Tales from the Bay

"The old man still had two drinks of water in the bottle and he used half of one after he had eaten the shrimps. The skiff was sailing well considering the handicaps and he steered with the tiller under his arm.  He could see the fish and he had only to look at his hands and feel his back against the stern to know that this had truly happened and was not a dream."
     – Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea



The great bay had always tempted the old man away from his city work.  He did not want it this way, he wanted to be like the strong-standing farmers from the northcoast who traveled down to the Ferry Market for hours just to stand and exchange money for produce all day, often well into the night. Yet the wild moving blue of the bay was closer to this heart, his very soul, and he found himself often moving off into the shadows of things and disappearing to reach his small boat, the Angelina, tied to a series of wharf poles.  Here the seagulls' cries, as they floated on the cross drifts of wind, was the

alerting sound of freedom and crisp sea flavor to come.  Flavor for that which he might catch for that day. He sometimes winked to himself as he took his first few pulls of the double oars from the dinghy he hung off of the Angelina, as he could see the bridge and the Embarcadero Market. For he

remembered well when it was just he and a very small hand full of others in those early days when the farmers and the seamen came together in a few homespun stalls to sell their labor to those small time cafes so hopeful to bring the city together after the great earthquake of '83.  Those days had drifted too, like the wings of the gulls, and now, more than anything else, he could be found recruiting his granddaughter to accompany him on some ocean-going excursion or another.  "We will be safe, I assure you," he would say to his daughter, who might still allow him around for the sockeye salmon that he might bring back, or a sample cask of oysters from his friends at Hog Oyster.  He would pull down the brim of his sun hat, so tattered now as to wobble at a whisper, while tethering onto his
granddaughter a thin version of a life jacket.  Down at the docks, all the men of the wharf knew her by

name, and had kept Rose a small chair near the boat with a latch for a fishing pole which they kept there permanently.  If the old man and granddaughter were not there and the pole blew down, Maria or perhaps the 'Showman,' as they called him, would reel it up and place it back onto the latch.

Snapshots from Milwaukee

Under a little better conditions than upper thirty degree blustery weather, the Riverwalk downtown Milwaukee is a great way to take a good long walk to see three separate neighborhoods watching, as you go along, old tugs like the pic above, boaters and kayakers in the summer, bridges rising, community artwork and riverside restaurants and cafes.

Heading toward the Rock Bottom Brewery at the central downtown portion of the Riverwalk, the architecture is bound by history itself to be the oldest and most grand in the state of Wisconsin.

A few blocks down from Rock Bottom is the Third Ward's Public Market, an indoor farmer's market

style center that includes some small bars, sandwich eateries, an oyster shack and upstairs, near the

seating, a cooking class kitchen where local chefs demonstrate.  We hadn't brought all of our winter coats, thinking that spring might spring, so weren't sure if we were ready to stroll twenty more minutes through the architectural wind tunnels, but we took the risk and walked to Discovery World on the lake adjacent to the Summer Fest grounds down on East Michigan Street.  Some science and aquariums centers are a bust, but we got lucky, and this one was well worth the visit.

In the science and technology portion of the innovation center, there are hundreds of hands-on devices, tools, engines, studios, labs, "nail beds," and kilowatt wheels for the more adventurous.

The zoo was not available to us on this trip – just too cold – but we found little caged animals all over the city just waiting to get out...

Salers and Artisons at
the Cowgirl Creamery

In 1976, two young women from the University of Tennesee took a hippie trip in a baby blue Chevy Van to San Francisco to find a place at the table of the city's up-and-coming food scene; one landed at the famed Chez Panisse, working under the founder of the farm-to-table movement in America, Alice Waters, and the other opened Bette's Oceanview.  Their paths reconvened some years later at Point

Reyes Station just up the coast from the city by the bay in the form of an old barn they turned to a cheese making facility, which they came to call The Cowgirl Creamery, today one of the foremost quality cheesemakers in the U.S.

"Legend has it that when Peggy and Sue were exploring names for their budding cheese business, two women on horseback pulled up in front of the barn, hitched their horses to the bike rack and ran into the grocery store for supplies.  Ellen Straus, who was visiting at the time, looked at Sue and Peggy and

 A Point Reyes Station Farm

said, 'We're living in the Wild West out here.' Peggy's response: 'Then we must be cowgirls!  And this must be the Cowgirl Creamery.' Two decades, dozens of awards, two creameries, four retail stores and two thousand tons of cheese later, it's safe to say they've earned their 10-gallon hats."

It's not by accident that the seacoast hill region of northern California would come to provide world-class cheese.  The mountainous high elevation grazing ground for cattle harkens to the world famous

 homeland of cheesemaking at Auvergne, France, where the enormous Saler cattle feed on ancient

volcanic earth to produce a rich and rustic cream that is eventually put to good use concocting novel cheeses like the Fromage aux Artisons.  The 'artisons' refer to the specialty mites that aid in sculpting this raw pressed cheese the color of straw.  The Cowgirls' own best cheese, Red Hawk, (soon to be delivered to Quarry Lane!), is described: "The wild bacteria that define this bold, sumptuous triple

cream are native to Point Reyes; in fact, we could not make this cheese anywhere else.  Aged four weeks and washed with a brine solution encourages the sunset red-orange rind, Red Hawk captures the true essence of West Marin."  Just as the Hogs Island Oyster must taste like Tomales Bay, the Cowgirl cheeses tastes like the pungent and lush mountainous seacoast looming above the rising ocean spray.

Chicharrones by 4505 Thursdays 
at the Market

"Crispy clouds of porkaliciousness" is not necessarily the first phrase you think of when imagining

one of the most food conscious farmer's markets in the land, but that's what chef Ryan Farr, originally from Kansas City (meat capital of America), calls his lightly fried pig skins, which landed Farr a prime kiosk spot down at the Ferry Market.

'“We had all this extra skin left after buying whole pigs and using every other part, but there’s not a lot of use for pig skins,” says Farr. Now, the demand for Chicharrones has outpaced his need for the other parts of the pig, says the chef. So in recent months he’s been buying skins from the same local farms he’s

always gotten pigs from — Marin Sun Farms, Prather Ranch, Devil’s Gulch Ranch, and Niman Ranch, to name a few. As Farr sees it, smart, resourceful butchery is the only viable option at a time when eaters are becoming increasingly aware of what it takes to put a piece of meat on a plate."  

Farr turned his precociousness for butchery into a full entrepeneurial vision by opening up the standard idea of the vegetable CSA (community supported agriculture) to meat.  San Franciscans can pre-order packages of locally grown pork and beef and pick-up at a designated sight.  Education has always been a part of the vision as well, as 4505 not only conducts intensive butchery classes for a seemingly

 endless draw of willing participants, but have also assisted in teaching skills to the less fortunate citizens of the city, as well as creating the 'Feed the Pig' program, a philanthropy project which is dedicated to partnering with other organization in the bay area to promote healthy and sustainable food options for children in the community.

4505 shows us the cutting edge, literally, of how our new food culture sees and eats meat compared to even a decade ago when America, at least in popular culture, was beginning to lean toward vegetarianism and away from meat diets.  Farr, located directly inside the epicenter (on the San Andreas fault line) of American West Coast food culture, re-teaches us what we already know but lost track of: there's nothing wrong with meat, but to think about, care about, and consume the meat product consciously is where it's at right now.  Aldo Leopold, the great conservationist of the early 20th century, would be tickled at this 'slow and small' movement as he was the first to publicly call for a "Land Ethic," where people invest in the value of the land, the soil, the wildlife as if IT, along with us, were all connected, and all represented value, not just people and machines.  

So although the 'pig skin' has in the short past been frowned on because it's fried and meaty, perception has now taken a new turn.  The pork is local, organic, sustainable, and the entire animal is used not wasted.  The long line waiting for the bounty of fresh kale and brussel sprouts has now meandered back to the pig.

Hog Island Hogwash for
the Sweetwater Oyster

"The two weeks up, he suddenly attaches himself to the first clean hard object he bumps into.  His fifty million brothers who have not been eaten by fish may or may not bump into anything clean and hard, and those who do not, die.  But our spat has been lucky, and in great good spirits he clamps himself firmly to his home, probably forever.  He is by now about one-seventy-fifth of an inch long, whatever that may be...and he is an oyster."
                – MFK Fisher, "Consider the Oyster"





The story of Hog Island Oyster, out of Tomales Bay CA, is by its very nature long and laborious, but full of passion like the process of oyster farming itself one seed at a time.

For oyster lovers, we know it's not really about the dipping sauce – instead it's that rare experience of eating something that so tastes like its surrounding aquatic habitat that you sense you're eating

Sweetwaters on a pan of ice, Hogwash in the center

a particular region of the seashore – but just the right sauce does add a very precise 'kick' of flavor to the otherwise subtle oyster.  For Hog Island Oysters, one of the most important oyster farm operations not only on the west coast

but in the country, they suggest their 'hog wash sauce' to dip their trademark sweetwaters in.

John Finger and Terry Sawyer started oyster farming back in 1983 with the motto "strong backs and weak minds," referring not only to the backbreaking work of oyster farming, but also to the fact that, back in the beginning, both founders were marine biologists by day and then farmers at night. They could not have known that their little experiment with a patch of the Tomales Bay (north of Point Reyes, 50 miles north of San Fran), would have turned into a 3 million a year operation.  Oyster farming in a sustainable way means

you cultivate shells seed by seed, hand by hand, attaching a single "'spat' onto fragments of shell and grow them to about the size of a grain of granola.  The seed is placed in mesh cylinders called Stanways.  The Stanways are then floated out in the bay so that the tides can deliver nutrient rick algae to them and gently roll them around just enough to set in motion the foundations for the thick, deep and fluted shape of their shells."

Some oysters take up to three years to fully mature. They churn through the variety of aquatic nutrients available and approximately 50 gallons of water a day, growing into the elastic muscular flavor pack that we eat after its shucked.  MFK Fisher, from above, says in another short essay from "Consider the Oyster," that there are three types of oyster eaters: "those loose-minded sports who will eat anything, hot, cold, thin, thick, dead or alive, as long as it is oyster, those that will eat them raw and only raw; and those who with equal severity will eat them cooked and no way other."  For my own taste, I'd side with each of these folks, and eat them any which way, but the cold, farmed, and filtered

Hog Island Farm 'Boat' outdoor oyster bar

oyster, like the Hogs Island Sweetwater, enjoyed at a quaint sea-spot like their 'boat' bar at Tomales Bay, or their flagship oyster bar at the Ferry Market,

 is as close to living like a west coast fish as you can get.

Hogwash

Makes 1 generous bowl

Ingredients (hogwash)

1/4 C seasoned rice vinegar
1/4 C unseasoned rice vinegar
1 large shallot, peeled, minced
1 large jalapeño pepper, seeded, minced
1/2 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Method (hogwash)

Using a 50-50 blend of unseasoned rice vinegar and seasoned rice vinegar gives the perfect balance of acidity and sweetness. Seasoned rice vinegar has sugar and salt added, in just the right proportion. Both are great condiments to have on hand in your kitchen. Combine ingredients in a medium bowl. When serving, stir the Hogwash beforehand to include all the goodies in the bowl. Serve in a ramekin or small, shallow bowl along side freshly shucked raw oysters. Place a teaspoon near the bowl for guests to spoon the sauce onto their oysters. Use the Hogwash the same day it’s made. If making ahead, mix all dry ingredients and store refrigerated in an airtight container. Add lime juice and vinegar blend just before serving.

How Little Apple Granola Makes
Apple Crisp

The Ferry Building Farmer's Market is full of stories.  Inspired by small production, the little farms that bring their product to market down by the bay want to make a difference.  They do this by caring

for the soil, the product they produce, and visualizing a correspondingly caring customer.  Farmer Al from Frog Hollow knew he had a jackpot crop with his Cal Red peaches.  Dan Lehrer and Joanne Krueger of Little Apple Granola started their little stall with not much more than an idea it was time to be done "with city life, at least life in the Berkeley flats, and wanted to live somewhere with a bit more space.  With little more than enthusiasm and lack of Plan B, we became apple and flower farmers...During the next several years, we put greenhouses and grew, literally and figuratively, our business."

After beginning their farm by growing vegetables, herbs, and edible flower starts, they also started selling apples, not primarily for eating but processing into juice, sauce and dried.  "The apple industry in Sebastopol (California) started shrinking in 1982, hammered by imports, first from the Central 

Valley, then Washington State, then New Zealand, now China.  China has flooded the world market with cheap apple concentrate, commonly used as sweetener, and you can buy Chinese concentrate for less than it costs to pick the apples here."  Much of the apple orchard land in this once prestigious apple growing area had been torn down and only a few hundred acres of apple trees had been left standing.  "We've wondered for years how to make our orchard a more viable part of our business.  A couple of years ago, we pressed some apple juice on our wooden press and made our first batch of

apple cider vinegar.  It's rampant success made us think: what else can we do?"  Joanne put her culinary skills to use and began tinkering the various ways to create sweet granola combined with apples, such as apple cider caramels with chamomile & vanilla bean

as well as apple cider toffee, which Dan says, "The result, using our apples with expertly-baked granola, speaks for itself.  There's nothing else like it on the market, even one with umpteen million brands of granola."

Apple Crisp

Apples (enough to fill a 9x9 baking dish, approx. 3-4 lbs)

Flour and sugar for the apples

2 tablespoons brandy or juice of 1 lemon

1 3/4 cups unbleached flour

12 tbsps. very soft butter

2/3 cup light or dark brown sugar

3 tablespoons raw or organic sugar

1/2 cup granola

1/2 to 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Peel, core, and thinly slice the apples. Toss with the brandy and a couple tablespoons sugar and flour (add more sugar if you like it sweeter), and put in the pan. Briefly pulse the granola in the food processor or break up any large dried apple bits with your hands. (This is so the apple bits don’t stick out and burn in your finished crisp.) In a mixer, mix together the dry ingredients. Add the butter and mix on low speed for about 5 minutes, until all the butter is incorporated and the mixture resembles small peas. If it sticks to the bottom of the bowl, just break it up with your hands. Sprinkle over the fruit press down gently and bake for about 45 minutes, until the apples are soft and the juices are bubbling around the edges. Cool and serve warm or at room temperature. Heavy cream, whipped cream or ice cream are optional! 

The Story of Frog Hollow's 
Stinging Nettle Pesto

Walking along the open-air high glass ceilinged halls of the Ferry Plaza Building down on  

the Embarcadero waterfront San Francisco, you might be able to, in any given glimpse, see the San Francisco / Oakland Bay Bridge and some 125 farmer market cafes and stalls, all brimming with local produce, cheeses and baked goods.    

The Farmer's Market is the food source for a bulk of San Franciscan restaurants from all neighborhoods, as it has come to represent a pioneering hub of the farm-to-table restaurant movement since Alice Waters first originated the idea at her Chez Panisse near Berkeley

decades before the rest of the country caught on and began to use the term as if it were something only just beginning.  Farmer Al Courchesne,  another pioneer at the Market, founded Frog Hollow Farm fifty-five miles away in Brentwood back in 1976 with nothing more than a small Cal Red peach patch

that has now grown to a 133-acre farm specializing in stone fruits, conserves, chutneys, marmalades, pastries, dried fruits and olive oil, all to be found in one of many produce bubbling eateries along the corridors of the Market building.

Anna Buss, Culinary coordinator at Frog Hollow, writes "Developing a new product for Frog Hollow is often an adventure and definitely a team effort.  I never know when inspiration will hit and where it will take me.  A typical day might start like this: Wearing his trademark overalls, Farmer Al walks into the office to talk with out Marketing director, Pearl, about mail order sales and new marketing initiatives.  As he is leaving the office, he sees me and his thoughts shift to new products.

"Anna, what can we do with nettle?  We have a lot of it!"

"Well,"  I say as I run through options in my mind, "we could make it in to a pesto, put it in a soup..."

"This is stinging nettle.  It's really good for you, and we are going to make it into a pesto.  It's a little painful to work with at first, but you get used to it after the first time, and it's great for arthritis.  You will learn to love it.  They look at me like I am loco, but we carry on....This stinging weed which was growing in surplus on the farm is now part of some of our best selling and popular products.  We are using the pesto to garnish our cafe menu items such as soup and pizza."

Quick and Easy Nettle Pesto Recipe

.15lb of blanched nettle
1 bunch parsley
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup champagne vinegar
1 clove garlic
1 tsp of salt

Blend in food processor until smooth and bright green.  Season to taste, and drizzle over soup.