“And who doesn’t have a farmers market you can walk to?”

Are you serious? LOTS of people don’t.

“According to research from The Ohio State University (OSU), Columbus, the average supermarket shopper is willing to pay a premium price for locally produced foods.

We suspected people who go to farmers’ markets go there for a reason, because they are willing to pay more, hunt it down and travel there. But we also found that the typical shopper in a retail grocery store is willing to pay more, as well. And in fact, we’re seeing that grocery stores are figuring this out by prominently labeling locally produced food,” Batte said. ***“So we were trying to see if that group of people who shop at retail groceries are willing to pay X amount, and determine what that amount is.”*** For complete details, see the press release on the OSU website.”

Yup – they’re trying to see how much profit there is to be made by the major retailers tapping into this trend for for the consumer to try and feel like a good person by being a “locavore”.

Think about this the next time you pay $5 lb for green vegetables in season, or buy Wal-Mart “Organics” (Made in Mexico, to Mexico’s standards for “organic” – which is how that e.coli got into Flay’s beloved serranos

“Three servings of cheese a day!” (…that’s all we ask…)

(Mmmm-mmm! Says to “serve with grilled sausages and mimosas” – so you get in your daily liquor and hog fat requirement met too – all in one meal! The photos in the real ad are to yummy looking to be missed. I’d suggest that you click-through at your first opportunity…)

(PS: Why does she bother to specify “fat-free milk” in a recipe that includes 2lbs of cheese, a whole loaf of bread and 12 eggs – OMG! – and an entire stick of butter!!!)

“CityMama’s 3-A-Day™ of Dairy: Weekend Recipe
Special Meal: Asparagus-Fontina Breakfast Bundt

It’s the weekend and, in my house, that can only mean one thing: Sunday brunch with friends. Brunch is one of our favorite ways to spend time with friends. If they have kids even better because the kids can play together while they are fresh (and in good moods) and no one has to rush off to put kids to bed. Adults can relax and catch up, kids are off playing-it’s my idea of the perfect end to the weekend and a sure cure for the Sunday blues.

The breakfast bundt makes brunch even more hassle free because you make it the night before, stick it in the fridge, and then bake it the next morning. Sausages, fresh fruit and mimosas complete the meal. I adapted this recipe from one my friend Alisyn Cobb makes.

photos: Stefania Pomponi Butler

ASPARAGUS- FONTINA BREAKFAST BUNDT

12 beaten eggs
a loaf of cubed soft French bread
a pound of grated Fontina (or whatever cheese you like)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
a bunch of blanched/sliced asparagus (you can also use other vegetables or ham/prosciutto or a combination)
1/2-1 cup of low-fat or fat-free milk
salt and pepper

Combine all ingredients above and pack into a bundt pan. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.

Just before baking slowly pour 1 stick of melted butter over all. Bake at 350º for 45 mins.

Would you like a slice? You know you want it…

Serve the bundt with fresh berries, grilled sausages, and mimosas made with fresh-squeezed orange juice”

This “Locavore” thing that Pollan has stirred up has really gone over the top now.

I grew up in Berkeley, where Pollan lives, and I live 10 mins. away still (having been long ago priced out of Pollan’s immediate neighborhood).

I recently was in the midst of researching the availability of stalls at our local Bay Area farmer’s markets – including the much-touted SF Ferry Bldg. market – to sell my own artisanal chocolate truffle ganache in jars, which is made from local, family owned Guittard chocolate (Scharffenberger having long ago sold out to Nestle, and Ghirardelli to Hershey – or is it the other way around(?), and local Straus Family Dairy products.

Anyhoo: Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, other parts of SF – these markets are all run by co-ops, and the stalls are available and very reasonably priced (appx.$40 per day), and all products are carefully vetted to assure their authenticity and local sources.

The Ferry Bldg. Market however, has a website which says to the prospective vendor “We only choose who WE want, if you are asking to be allowed in you weren’t already invited, you can pretty much forget it.”.

The local press has been lately been quite critical – and rightly so – that the SF Ferry Bldg. Farmer’s Market has become nothing more than an overpriced, over commercialized tourist attraction along the lines of Fisherman’s Wharf, and that no real chef – pro or otherwise – would even bother to go there anymore.

Gee: Does anyone even remember “Molecular Gastronomy” anymore? It’s SO last-week.

I agree completely re: people apparently undertsanding it all so little that they think it requires a specialist.

Many people think that their failures to grow tropical plants indoors (of all places) means they can not grow food outside. They also assume that their small outdoor space is a negative.

Container gardening can be fantastically productive.

I kill all my indoor plants (do not even try these days) and I grow exactly zero flowers outside but I grow a mean food garden here in chilly MA.

We eat homegrown broccoli, beans, peas, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, peppers, cauliflower, spinach, mesclun, squash, and later popcorn, eggs from our own chickens and milk from our own dairy goats.

The animals can be a bit advanced in challenges if you do not have some space (the goats I mean – subversive chicken coops with only laying hens should be everyone’s goal! I know, I am an avian revolutionary)

Why have chickens? They are funny for one, lots of character. Number one reason = they turn your kitchen scraps of today into lovely eggs tomorrow morning, easy peasy.

Anyways, if its all hire out to a specialist, you never get in touch with the transformative power that food should have.

Why do we devalue (buy at cheapest prices, allow chemicals, etc) the substance that BECOMES us – our food.

If people want to hire people to do anything, that’s their perogative.

You have extra money and you’re passing it along to someone else who can use it. That’s fantastic.

Just don’t kid yourself that you’re really doing something that’s an improvement over buying food at the farmer’s market, or from any other source of local food.

This is really just people with money to spare paying to feel good about themselves.

And the funny part is that growing vegetables really isn’t that time consuming at all (at least not on the scale you can do in your yard) – I guess that just shows how little people understand about the process, they assume it’s beyond them when it isn’t at all.

That’s not about gardening, that’s about landscapers upselling on the back of the locavore concept. That is really all what that is.

I am not going to tell people to NOT grow their own food. If these faux gardening efforts where the specialist comes in and transplants and plans it all become a bridge to a better understanding of the natural world and how our modern societies are trashing it, then by all means go for it.

Just don’t for a moment honestly imagine that you are an actual gardener or locavore.

No, you are simply a client.

Creating a beautiful garden that feeds your body and mind, its just not that hard. It is more wholesome and filling to do these things yourself than to outsource it to some perceived specialist.

Gardening is something that grows all year long; in the summer it grows under the sun, in the winter it grows in your heart.

You can not become a gardener without actually gardening. Much of growing food is a hands on experience, over time, as the plants, insects, animals, and weather teach YOU how to garden.

None of this happens if you outsource it.

When the time comes when you can no longer afford the specialist, when fertilizer is simply too expensive (its made from oil after all), when you finally see the deep errors of using insecticides, you will be left with no skills, knowledge, calluses, nothing. Your garden will not feed you then.

By all means, be a locavore, let the farmers do it if you must. If you want your food to grow in your backyard, learn what it takes to do it yourself.

Once YOU are cultivated, cultivating your food will be a snap.

Nika
http://www.humblegarden.com – see how our garden grows

Then I thought more. I’m a far better analyst than I am a gardener. As an analyst I earn money, give good value to employer, and support my family. As a gardener I only waste resources including my time. I can kill mint. And it’s not for want of trying or research. (I make kick-ass enriched soil, though.)

We hire someone to clean our house; none of us enjoy it and hiring it out prevents a lot of arguments. We hire someone to mow our postage stamp lawn and clean our gutters; the service already owns the tools, does it faster and more efficiently, and does several houses on the block per visit. I don’t make my own clothes, either.

Hiring personal services keeps others employed – you can’t send this work overseas, if that’s something that worries you. Heck, in the part of India my coworker is from, it’s frowned upon for the wealthy to do too much of their own work when they could hire someone. Hiring out the work employs someone, don’tchano?, who might not have work that day otherwise and is better than out-and-out charity.

So hiring someone to do my gardening would give me fresh veggies, employ someone (maybe someone who really likes the work), I’d know what went into my food, and – in the best of worlds – I could learn from him.

Sounds fine to me, if you can afford it.

I don’t see the idea of hiring someone to garden for you as silly. I can think of several good reasons why a family would do so, most of them relating to the fact that a lot of folks have no bloody idea how to garden anymore, or they work too much at their own paying jobs to dig their own garden, or they have physical disabilities that impair their ability to garden to greater or lesser extents.

I also like the fact that this is good old fashioned job creation, which boosts the local economy, which is good for everyone.

The bigger picture of whether the whole locavore movement makes sense or not is addressed very well by Paul Roberts in The End of Food. It seems like a more well-rounded and inclusive look at the global needs and market force issues than Pollan’s ideology. Here’s a good interview which also has a link to a recording of his speech which was aired on NPR.

http://www.chow.com/stories/11213

Having had large gardens, one can never have enough soil, amendments and mulch trucked in over the years. I’ve always found it beneficial for the garden, and also satisfying to go out and turn the soil, add amendments and plan the irrigation system and spray the trees (with organic preparations).

Expense? There are many ways to handle this. Mess? It’s part of the fun.

If the gardener has a brain in his/her head, having a client change over to a different kind of garden is just money in the bank. The design fees alone are well worth the effort, not to mention that former vegetable gardens make landscapers very happy – no need to truck in expensive soil.

I have containers on my balcony that keep me supplied with marjoram, two kinds of thyme, sage, two kinds of basil, rosemary, parsley, garlic chives, pansies for salads, sorrel, lemongrass and whatever else I can make fit. All of these things freeze beautifully, which I’ve always thought is superior to drying.

All you need is sun, potting mix and containers. Easy.

Are puppy trainers, nannies, and pool cleaners exclusive to the United States?

And those jobs “americans don’t want” to do and those that make a buck from them, are they limited to the people in cities like New York, San Francisco, and even Chicago?

Ridiculous.

It must be wonderful in Canada.

In this case, I think it serves both parties. The client gets to have someone else garden and play “gentleman farmer.”

The gardener gets to do what he or she likes –garden in an expensive area where real estate prices are at a premium, and were it not for this might be confined to doing some container gardening on their small balcony (if they even have one).

Where the gardener has to be prepared is when the client grows bored with the whole thing, and decides to give it up in favor of standard landscaping. But that’s like any other business. You just have to not get too attached, which is actually very hard when you’re a real gardener.