No Tofu

Alert to regulars—there will be no fresh tofu tomorrow at market.

I am sad to report that our friend Mickey, our regular tofu-talking delivery guy, has passed away. I'm kind of glad there will be a gap in tofu sales—it seems only proper that Mickey's death should disrupt us!

Please forgive our soy pause while our thoughts are with Mickey's family and friends, and we'll be back to our regular programming soon. We'll have plenty of other goodies available at the Cold Spring Market tomorrow morning, including seitan, cashew cheese, spicy beer mustard, and a bunch of varieties of pickled veggies.

"Responsible" Meat Eating

I went to a kitchen store in Brooklyn over Memorial Day weekend. They started up in the last couple of years, gave interesting classes in their tight space, and sold vintage cookware alongside the new. I loved this store. Not only did they have nice tools, they had good aesthetics, and were a small player who gave helpful individual advice. They seemingly had good politics: people rode their bikes there, they taught customers about preservation and reuse, and talked about locally produced food. They sold old school tools like pickling crocks. It seemed like they were a part of the movement to take things back into our own hands, and do them better than big business would.

They still exist, yet I write about them like it's over. That's because they've moved into a big space with a proper kitchen classroom and joined up with another business, a butcher. There's a full deli counter, barbeques big enough to roast whole pigs, and a room that I never fully looked at, because I was convinced it is where they butcher animals, and teach other people to kill animals themselves. I had no evidence, just a vibe. A strong, awful feeling, that came from more than just the smell of the place.
If I think about Brooklyn Kitchen's move from a purely business perspective, I get why they did it. The new space is huge, they can now sell all kinds of foods and conduct proper classes, and the meat will be a draw for a lot of hipsters, who think local bacon is the new black.

Seeing this, acknowledging this, really set me off in a spin.

I meet ex-vegetarians every day who now eat meat because they can get it from a local farmer at the farmer's market or specialized shop. Coffees are being made with bacon, my popsicle guy put bacon in one of his new flavors, Beacon's most popular buying club (traditionally for bulk grains and beans) is centered around local meat. I went into a shop for a vegan cookie the other day, and boar soup was on the menu.

Twenty years ago I went to brunch at a Seattle vegetarian restaurant on April Fool's Day. Their menu for the day included "easter" rabbit, spotted owl, sea turtle soup, all in fancy preparations. Gullible, I got upset before getting the joke. It didn't seem farfetched enough to me, I guess, and seems even less so now. These days, it seems practically everyone thinks it's okay to eat animals.

Except that we know better. We've read the China Study and the new U.N. report. We know how animals raised for food affect the environment, hunger, and our drinking water. We know that free range doesn't equal being outside, that humane is used all over the place for all kind of practices.
Because I live in a small town and know the farmers who sell meat and the people who buy meat, I know that most often people buy a small fraction of the meat they eat from local farmers. The grossest cheap meat on a styrofoam tray has risen to new heights in hearts and minds: people want to believe it's right and good to eat animals, and that their palettes are king. They get the expensive farmer's market stuff for the cred.

Food is important to me, too, very important. When I took St. John's wort for a stint and lost my appetite, I thought I'd be glad to have lost so much weight. Instead, I missed food, missed eating and tasting and all the pleasure and socializing that came with it.

I'm the worst person to talk about meat-eating because as a long-time vegan and animal rights activist, I won't be seen as level-headed, or looking at all sides. But I swear, if I had an intern, I'd have them research this:
- How much food is produced in the Mid-Hudson Valley that is consumed locally?
- How does that food break down in categories? What percentage are vegetables, fruit, grains, animals?
- How do the resources to produce those foods break down?

It seems to me that there are a lot of farmers who grow tons of veggies, a little bit of fruit, and have enough animals for a few eggs, some goat's milk, and send the occasional animals to slaughter. (Right, send them to a slaughterhouse. It's illegal for them to do it themselves.) My guess is that it would be something like a 90%, 5%, 3%, 2% breakdown. Shouldn't this mean, then, that people concerned about eating local foods eat an (at least) 90% vegetable diet?

Pardon our Dust

while we reorganize ourselves a bit...

wintergreens: How We Started

wintergreens is a presence at Hudson Valley farmers markets selling pickled local produce and vegetarian staples (tofu, seitan, cashew cheese). In the winters we run a winter C.S.A. that distributes local produce all winter long. We do that by practicing some of the oldest methods for storing food: root cellaring, fermentation, dehydration, and more.

Here's how wintergreens came to be.

I moved to Beacon, NY several years ago. The most amazing thing about living here, for me, has been participating in community supported agriculture (well, and my beautiful porch. and the Hudson River.) My summers have been filled with so many gorgeous veggies, a weekly visit to the fields, picking flowers, and the smell of warm tomatoes and basil on my hands. But each year there comes a time when the days get shorter, the air gets a chill, and C.S.A. distributions end. It's a tragic time. I look at all the pathetic produce at the supermarket and want to cry. Then I look at the prices, and really want to cry. For years I'd been fabulously healthy during the summers, and weird and anemic in the winters.

There were winter C.S.A.s all over the country feeding hungry locavores, and it was time for Beacon to finally get its own. I took a fermentation workshop with Sandor Katz, and that really set the wheels in motion.

wintergreens is based on the belief that everybody should have access to local food. That's what a community food program is all about: rich, poor, fat, skinny, vegetarian or no, everybody should be eating food that's grown in their backyards. Living in the fertile Hudson Valley, there's a lot of food in our area! We all have a lot to gain to by supporting local farmers.

Therefore, I introduce to you wintergreens. It is food made from the same beautiful (organic and certified naturally grown) fruits and veggies we're getting in our farm shares. No pesticides, no wilting while traveling. Just beautiful, healthful food, preserved so that you don't have to get pale, weak, or hungry in the winter months, and you don't have to rely on Key Food!

*The photo is from that first fermentation workshop, and shows our "bruiser" breaking down the vegetables so they could brew in their own flavorful juices.

Summer Farmer's Market

wintergreens will be at the Cold Spring Farmer's Market every first and third Saturday of each month, beginning June 5, from 8:30 to 1:30.

We'll have a variety of fermented vegetables, chutneys and mustard, quick pickles, and vegetarian staples, like fresh tofu, handmade seitan, and cashew cheese. See you there!

Berries Begin

The heat is making a lot of berries ripen very quickly. If you belong to a C.S.A., you might be getting urgent calls to come pick strawberries. Today, we answered that call, and picked as many no-spray strawberries as we could stuff into our mouths, plus some to take home for later. We paused on Main St. in New Paltz to eat some already ripe mulberries, too, off the tree squeezed between the falafel place and the tie-dye incense place.
The mulberries by my house are on the verge of ripening, too: the birds, the squirrels, and I are all waiting eagerly.

If you don't have mulberries in your yard, some good, public picking trees are these: Beekman St. (on the way to the train station) over parking spots #565 and #556. These two trees have branches that hang low over the road, so it's easy to reach the fruit. If you're by the sloop club, check to see if the two June berry trees by the walkway have ripe berries yet, or harvest from the mulberry tree by the tracks, about 10 parking spaces to the left of the entrance to the tracks.

If you're up for a walk, some trees on the way to the old brick factory on Dennings Points have the biggest mulberries I've ever seen.

Happy foraging, and happy eating. Here's hoping you don't get berry juice on your clothes, like me.