The Market Report: To Market: 97th St. and Columbus Ave.

Friday, January 30, 2009

To Market: 97th St. and Columbus Ave.

Was today the wrong day? But no, once I'd gotten past the construction on two corners (it seems a Whole Foods and a Modell's is coming to the Upper Upper West Side), there it was, the 97th Street greenmarket. This morning, attendance was reduced to these good sports:

• CENYC, accepting recycled clothing and other items;
• Locust Grove Fruit Farm, with a long, colorful line of apple varieties;
• Minard Farms Cider, in apple and apple-pear; and
• Ronnybrook Farm, selling milks, yogurts and sweet-cream butter.

There were clusters of leaves still attached to some Locust Grove apples, making them look recently picked — not a possible thing for anyone, given the winter New York has been having.

"We keep them in a room with the oxygen sucked out," said the seller behind the table. And paying for a mixed bag of apples, whose fate still hung between a cake and a pie, I tried to imagine such a thing.

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Your Hostess

My name is Michelle Maisto, and I'm a freelance writer in Brooklyn. Thanks for dropping by. • The big news around here is that after years of tinkering and toiling, writing and editing, waking up early and staying up late, I actually wrote a book — The Gastronomy of Marriage — which arrived in bookstores Sept. 8. (And Sept. 1 in Australia! Where, of course, everything happens before it happens in New York.) • The book, in a nutshell, is a lot of writing about food as way of talking about marriage and identity. I hope you'll let me know what you think.

Food in the News

• 1/29 CALENDAR
In February, the WORD bookstore in Brooklyn is hosting a series of food-book-related events, including an evening of aphrodisiacs and "Venus in the Kitchen" on Feb. 11.

• 1/23 CHEESE BALLS
I absolutely loved the flaming-red, nut-covered cheese balls that adorned so many coffee tables of my youth. Kirstin Jackson, while feeling similarly, offers a few new options — and the cheese ball some respect.

• 1/15 FARMERS' MARKET IN HAWAII
I had no idea jackfruit was so enormous! (Check out the slideshow.) Did you know that more than 100 types of bananas are grown in Hawaii? Let's hear it for bio-diversity!

• 11/27 "CHEAP FOOD IS A LIE"
That's the all-important issue at the heart of this story, about the realities of being a chicken farmer in America.

• 11/25 GASTRONOMY SHOUT-OUTS
Thanks to USA Today for making me a Side Dish (not a bad thing to be, rolling into Thanksgiving) and to Australia's Independent Weekly, for warning that Gastronomy is mouth-watering...

• 11/25 LESSONS IN EATING
Great piece in The Atlantic. God love the Italians...

• 11/10 MEET THE CHOCOLATIER
How about heading to Myzel's Chocolate, at 140 West 55th St., where Kamila Myzel makes all of her own chocolate, marzipan and cookies? She even has 60 varieties of licorice — which is said to be a figure-slimmer...

• 11/4 SAM KASS
Remember this name, Sam Kass. He's not just a handsome feature in the White House kitchen, he's a chef with a bent toward sustainability and accountability — and he has the Obamas' ears...

• 10/29 MICHELLE OBAMA...
...gets down and dirty, harvesting the White House garden.

• 10/28 THOMAS KELLER
Even the big man knows — or, it seems, has learned — that a good meal is about creating memories.

• 10/10 ON NOT EATING MEAT
This week's New York Times Magazine is a special food issue, and in it Jonathan Safran Foer offers this very thoughtful personal essay about our complex relationships with food and how our choices define us.

• 10/6 GOODBYE TO GOURMET
I feel incredibly sad about this — gut punched, indeed. And not just because I had a piece coming out in an upcoming issue...

• 10/4 E. COLI
Stephanie Smith became paralyzed after eating a tainted Cargill hamburger, ground in Wisconsin, that contained meat, trimmings and scraps from as far away as Nebraska, Texas, South Dakota, and Uruguay. "Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli," writes The New York Times. How much of what you eat can you trace to its source?

• 9/29 TOO MANY COWS
A story like this makes me worry for the quality of milk. With too many cows, and dropping demand, it seems even an otherwise well-meaning farmer might choose economics over health.

• 9/2 87 FLAVORS
In New York City, we all scream for ice-cream.

•9/1 CONGRATS, VERMONT!
Ben & Jerry's is celebrating Vermont's new "live and let love" stance by renaming Chubby Hubby for the month of September. Spoons all around! It's time for some Hubby Hubby.

• 8/20 MERCURY IN FISH
Government scientists tested fish from 291 freshwater streams across the country and detected mercury contamination in every single one of them, Reuters is reporting this morning. "More than two-thirds exceeded the EPA-set level of concern for fish-eating mammals," states the article.

Have you read Marion Nestle's very excellent "What to Eat"? She has a whole chapter on just how much fish, and which varieties, is truly safe to consume each month. Rule of thumb: The smaller the better (i.e., sardines, mackerel good; tuna, swordfish, shark bad). The Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium offers a downloadable pocket-size guide for helping diners make smart choices about fish. You can even download the guide specific to your state or region.

•8/17 HERBS
This article is less-than-recent, but I'll take some of the divine JULIA REED, particularly offering advice on what to do with a glut of summer herbs, any way I can get her.

• 8/14 CHAT N' CHEW
The New York Times has a special knack for inserting a yuppie ick factor into even the most benign stories, but this piece on Hudson Valley farmers' markets offers some helpful location information for markets in Dutchess and Columbia counties, as well as a personal peek into the Migliorelli family, whose stands are always great additions to the greenmarkets it contributes to.

• 8/6 LATE BLIGHT
The same fungus that caused the Irish potato famine is wiping out tomato crops — a big income-generator for farmers — across the Northeast. This summer, how about showing a farmer some love and picking up a few heads of cauliflower instead?

This PEACH CAPRESE SALAD from Real Simple, via Serious Eats, is one way to get through a tomato-less summer...

• 8/4 BACKYARD CHICKENS
My favorite details in this story about gaining self-reliance and security by raising chickens at home is that the woman in Washington gets $2 or $3 a dozen for her chickens' eggs, while the guy in Brooklyn charges $6; and that the postal service actually keeps track of how many baby chicks it ships each year (we're up 7 percent from the same period a year ago).

• 8/3 URBAN DESERT
"About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city," writes Mark Dowie in the most recent GUERNICA. But like some other forward-thinkers, Dowie believes DETROIT has the potential to become America's first modern agrarian metropolis.

• 7/20 GOT FRUIT?
Have you heard about the 24-hour Chelsea fruit vendor?

• The wonderful Bill Cunningham focused his camera on the UNION SQUARE greenmarket in this week's "On the Street," calling it a "little slice of New York that's very old fashioned, very special, and very romantic." (WARNING: You may experience pangs of wishing he were your best friend/neighbor/close relative. Just as I always do.)

• What, did MONSANTO threaten to abduct Sasha and Malia? What else could possibly have made the Obama administration bring MICHAEL TAYLOR back into the FDA? Taylor is a former Monsanto attorney and lobbyist, and is the man who covered up scientific evidence of the dangers of genetically modified foods. As Jeffrey Smith writes, GM foods have shown causal relationships to "infertility, accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies and inflammation."

GRIST's Tom Philpott also weighs in on Taylor, and whether he's changed his ways, here.

• Dean Foods is about to launch a new line of "natural" yogurts and milk under its HORIZON ORGANIC brand, Courant.com is reporting. The USDA only regulates the term "natural" for meat and poultry; on a milk label, it means ... whatever Dean Foods wants it to. Organic, however, is a regulated term. Doesn't selling "natural" milk under the umbrella of an organic brand seem intentionally misleading?

• What do you do when your family has been farming sustainably for 152 years, but the field across the road uses a CROP DUSTER to drop ROUNDUP? To start, you give up on your hopes for organic certification.

• Before the end of the year, shoppers at WHOLE FOODS will be able to choose foods free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In cooperation with the Non-GMO Project, Whole Foods is developing an independent, third-party Product Verification Program (PVP), which will result in a PVP seal on products proven — through on-site facility audits, document-based review and DNA testing — to be free of GMOs. According to Whole Foods, the FDA estimates that as much as 75 percent of processed food in the U.S. may contain GM ingredients.

If that seems OK to you, watch "The World According to Monsanto" (and be prepared to feel kicked in the gut).

• BED-STUY finally has a farmers' market! It meets through the summer, on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. It's run by the Brooklyn Rescue Mission, which seeks to bring FOOD JUSTICE and community and economic health to the neighborhood.

• Everyone speaks highly of the New York restaurant PRUNE, but I've never been quite motivated enough to get myself over there. This 2005 F&W article, however, written by Prune's chef and owner, Gabrielle Hamilton, makes me want to run there as fast as my feet will take me.

• I take a certain (absurd) pride in being a lover of bitter greens. MARK KURLANSKY writes, however, that this may just mean that my bitter taste receptors are weak; which, in its way, does knock the ego down a notch... There are also links to more of his excellent articles here.

• Have you heard of CONVERSATION DINNERS, which have both a Dinner Menu and Conversation Menu? "A normal dinner party is actually a pull of many systems. In conversation we tend to default to questions that either have easy answers or that we hope that people will ask us back so that we can tell them how great they are," Sophie Howarth, who organized the dinner through the School of Life, told the author of the article. Would you agree?

• The G-8 pledged $20 billion to helping DEVELOPING NATIONS grow more food to feed their people. But who polices that anything — and anything good — actually comes from their promises?

• Whether you call it a pick-your-own (PYO) or a U-Pick, my favorite part is that the farmers are growing multiple varieties of STRAWBERRIES — Alice, Symphony and Korona, to name a few. When was the last time you saw more than one type at the grocery store? (I wonder, though, whether I'd really pull over at a place that also has a bouncy castle...)

• For performers in the Theatre du Soleil, EATING TOGETHER is a part of the creative, communal process from which their art emerges.

• There's something a little off in this article — was it that I had to read it twice to figure out whether she was in a home or a storefront? or that the lead photo was a woman in an apron at the stove? — but the principles of LIVE CULTURE, and the ways they're teaching people to feed themselves locally, sustainably and for the longterm are certainly commendable.
{Non sequitur: To nod to how the world is changing, "sustainably" isn't recognized by the online dictionary.}

•Have you seen the enormously important FOOD, INC? Gourmet.com has a Q&A with the producer/director, Robert Kenner.

• Does it really make OBAMA a hypocrite to promote good health but then head out for a BURGER? Or is that just the good sense of "everything in moderation"? Call it posturing, but the bottom line is: Five Guys makes a tasty burger.

• I applaud any woman who can stand before this food-obsessed nation and say, "You know, cooking just isn't one of my huge things." And I, too, believe everyday cooking can feel like a chore. Amanda Hesser, however, believes Michelle Obama is missing an opportunity to get more families into the kitchen and cooking together.

• If a food manufacturer is so large, and has so many ingredients in its products that it can't keep track of them and assure you that they're safe to eat, why would you buy their POT PIES?

• "Allotments," or Transition Towns, are a community-based way to create more self-sustaining neighborhoods, instead of waiting for government to provide and look ahead to the realities of the future, as food shortages become more likely. John-Paul Flintoff created one in his London neighborhood. Any takers for Park Slope?

• Ah, it's good to be a Pugliese. Particularly on burrata-making day at the Mozzarella Gioiella factory.

• Who are you to resist the Kogi BBQ truck?

• Could you go without a FRIDGE?

• FISH SHARES can help protect marine species, improve the lives of fisherman, and boost sustainability, explains Aaron E. Hirsh in the New York Times.

The Market Report

Friday, January 30, 2009

To Market: 97th St. and Columbus Ave.

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