chardgirl

And more from Saturday: I think it's going to take quite a little while for me to catch up from this marathon weekend. This is a view from around the corner from our stall, it's understandable why 'tourists' love this destination so much, it's too bad for me they don't want to buy CHARD. Slanted Door just bought 35 # broccoli romanesco, the tourists can eat our vegetables prepared by the pros. There are two excellent sources for Mexican food at the Saturday market: and One's "in the building" (mijita) and one's 'outside, in the back' (primavera) like us. So here's the deal as I see it: the Ferry Building Marketplace is the upscale foodcourt so much of the food press has commented on in the last couple of years. Mijita, Boulette's Larder, Slanted Door, our mushroom friends Far West Fungi, Scharffen Berger chocolotes, etc. all have shops 'in the building'. They are there 7 days a week and pay dearly for the privelege I'm certain. ALSO on Saturdays there is one great big also upscale real live with farmers and everything FARMERS MARKET, outside, in the sun or rain, whichever the SF Bay is choosing that day. 2 days ago it was sunny but very nippy chilly, all day. another inside the building shot: our radishes and a bit of broccoli: Pickles from Happy Girl Kitchen: We've known Todd and Jordan quite a while.... I still have a few more but it's time to go be gymnastics mom, finish up washing some wine glasses, I'll be back later today. cg

Swanton Kiwis, with Daughter Aged 8 artwork adorning:

name that vegetable: (Gifted Gourmet, where are you?? ) more Boulette's Larder: They have windows in their cooler so passersby in the building can see things in their cooler on special 'display'. (here's some of our broccoli romanesco) Dirty Girl Produce: started by our friend the ever pumped Jane, it's now owned and run by Surfer Joe. Rumours abound that Dirty Girl sells next to Happy Boy at the Berkeley market, but I"ve not been there so I've not confirmed it.

More market pictures with captions: Here's a photo of Far West Fungi's mushrooms: it's a family operation: Some of our gold beets: Amaryl of Boulette's Larder: she's up to interesting things at the larder! The Apple Farm: masters at 'value added product' , three words that give me the horrors. I'm thrilled THEY do it, but I'm not the farm wife who longs to stay home and fuss with the best apple butter/pumpkin butter/pumpkin juice/pickled beet recipe, then once perfected make hundreds of jars a week. There's a space for everyone on the universe, right?

My delicious taco made of leftovers, my chai, and my vitamins are all consumed and it's time to get to work in the office while Mr. Chardgirl does HomeSchooling Duty today. So I'm posting photos from farmers market of course! I took lots of photos of 'frequent market shoppers' and chefs that come to buy vegetables at the stall, but I only want to post photos that will be interesting to you folks who are viewing. I also took photos of some of my favorite vendors: either their products or the people: usually both Honeycrisp: Art is a sweetheart of a farmer who grows GREAT citrus. And the photo came out ok: FattedCalf: Toponia and Taylor are a young (to me) couple who started their own charcuterie business and make a great sausage. Daughter Age 8's favorite product, unless you count the inside-the-building gelato parlor. Tierra Vegetables: Lee and her brother Wayne grow chiles and vegetables north of SF: they are passionate about all they do and it shows in their products! Sally: our beloved nut gal. She and her husband grow and bring walnuts and almonds. Son Aged 10 will only eat her nuts now, I can't slip in the inferior Trader Joe's brand, he notices. AndrewDonna: ok, this one photo of FMS (frequent market shoppers) Andrew and Donna are double extra special in that they come down to market EVERY WEEK and they are CSA members! They are also interested in food history and talk about the latest renaissance recipes they've tried with their neighbor Jeremy, I love talking to customers about food. I learn lots every weekend: Eatwell: Nigel has a great little farm east of S.F. He does lots of vegetables and a CSA just like we do, but he also has an entire lavendar empire going on. Folks can have their weddings in the middle of his acres of lavendar. Cher and Wayne: These FMS make the market look good, don't they look look like Hollywood stars? They are buying Sally's nuts nextdoor. Foreground = our chantenay carrots. Swanton: Swanton Berries is north of Santa Cruz and they grow broccoli and artichokes as rotation crops with their berries. This weekend that's where Daughter aged 8 hung out, you can see her art hung about. It's much better to draw and talk to interesting but non mom Big Girls than hang out in our stall and have to WORK. I'll post a few more around lunch time PST. cg

breakfast this morning: gen mai cha (roasted rice green tea, a refreshing hot beverage the morning after a large meal), and 1 taco with my doctored beans and doctored salsa, see photos above. cg

Maria and Lourdes are both from Michoacan, I don't know the name of the county/town they're from. I know that in this last generation many of their family have landed in Uruapan to work and they go back and forth between the smaller town and the city when they visit. Birria is ubiquitous as far as I can tell. Mr. Chardgirl tells stories of hearing about birrias made from deer, armadillo, gophers, squirells, badgers, you name it!

I did a bit of cooking while trying to figure out where to store all the left overs. Yes, we did try to send as much as possible home with folks: ziploc bags! Birria tacos are served with chopped cilantro and chopped white onions. I sauted the leftover onions and added about 20% of the leftover beans. Then I slopped in some of the mole sauce and some of the cilantro and and mashed them up with a bean masher. They are YUMMY. I added the rest of the cilantro to the simple tomatillo salsa: here's the photo:

Yes, the fried crackers got ground up at some point in the mole making process. I'm very intrigued by Maria's mole. She will be working here on Tuesday, I hope to at least get the ingredient list from her then. I think this blog runs through Tuesday or so, I can post it then! Tomorrow's plans?! left overs! I hope to do some KID COOKING tomorrow at some level, since that was one of my hopes for this blog. And I'll continue to post weekend photos til this blog is over. I still have quite a few great market photos.

Yes, some folks love offal: I have a friend writing a cookbook about it (!). But maybe I was a vegetarian in a past life, it's often the sides that get me animated. I did a bit of left over cooking tonight, the photo is on it's way... cg

Making Goat Birria! I was busy with the house/sides/Lourdes Maria part of the day, Mr. Chardgirl did most the birria with Don Miguel and Adrian. What I know they did: I'll leave out the gory first parts... Once the animal was butchered into pieces it was cooked in a big pot.. The sauce had: dried then fried chiles (guajillos and arboles), fresh oregano, fresh garlic, black pepper, dried ginger, bay leaves (maybe those were added later?), cumin, onions. The birria was cooked with the top on for 3-4 hours. The truth: Mr. Chardgirl and I were busy hosting the party so we missed big pieces of the actual cooking/recipe stuff. For instance Don Miguel needed 'cal' (lime: as in the mineral kind) for the preparation of the goat stomach delicacy where they chop up some of the innards and mix it with oregano and garlic and stuff it back in the stomach and then steam this. Some folks say Yum, I say Yuck, but to each his own. But we didn't have any cal: it was a misunderstanding. So I ran to the store (8 miles round trip) to get the cal. So it's a little hard for me to post actual recipes since we weren't doing the cooking!

Ok... more on the mole: the dried chiles were then cooked in a little vegetable oil then water added so they could steam up: Then they were ground up with my immersion blender, which then died. It's easy to get another though... another ingredient photo: I was outside running around helping folks park, helping visiting kids visit young goats, setting up the beverage table, etc, so I didn't see part of the mole making. When I came back, the sesame mixture had been added to the chile mixture and this is what we served: Lourdes also made a tomatillo salsa and a radish salad. These with the beans and tortillas would have made a fine meal WITHOUT the goat, but the birria was tasty.

Mole making, including 'fried crakers': Lourdes and Maria preping the dried chiles for the mole sauce: The toasted sesame seeds were blended with a little water to add to the mole sauce: and more coming...

one question for the egullet community: Mr. Chardgirl took photos of the butchering and whatnot of the goat... I don't plan to post those. I can email them to those that are interested and/or make a link on my own website, I don't want to offend anyone or gross anyone out....... pm me and I can easily email you a file or two. cg

Well... hosting 2 guest cooks in my kitchen (the 'sides') and 2 guest cooks outside (the goat/birria) and then hosting 20 eating guests prevented me from 'posting throughout the day', sorry about that. I have so many photos to post! I still have photos from farmers market. Tomorrow will be a relatively calm day and I can catch up with the good stuff I miss tonight. Let's start! I'm going to go minimize the photos, do the egullet small acrobatics, and then come back and post. One of my favorite food moments of the day: Maria fried the saltine crackers for the mole sauce. I tried one, and it was quite tasty. The mole was delicious! Stay tuned. cg

Goodmorning all: breakfast was the leftovers of the sausage/broccoli/red pepper pasta thing I made last night. I like leftovers for breakfast, I'm not much of a sweet-in-the-morning person. Ok, I also had the last Boulette's cookie too: with my Earl Gray tea. I'm madly cleaning the kitchen, in fact I'm procrastinating that chore for 5 minutes by posting this. I've not given the menu for today, I don't think so anyway: Birria de chivo. Sopa. Frijol. ensalada de watermelon radish y black spanish radish y cebolla, chile, y ajo, at least I think so. also: 3 salsas, including a mole (!) I"ll post the English ingredients and descriptions after the meal Ingredient procrastination photo #1: Ingredient procrastination photo #2 and while we're in my kitchen: the leeks/carrots tiles my very talented cousin Joel made for us

BDV: as an official member of your fanclub, I'm honored you're even looking at my blog. My goal this whole week has been to come with photos as beautiful as yours, my clementine jam photo has been the closest in my opinion, the light was right or something, it was just luck on my part more photos coming...

A few more photos, I'm running out of steam. the others that I want to post may need to wait til tomorrow night. (why not tomorrow morning? look at my post a few messages back that has the photo of the kitchen in it................!!!!!!!!!!!!!) My Favorite Photo of the Day: this is of June Taylor Jam. I LOVE her jam: she uses only organic fruit and only jams when it's fresh and at it's peak: no freezers or frozen fruit ever. She is a true artisan: and right next door to June Taylor Jams: Andante Dairy: SoYoung Scanlon's wonderful cheese: yawn. I'm going to bed. More tomorrow. And I'll be goat roasting (in fact I'll be making salsas and radish salad and beans with Lourdes and Maria, maybe I can sneak away and post a photo here and there throughout the day.) good night, till tomorrow. cg

Here are a few of the farmers market photos: these show how we get from 6am to 8:30am. #1: 6:05am #2: 15 minutes later: #3: 1 hour later: #4: another hour passes and it's 8:30am! And a photo of our own favorite bean-peddling egulleteer selling beans and giving calendars out (here to Peggy Knickerbocker, her book Simple Soirees just came out. I've not seen the book: now that you've seen my kitchen maybe we all better agree I'm not ready for even simple soirees! ):

Ok... It's now 8:30pm Pacific Standard Time. The kitchen is a disaster: all the shopping for tomorrow in bags on the floor and table; all the 'market booty' all over the kitchen floor. Coats, water bottles, shoes... And there are dirty dishes from last night. I'm beyond tired... But I'm inspired to post you photos of dinner for tonight. Looking at past blogs I'm feeling bad I haven't cooked more: but it is my reality to be surrounded by great ingredients and not the time/attention to cook. Tonight Mr. Chardgirl and I dreamed of our favorite local taqueria: "Taqueria Mi Tierra" on Freedom Blvd. simply arriving in our kitchen to serve us. After both of us driving our own separate trucks filled with produce bound for San Francisco there was no way we were going to drive 4 miles each way. So I made the pasta fall back: noodles, steamed/chopped broccoli di cicco, chopped garlic, olive oil, and sausage. Here's what I did: put the water on to boil. Chopped garlic. Found 3/4 full pasta package (with this standby semi-emergency recipe nearly any shape will do, pursits will be horrified, but this is reaction cooking, not fine dining cooking.). browned sausages. Opened the only wine bottle we could find: it turned out to be an EXCELLENT zinfandel from I don't know where. We both like wine occasionally but know next to nothing "about" it in the wine world sense. Cooked pasta. continued to cook sausage (Fatted Calf Toulouse and Sweet Italian). 2 minutes before I deemed the pasta done, (thin spaghetti in this case) I dumped the entire broccoli stalks in the cooking pasta. This is broccoli di cicco, a sprouting broccoli. Removed the broccoli stems, then roughly chopped them. drained pasta and put back in warm pot. Added raw chopped garlic with the now chopped broccoli. Tossed with olive oil, S & P. Actually just P. Mr Chardgirl likes more salt than me. Added sausage, pecorino and red pepper flakes on the side. Kids were still stoned on anime (Japanese cartoons) in the guest room on the other side of the house. SO WE FOUND A WAY FOR THEM TO EAT OUR BROCCOLI: Mr. Chardgirl told them that's what's for dinner and let them eat in front of the TV. (they just about NEVER get to eat dinner in front of a movie!) They ate it all. Too bad we don't get cable or let them watch anything at all during the week! I have the other 166 photos from farmers market, and it's going to have to wait, sorry about that! After I post the dinner photos, I might add a few market favorites. Thanks for all your patience and interest in what and why I eat! cg The broccoli before steaming: The broccoli steaming/boiling on top of the pasta: The sausages traded for at market from The Fatted Calf: the ingredients ready to mix: the wine in the chaos (I didn't have energy to tidy to show you only the clean and neat side of our lives, any friends and family will laugh at this one!) The final dish, not plated at all, just in our pedestrian Correll dishes. When I have more time and money in my life I'm going to buy some NICE dishes! Dessert: cookies from Boulette's Larder: Amaryl is very sweet and often sends us on our way at the end of market with a little bag of cookies: Ok, I'll just show you the kitchen as it is right now: it will make yours seem so much neater

Do the take out, is my suggestion. I had one of my worst dining experiences ever there (and I'm not alone). So bad that I wrote a letter that they never had the courtesy to acknowledge. I think Charles is probably a great cook and a great promoter but I don't think anyone there knows much about running a restaurant. ← My own experience is only eating at the bar: and the bartenders have always served me my Saturday tea service with a plate of food just fine. I've never eaten in the dining room. Not yet anyway! Maybe someday. cg

6pm, Saturday night. I've been working without a break (unless you count an hour lunch at Slanted Door with an unbelievably delicious crispy spring roll... see below) since 4am. I'm about to have a cup of chai with Mr. Chardgirl while the Kids Aged 10 and 8 watch their weekly movie: Sakura from Japan. I took 170 photos today. But I'll spare you many of them, below are 4 to get started and I"ll see if I can rally and post more later tonight, or maybe tomorrow. I've also got many photos to take tomorrow: the Goat Roast! To the Photos, this is just a taste, I have more that are post-worthy. LUNCH: BREAKFAST: NAME THIS ITEM: FROM THE SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION CATEGORY

I'm nearly falling into bed now, just three more photos since I'm signing off for the next 20 hours or so. I don't know if I've talked much about how we live in Alta California: Watsonville is a very Mexican town and Mr. Chardgirl and I love it. We both are native English speakers who have learned to speak fluent Spanish and use it everyday, with our employees, with our friends, as a secret language in front of our kids... (Since English is my mother tongue that's what I wanted to speak to my kids when they were little, we're now working with them in Spanish.) So we are hosting a goat roast exactly as our employees from Michoacan would do it, and inviting our Bay Area Slow Food convivium to join us down here for that. To be authentic 'sopa' the rice needs fresh tomatoes, even if it's December, so I had to go to the Mexican supermarket and buy some. Tomatillos too. We grow both of these things in high season. so here are three photos I took tonight at Mi Puebla on our way to the cub scout meeting. I've spared you photos of the cubscout snacks: salame, cheese cubes, and interesting looking crackers I managed to not try, and capri sun juice-oid bombs. Son Aged 10 helping fill the bag with yummy tomatillos ( he seems thrilled.): Frijol Peruano ("Peruvian beans") (I bought a few to show to Rancho Gordo tomorrow.... they looked really good.) And the Dried Chile Aisle: it's a bit blurry, but it's as big as it looks. And there's also bulk bins of dried chiles. They are a BIG deal in Mexican cuisine, at least around these parts!

It's puntarella! and yes, it's a type of dandelion. "puntarelle is the Roman name for what is cicoria de Galantina in Puglia - its home region" says Elizabeth Schneider : her's is the book "From Amaranth to Zucchini"! We also grow Catalogna and red-ribbed dandions, and one called a lion's tooth. soooo... Dinner! Well: the best laid plans... I would have liked to have made Italian Wedding Soup. I have all the ingredients. But I in fact ran out of time. Such is the story of my cooking life. My dinner included a small bowl of leftover chicken soup, the rest of the 'healthy' brown rice salad from last night, chai, and a mango paleta from Mi Pueblo, the Mexican supermarket I went to right before the cubscout meeting I led this evening. Today I also did my chef dance: making up all the invoices and then taking add on orders and letting the chefs know when we ran out of something and running back and forth all day between the office and the packing shed. Fridays are often not very pretty around here as far as lovely sit down meals go! I promise to take photos tomorrow and post them at some point tomorrow night. Because I'll be gone tomorrow from 4am til about 5pm I also had to do the shopping for the goat roast: dried chiles (4 kinds), the 'correct' rice for sopa (spanish rice, we call it pink rice), source the cilantro and onions and tomatoes from neighboring farms. Each of my children also had a playdate today since it's Friday and many of their friends-in-school have half days today. It's now 9pm and I have to gather many rolls of quarters and a few dimes and nickels (San Franciscans need their quarters for meters! I always bring LOTS.) and put together my signs. Then at 3am we'll all 4 get up and go to the city. Actually Mr. Chardgirl and I get up at 3 to have coffee/tea, then wake up the children right before we're going to leave just before 4am. This is a good life... except on Fridays! Saturdays are lots of fun, until about 1pm. Then cleaning up the stall and driving home is most difficult. I have to have a STRONG cup of black tea to stay safe on the road home. But, I will post photos here tomorrow! Thanks for all your posts over the last few days... I can talk lots more about sustainability and our theories on this on our farm. I didn't know how political or not egullet wanted me to be or not on this subject... Ask questions: I'll try my best to answer them. cg

Name That Vegetable!