Locally Grown Food

Like You Don't Know

The Angelic Organics Learning Center is leading a discussion on eating local this Wednesday at the Chicago Public Sulzer Library in Lincoln Village. Details here.

Next Iron Chef?

As far as I can tell, no other source has picked up on the latest in Vie news. Look here for more details soon. Good luck Chef Virant.

Perhaps the secret ingredient will be hearts of palm...paw-paws? heritage turkey? gooey butter cake?

Inventory

A Big Head of Lettuce, a Small Head of Bok Choi, It's Nice Getting New Crops to Eat

Last night's dinner made good use of what Spring brings. I thinly sliced about five scallion stalks and sweated them in a mix of butter and olive oil (medium heat). I roughly chopped the leaves and stalks from three beets, added them to the pan. Cracking nine farm eggs, whisking them (with a bit of added olive oil), was enough time for the beet greens to cook. I started the scramble on low heat and then turned the stove to medium high after the curds formed, about five minutes. Then, its a diligent swirl, swirl, swirl, getting the cooked edges to the center. Just before the eggs were finished, and I scramble soft, I shredded a good bit of Wisconsin Fontina style cheese over.

On to the inventory. (Last inventory here)

Herbs - Cilantro

Keeper onions - 3 small ones from our CSA box this week, so we are just fine here.

Scallions (a/k/a green onions; a/k/a spring onions) - None this week, but we have plenty still.

Garlic - Garlic holding out. I love congratulating myself for buying enough garlic to last.

Cabbage - Red head still there!

Carrots - Enough that they can go in the kidz lunches again

Parsnips - The problem with all the parsnips we have, it's like the squash and the cabbage, they seem so winter.

Potatoes - Have not touched them in a week or so, but there's still some,

Apples - Picked up some red delicious and golden delicious for lunches at Caputo's

Lettuce - Big head of leaf lettuce

Burdock root - 1 lb - No change

Beets - We are quite long on beets, about 20

Kale - We were saving one from a previous CSA box; this week we got two big bunches. Now we actually have enough for a decent portion.

Misc - One small one regular head of bok choi

Radishes - A...bunch

Local Pantry - Cheeses (actually low on cheese), yogurt, eggs, noodles, pork, beef, lamb, bacon, granola, grains, milk

We're heading to Madison today for morels, nettles, ramps, herbs. I imagine next week's inventory will be a bit larger.

What's in Season - May

Before It's June

As I just posted, May is finally starting to bring some farmer's markets, and with such, the ability to add local to your table gets a bit easier. May is a time for mixed product around here. We can roughly divide our what's available into 4 categories.

The Esoteric
The earliest spring crops are mostly still there, and unlike the last couple of months are entering a bit into the markets. Over at LTHForum, shoppers have found ramps at Whole Foods. Likewise, Irv and Shelly have them to order. Other foraged type crops include morels, garlic mustard, dandelion, nettles and watercress. See if you can find these real spring around Chicago.

The Classics
Yes, local asparagus can be now had. Irv and Shelly have. I know Cassie was working her hardest to get some too. Spring onions ("scallions") are around. Rhubarb should be available too/soon. A couple of other early crops you might find are sunchokes and burdock root. Hopefully, we'll see strawberries.

Greenhouse Crops
Spring farmers like my pal, Farmer Vicki, are working their hoophouses with abandon. Their crops include lettuces, chard, bok choi, kale, carrots, spinach, beets, and the ever present sprouts. Fresh herbs this time of year include cilantro* and sorrel.

Stored Crops/Frozen
Over-wintered parsnips are around, maybe a few over-wintered carrots. In these cases big is better. Michigan apples are sill hangin' in; I saw them this week at Caputo's in Elmwood Park and Cermak Produce in Chicago. Likewise both places had Wisconsin potatoes. There's keeper onions lollygagging around too.

Meat and eggs.

*The saying goes, what grows together goes together, but cilantro is most vexing (to me). It's a cool weather herb and mostly in season around this time of year. Yet, when I think, what does cilantro most go with, and I think salsas, especially salsa crudo's or fresh tomato salsas. These, surely, are not in season for a while. I got a nice bag of cilantro last week in my CSA. Twice this week, my wife prepared on of our favorite cheats, guacamole. The avocado, lime and serrano chile may have been non-local, but at least we found a use for the cilantro! (local onions too).

Get Your Farmer's Markets

Today's Market

This is about the time of year that various publications present their farmer's markets guides. The Chicago Reader scooped the industry with their guide last week. It's not a bad one, being both info packed and a bit subjective. Still, they miss the first market I know.

Today, in Western Springs, you can stop by to congratulate potential Iron Chef, Paul Virant, and you can hit the French Market at the intersection Hillgrove and Wolf. The market, unlike many markets around here, runs in the afternoon, 2-7 PM.

Some may disparage these markets with their mix of crafts and olive (!). Me, I like any farmer's market. Maybe because they're "French", these markets often feature the nuns from the Fraternite of Notre Dame from the West side of Chicago. These nuns bake up some classic style French pastries. The French Markets also often have guys who will amalgamate a collection of Amish goods, get a pie baked with lard; most of the more "real" farmers markets will not have these types of stands as they only allow farmers to sell their own goods. I highly doubt their will be much in the way of seasonal produce at this market. Nearby Vie may have ramps on its menu, but I do not believe their will be at this market, nor will morels another Virant favorite. Still, for all anxious to get to a market, here's your chance.

Vie News

Yes, there's a new menu online, been online for days now. Yes, it'll make you hungry for spring with roasted Klug farm asparagus, Spence farm garlic mustard and ramps, cream of stinging nettle soup and lovage and sorrel playing their herbal tune. That's not my Vie news.

Nope.

Here's the news. The Chicago area's ablest pickler and restauranter most committed to local (at least until I know the Mado people) has also caught the eye of a certain Chairman Kaga or whatever his nephew is named. Hopefully the secret ingredient will be morels. Keep here for more updates.

Eat Good Food

Dancing with Mr. D

My wife first read about the local food centered market, Lionette, in one of our in-room magazines (I think). I'll cover Lionette and some related places in another post.

In looking up the name of an oyster bar in Boston yesterday, I was reminded of yet another post I meant to do. So, listen, I'm totally backlogged on posts. When I promise forthcoming posts on local inventory, what's in season, my recent eat local speech in Glen Ellyn, I mean it. I promise. And I have a couple of restaurants to report on, in the loop; both I generally liked, and both had pretty good fries, but neither had fries that came close to as good as Mr. D's on the far Northwest side of Chicago.

Why, why, why...why, why, why; why it frustrates me so much that people, people, at least the general population in the Chicago area eat so poorly. Eat good food. Is there anything more basic, more satisfying, more hard to find than a good french fry. In another time, in another food board universe, there used to be vehement arguments on "cheap eats" vs. "fine dining". I'm surely a cheap guy, but I have some sympathies towards fine dining. Certainly, as I have focused on local eating, my snobbery towards product has grown. Still, there are things that cheap restaurants tend to do better, that satisfy more, and no more is that demonstrated than in the french fry.

I assume the couple running Mr. D's Shish Kabob (6656 W Diversey, Chicago) are a couple. They have that silent communication, nearly extended conversations of the long married. They divide the labor. Most orders just come over the short counter. She'll get the meat and condiments ready and later take the money. He mans the grill and fries the fries. Unlike, say Gene and Judes, the potatoes are not constantly cut. Rather, you can see the same levered device as Gene and Judes to the side, but there are bins a-ready. He works the two fryer system, aided by a long, square-headed spider, that he uses to both pat down frying potatoes, maintaining submergence, and straining out any fallen bits.

It is rare, really rare, for a better (read more expensive) to take the same care on their fries. Outside Chicago, I know, but so representative, both of the Kellers in Las Vegas, Hubert at Burger Bar and Thomas at Bouchon, produce fries no where close to Mr. D. I remember someone telling me at Bouchon that they just did not have the time to make fries the way Mr. D does. Then, someone else told me, about one of the Kellers, that they got the "best frozen". Hahahahahaha. One of the places in the Loop had those too, skin on, maybe could fool a non-fry freak, but not me. I'm a freak.

A freak for good food. I get most of my good food from local farms. I also like to get my good food from guys who know how to do it. Guys like Mr. D.