Jakob's Bowl

Out And About In Boston And Cambridge

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

R. W. Emerson

Even though A & P was a well established supermarket when I was very young, and an older brother worked for a small, regional supermarket chain, my mother shopped every few days at the local butcher shop and the local produce store and our dairy and bread needs were filled by the milkman and the bakery truck that delivered every few days. I think that’s why my freezer has always been virtually empty, and I have always shopped for food at least every other day. It helps to be living in a major metropolitan area situated within a diverse agricultural region, so I don’t have to buy my meat in cellophane wrapped coffins; I can find milk, cream, and cheeses from a pasture-based farmers, and locally raised vegetables throughout most of the year. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that even with only three days in the Boston area, I’d be out ‘window shopping’ for food.

One of my objectives for this trip was a visit to a former online competitor that I had always held in high regard, Formaggio Kitchen. As the website manager for an Internet specialty food boutique, I first discovered Formaggio Kitchen over eight years ago through its simple but tasteful website. Although it didn’t offer the same depth and range as our website, it offered some of the best quality imported products available in the country, including many that we carried. I especially liked their cheese collection and their selection of Italian holiday confections mainly from small producers, many which they imported directly. I ordered one of their Ofella d’Oro Christmas cakes baked by Pasticceria Perbellini in Bologna, and it changed my whole appreciation of Panettone. Formaggio Kitchen has been a Cambridge institution for over thirty years, and they have spread their wings to include Boston’s South End and New York City’s Essex Market.

Orange Nun

No, no this isn’t about large volume production Liebfraumilch from Germany with a picture of a ‘nun’ on the bottle. It’s about a small production white wine from Italy’s Lazio region made by two real nuns, Coenubium Rusticum. I know what you’re thinking; “white wine from Lazio?” Well, the region does have a long-standing reputation for producing large volumes of cheap, light, undistinguished white wine, consumed mainly by the locals with some making it to this country, Frascati being the most familiar. This white blend that includes Trebbiano and Malvasia grapes was a staple in Italian restaurants in this country throughout the 1980s - think Fontana Candida.

Farmers' Markets Back East: Two If By...

Given my tight schedule, I was only able to visit two farmers’ markets over the weekend, Copley Place in Boston on Friday and the market in Somerville on Saturday. The weather seemed just as odd in Boston as it had been in the Pacific Northwest this summer with Wednesday and Thursday as warm and humid as the middle of July and Friday as cool as October, and of course, this was reflected in the produce.

Outside of Union Square in NYC, I hadn’t been to a Farmers’ Market in the Northeast in five years, so I was very excited, especially since it was the height of apple season, and they seemed to be everywhere. Back in the Washington and Oregon, the Department of Agriculture did a bang up job over the years helping the apple growers concentrate their efforts on a half dozen varieties - you know the only ones you can get in the supermarkets these days - and it seems that there are only a few farmers who grow any old varieties. Fortunately, New England and the Northeast maintained much of the ‘old’ apple stocks, and it’s fairly easy to still find varieties that originated in England, France and here in the US over the last two to three hundred years.

Farmers' Markets Back East: One If By Land...

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

H.D. Thoreau

Having been born amidst the ‘truck farms’ that dotted the northeastern US, sweet corn, tomatoes, and cucumbers were key ingredients to most meals in the late summer and early fall. If we weren’t getting them out of the backyard garden, it was hucksters, farm stands or farmers’ markets. Some years, it seemed like we consumed entire fields of sweet corn. It wasn’t unusual for my mom to be buying fruits and vegetables every day. One thing she was particularly picky about was sweet corn on the cob - if it wasn’t picked that day, she claimed, it was only fit for the pigs, and the corn my mom served was rarely ‘starchy.’

While I’ve always had this rule of thumb in the recesses of my memory, I didn’t have much chance to take advantage of it for a long time, with the exception of realizing that a supermarket was not the place to buy sweet corn. I did become a Farmers’ Market fanatic when I moved to Seattle though, and I did notice, fairly quickly that no one here seemed concerned about when the corn was picked, and that seems to be the case to this day. The farmers lay out their corn; people rummage through the pile, open a few and then buy without a word. Even I fall into this trap when I’ve got a lot on my mind, much to my chagrin when I bite into it later that day. I don’t think it was as risky back in the days when we only had two Farmers’ Markets a week, but now there are around a dozen. Many of the farmers sell at five or six, and may be picking a few days in advance. Sweet corn has lots of sugar in it - some sources indicate that sweet corn is about 80% sugar and 20% starch when picked. However, at the moment it is picked, the sugars begin to convert to starch - the conversion can be 80% starch and 20% sugar by the third day. This sign at the Somerville, MA Farmers’ Market this past Saturday was a pleasant reminder of the wisdom handed down to me as a child, and it’s also pleasant to know that the people in at least one part of the country know enough to inquire.

East Bound And Down

I’m headed to the bay State this weekend to take some tea with my two-year old niece and a wood sprite named Totoro. I also plan to see how the ‘season’ has gone on the 'Right Coast' by visiting a few Farmers’ Markets in the waning September sun - hopefully there will be time to post.

Gonna Get Localezized

Pet peeve time. Many people are under the misguided impression that with the most productive farmland in the world, at least our food won’t get outsourced. I recall when I was the buyer for an Internet specialty food boutique; I sourced some of the most amazing organic lentils in the world from a small co-operative of growers in Montana. After several shipments of exceptional quality, I inquired with my supplier if he knew anyone growing organic Cannellini, Marrow, or Borlotti beans, which he did and at a great price. When the pallet arrived, all of the 25-pound bags of Cannellini beans were stamped “Product of China”! In 1993 American farmers produced 5.26 million head of lamb for slaughter, by 2008 that had decreased to 2.65 million head while the per capita consumption had remained relatively stable. We now import 50% of the lamb we eat from Australia and New Zealand! We are a nation awash in milk, and yet food companies are importing milk protein concentrates because they are cheaper than using domestically produced milk.