fresh.

market season is here!

i have been waiting months and months for this. all those times i almost broke down and bought asparagus from argentina – totally worth the wait.

at the onset of this season i am reminded of one important thing – fresh food lasts so long in my fridge.

i first learned this lesson as a line cook in baltimore – working at Ixia (r.i.p.), we used to get produce from a local farm. one weekend i got beautiful purple asparagus for a special. at the end of saturday night i stuck what was left in a pan and shoved it in the back of my station, without thinking.

i found it again two weeks later – and it was still as firm and beautiful as when we first received it.

this week at Local Harvest we received lovely greens, beautiful radishes, bright red strawberries and eye-popping early turnips. all of which look as great as they did the day they were plucked from the ground.

i can’t say enough about those turnips (from three rivers community farm in elsah, il) – the greens and the roots were so crispy and full of flavor.

+++

speaking of fresh, i recently viewed a great movie at the white flag projects…called FRESH.

i would say i spend a lot of time reading and watching all about the ‘new food movement’ – but this is the first film that has been inspirational. instead of beating you over the head with pictures after picture of crowded chicken houses or feces drenched cows, this movie offers solutions – a thing we DESPERATELY need.

i was growing weary of the depressing and apocalyptic messages of the food community – telling us that we are killing ourselves and out environment (which i completely agree with!) – finally Ana Sofia Joanes is out there showing us that it is not all lost and that good food is not just for the elite.

the best thing i heard said all night was by a 50 year old man, something like “in my life time, food has gone from wholesome to atrocious – the rise of the fast food culture – this means, in the next fifty years, we can make just as drastic changes for the better.”

(please check out FRESH’s website, especially the ‘call the action‘ section)

no pictures yet.

sorry. sometimes i like to wait and sit down and unload a whole bunch of pictures at once…

i am excited about:
-root vegetables
-horseradish
-sewing
-cleaning
-snow
-cookbooks
-beans
-new wheels

i am unexcited about:
-cold
-lack of yoga
-holiday frenzy
-pulled pork
-no costume
-no gmail

and i like this:

impressions.

i was wandering about the internet – like i like to do – and stumbled upon a number of latin american political posters from the 70s and 80s. it created a wave of memories in me.

when i was in my first ten years of life my mother worked in a building that housed a number of political organizations. she ran the St. Louis chapter of “Pledge of Resistance” – an organization that sought to protest American involvement in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries. my childhood was filled with weekly marches, protests, mailings, poster making, demonstrations, and the occasional arrest.

i remember distinctly the times we bailed my mom out of jail after she had tied herself to something, or illegally obstructed federal buildings, or put posters in places that weren’t hers to put them (like hanging a huge thirty foot poster reading something like “NO WAR ON EL SALVADOR” at union station).

seeing these posters reminds me of things that have formed me, but i somehow forget them easily.

you can see the rest of the ones i found here: political posters