NW Farmer's Market

So I thought I'd check out the local farmer's market.  The closest one is pretty small, a tiny fraction of the main Portland Farmer's Market.  I have to get over there one of these days.  I was pretty impressed with the NW market.  It had better selection and prices than the Charleston, SC market!  I found some neat things!

Here are some Lemon Cucumbers, that I recently read about.  They don't taste like lemon, but they are delicious!  You can cook em, and they're great in salads, but I just ate one like an apple, but you can eat the whole thing!  mmm!

Maybe next week . . .  I wish I had brought more cash!

There is a local Portland Charcutiere there who had some amazing Spanish dried salamis, a great Greek salami made with orange zest (which was awesome!).  The meat was so flavorful!  I wanted some salami that was simpler and let the real meat shine so I got some French style Saucisson Sec, which is just simple garlic and cracked black pepper, sometimes a bit of wine.  As it turns out, Olympic Provisions also cures their own bacon!  So I got some of that too!  This brings me naturally to the white and yellow Pattie Pan Squash pictured here which will be sauteed with aforementioned bacon, shallots and garlic that I also picked up.  Pattie Pan Squash is really tasty and you don't have to peel it, so more delicious, nutritious AND easier to eat!

And of course lots of varieties of apples, nectarines and peaches.  There were so many kinds of apples, many I've never heard of.  I recently have been eating local Gravenstein apples, which look . . . I don't know, oddly shaped (at least the ones I've been seeing).  When I saw them I said to myself, "a ha!  These apples looks so weird, they couldn't have been genetically engineered!  And they have a deeper color green than a granny smith.  They are a bit more tangy, and have a real "zest" to them.  I swear there is a subtle cilantro-like herbaceous flavor that is really refreshing.  I was just reading an article the other day that stated the average grocery store apple is 14 months old when you buy it!!  It's really true the apples here from the area and Hood River Oregon, as well as Wenatchee, WA are so fresh and delicious you'd think you've never really eaten an apple before.  Such different apple flavor than I've ever had before!

  I ended up getting these Macintosh apples that had an out-of-sight deep green, red/maroon color.  It was incredibly difficult to get an accurate photo.  I ended up turning on all the lights in my house and opening the blinds and using a flash while screwing around with the f-stops just to try to get a combination that accurately represented the apple's color.

I think it's funny how much we take the simplest food items for granted.  I recently watched The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (brilliant foodie, many will remember from the film Food Inc.) which (in part) discussed monoculture and the complete destruction of our apple, potato and corn crops and how the main varieties we have today may be general varieties of only really a very small handful of strains.  The original apple came from Kazakhstan, where there are literally thousands of varieties.  Many have been brought to America and are being kept and preserved in an effort to ensure against worldwide crop failure that many fear in monocultures (like the great potato famine in Ireland), and also to hold on to the larger variety of apple characteristics that are being bred out by large corporations (cue nefarious, sinister plot music).  The vast majority of Potatoes available today are Russets, thanks to large fast food joints who want the same reliable potato that make identical shoestring fries.  Growing such a small variety of potatoes makes the entire worldwide crop susceptible to disease and famine and specially adapted parasites.  As the spoilage organisms become more and more advanced and adapted to our pesticides, our global crops are in a more and more perilous situation; the risks posed by monoculture and the industrial food system are great; our reliance on petrol based fertilizers and pesticides once our greatest achievement, may actually be our undoing.  Many fear a global potato catastrophe.  We should also be worried about the ancestral potato and corn of Mexico which is being bred out by genetically engineered industrial crops.  Spread by wind, the interbreeding of scientific Frankenstein crops and our ancestral heritage crops is eliminating our biodiversity and contributing to this modern threat. 

I didn't realize that buying an apple today, would get me to think so much!  Maybe you'll think a bit more the next time you buy produce too!  I guess now the only proper way to conclude, is that I ate one of those apples . . . it was good.  Bring on the bacon!