Seattle Local Food

Every year around September, Billy of Billy’s Gardens, who sells at most of our local farmers markets, offers a deal on #2 tomatoes in bulk: a 20-pound box for $25.  I generally get a box to help feed my tomato addiction through the winter.  Other vendors also offer discounts on tomatoes if you buy in [...]

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Just read an article at Grist about grocery chains (Safeway, Albertson’s) in the Pacific Northwest setting up fake farmers markets full of their own (non-local) produce.  That’s pretty creepy. Some supermarkets, like the Grocery Outlet on Union and MLK, do host farmers markets in their parking lots, on the theory that it brings them customers, [...]

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Events from City Fruit (forwarded via CAGJ).  Want to know what to do with green tomatoes?  That one caught my eye.  If I don’t make the class, I’m going to be working on some of my own recipes, thanks to Seattle’s charming lack of proper-length summer this year.. ~~~~ What to Do with Green Tomatoes? [...]

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We’ve covered a few different ways to preserve or cook salmon, like making gravlax and broiling fresh salmon. I finally got to experiment with another salmon treatment I’d been wanting to try: Ceviche. Ceviche is a Central and South American dish, a way to cure raw fish using lime juice, a bit of salt, and [...]

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Salmon: Does food get much better?  Salmon is fatty, full of vitamins and omega-3s, flavorful. It’s local and traditional in the Northwest. It’s fast and easy to cook. And yet there are so many ways salmon can go wrong. There’s farmed salmon, whose failings have been detailed plenty of other places. There’s old salmon, tragically [...]

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I live with people who like to cook, which is a happy thing. Today, my roommate Adina, stuck at home with a busted knee, was inspired to turn some local ground cherries and tomatoes into salsa, also using up some cilantro from our CSA box and limes a friend had leftover from a party. I [...]

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I grew up in New York.  My soul food is: bagels with scallion cream cheese, whitefish, and nova salmon.  Pastrami on rye with mustard.  Deli-style tuna salad, nearly puréed.  Half sour pickles.  Heavily-seeded rye bread. Most of this, I can’t get on a daily basis.  For starters, there is no decent whitefish in Seattle.  I’m [...]

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Okay, I’ve been storing up so many events and resources to post about, I’d better get them all down in a post.  I’m sure I’m missing a few I meant to include, so I’ll post again if and when I find them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Eat Local Now! collaborative is putting on the annual Eat Local [...]

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Updated to add: Thanks to Laura for the screen shot! So, I had no idea that Google ads appear at the bottom of my blog.  I’m fairly new to WordPress, and I use Adblock on my web browsers.  I guess it’s how WordPress makes money. Reader Laura cracked up when she got to the end [...]

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Sometimes, I’d rather not be right. Years ago, I wrote a blog entry about how manipulatively renaming detrimental ingredients can trick consumers into eating things they don’t want.  I was thinking about the term “organic evaporated cane juice” and how it’s simply a way to encourage people to eat sugar who might otherwise hesitate. I [...]

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They’re back, and they want my tomatoes. I don’t give my tomatoes up easily, so these fruit flies have crossed a line.  Time for another fruit fly trap. Many fruit-loving households have considered what to do with fruit flies.  A former roommate and I joked about packaging them up for a friend of hers running [...]

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I’ve written before about eggs: ~ Why eggs are good for you, ~ How to pick out eggs, ~ Why eggs contain the important vitamin K2 MK-4 when they’re from chickens raised on pasture, and ~ How small-farm eggs are more nutritious overall. So, you know there are lots of reasons to eat eggs, other than that [...]

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When I wrote about cauliflower crust pizza, reader Sarah tipped me off on the Seattle Local Food Facebook page to another idea: zucchini crust. Apparently it’s a trick she learned from her grandmother. Grandmother-approved and grain-free? I had to check it out.  If it was as delicious as it sounded, it could be the ultimate [...]

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Rosh Hashanah and the holidays that follow mark the season of sweet foods. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, and try to avoid sugar, but there is, as they say, a time and place for everything.  This is the season for my grandmother’s plum cake. The first rule of this plum cake: Use [...]

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It’s been a rough week.  Sometime in the last few months, my grandmother was diagnosed with early-stage pancreatic cancer.  About a week ago, she wanted to give up.  She wasn’t eating enough or drinking enough.  She didn’t want the (mild but still unpleasant) chemo treatments anymore.  She didn’t want anything, or to see anyone.  She [...]

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(I’ve had some requests to revisit and repost this recipe from my old site [archive].  Here it is!) A former roommate had a tradition of hosting pizza parties, at which she’d provide dough and friends would bring toppings.  I wanted to participate, but don’t eat gluten and try to limit my grain intake a bit. [...]

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I’ve published a recipe for madeleines before, another gluten-free one using honey, almond meal and lavender.  They were tasty, low-grain, low-sugar, and full of delicious lavender from Sequim. But the holy grail madeleine I was after kept evading me: the hazelnut madeleine. I buy hazelnut meal from Holmquist Hazelnuts (U-district farmers market or Pike Place), [...]

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Western Washington residents know we’ve had some early-fall cold and wet weather this past week.  But in honor of the changing skies — today and tomorrow should be warm and sunny — I’m giving you an insistently summer salad.  It’s all stuff that should be at the peak of ripeness at the markets right now. [...]

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I wrote a few posts ago about some arguments for local eating, including the abundance of varieties we just don’t get from industrial-level agriculture. Plant diversity means increased chances climate tolerance and disease resistance, (sometimes) extra nutrition, and lots of delicious things to taste. But I forgot to say one thing about those abundant varieties, [...]

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