Letter: Coastside Farmer’s Market notes

Seasoned Greetings, Marketeers!

I sure do hope that your first go-round of Holiday Cheer was as rousing a success as mine.  Feature this if you will: I got a pack of Fresno teenagers and some former Republicans to knowingly eat a pie made with spelt, sprouted whole wheat and tapioca flour, and to finally admit, that yes, eating foods from a Farmer’s Market is really a pretty good idea. 
How did such a transformation occur, you ask? Well, current political events seem to have broadened the horizons of many of my relatives ( thank the Lord) and dousing the top of the pie with Go-To Chocolate Company’s brown butter caramel sauce may have been the incentive behind a few former familial naysayers.  That and it was chockablock with Pliny’s Coastside Grown Belleflower apples, picked on the same day I bought them from a farm less than a mile from my house. 

You gotta understand:  I come from a family which,  in part, imagines that supporting local farms, buying local products and having a healthy lifestyle to be walking quickly through the mall with a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies. 

So in order to convince the gentlemen in question that there is another way, I made the aforementioned pie and a spinach salad with Santiago’s pomegranates, Patrick’s smoked duck-breast bacon, and Big Paw’s Apricot/Lavender vinegar with some shavings of Spring Hill Jerseys Dry Goat Milk Jack Cheese with black peppercorns that seems to have altered even old Uncle Ed’s opinion about us uppity San Fran-sicko food freaks, knee-jerk cheese-and bark-eating hippies.

It was a great day!

I feel fortified enough to manage Christmas! And I have plans, yes, yes I do.  And they include wonderful several occasions for two or twenty that feature insane combinations of fruits, vegetables and Tunisian spices, but meanwhile, a supper for two that featured Sweet Potato Pappardelle topped with sauteed butternut squash, sage and chanterelles alongside shaved fennel sauteed quickly with red onion and some of Aaron’s almonds crushed over the top was quite a hit recently, and if you have yet to make a marinade out of the rest of a decent but disappointing Zinfandel, the juice of a fresh pomegrante, the peels of a few tangerines and a handful of dried cherries that have plumped up in the brew overnight, why you are in for one Transporting Christmas Goose, Gloria, and I am not kidding.

And by the way, if you have yet to discover the effect that a thick slice of Brioche’s fig studded sourdough, toasted, and graced with a perfect skrim of Spring Hill Jerseys farmstead butter and served with a tiny glass of fresh squeezed tangerine juice can have on person who, until presented with this combination declared themselves "Not a Morning Person" , I highly recommend you investigate this phenomenon prior to finalizing your holiday gift list.

Happy Hollandaise!

Erin Tormey, Founder
Coastside Farmers Markets
May-December
Saturdays from 9 to 1 in Half Moon Bay Wednesdays from 2:30 to 6:30 in Pacifica
650/726-4895