Micah and I went with some friends to their friends' farm in Petaluma, which is about an hour north of SF. They were having a cookout/campfire. And sometimes it's just a nice change of scenery to get out of the city. Plus, we were told we could pick our own produce, who passes that up?
By the way, this is our newest addition, a kitchen cart.
As I was picking green beans with this other girl, we talked about our simultaneous feelings of connection and disconnection. Seeing the farm. Pulling and picking the produce. Feeling the dirt. I was connected to where my food was coming from. I was connected because I was harvesting it. And, yet, I had done none of the work to get the plants to that point. In fact, in some cases, I did not even know how to pick the produce. Is there a special way to pull green beans off a plant? Am I doing it wrong? I am disconnected from the process of how food is grown.
It was great to be out there on the farm, but it also has caused me to think again about the complexities of food production, both local and not. How do you support smaller entities on a tight budget? How do you encourage the local food movement, while realizing that this might come at a cost to small, "local" farmers in the international market? Farmers that have been forced to produce food not for their own local market, but for the U.S. How do you mobilize for provision laws for farmers, knowing that these also bolster large, factory productions that do damage, socially and environmentally?
Lots and lots of questions...
Wish I had some answers.
On a positive note, Micah and I sure brought home some farm fresh loot. We got green beans, cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, squash, radishes, kale, beet greens, chard, and turnips.
First up on the farm fresh menu was kale chips. Now, I had never made, or even had, kale chips before, but given all the rage around them I thought they'd be a fun experiment. I read a number of different recipes and decided to keep things simple. I washed and dried the kale, then torn it into "chip size" pieces. Put them in a bowl and tossed with olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. Spread onto a baking sheet (don't over crowd the chips) and baked for 7 minutes (or until crisp) at 350 degrees.
And, I'm happy to report that I really liked kale chips!
For dinner, I wanted to use some of the squash Micah picked. And when I saw this recipe for Flatbread Pizza with Sausage and Squash, I couldn't pass it up.
We also made a salad to go with it. Unfortunately, I hated the taste of the beet greens. They tasted really salty to me, so we ended up with an abbreviated version of a greek salad. But, oh my word, this garden cucumber was the absolute best. SO crunchy. SO tasty.
I'll keep you posted on whatever else we make this week from our farm fresh produce.
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