Grainews: First We Eat: Mom’s New Reasons to Love a Farmer’s Market

Grainews

We’ve finished our coffee, and I am helping my mom into my car for our weekly trip to one of the local farmers’ markets. She has her green corduroy tote-bag over one arm, her purse holding its little zip-up change purse on the other, her favourite feathered hat on her head, her cane in one hand. From where we live, it’s a short drive to one of several small-town markets, plus several of varying size in the nearby city of Saskatoon. If I ask, she’s quick to tell me what she wants to buy today.

Back in the day, Mom was a farmers’ market vendor, selling her farm-grown produce, and later, dozens of styles of practical fabric goods, from farriers’ aprons and gun wraps to saddlebags and berry bucket holders. She could tell you all the good reasons to shop locally and buy from a farmer, reasons that remain as true and self-evident now as they were when Mom was a spry sprat of fifty: keep your cash in your community; fresh-picked food is fresher and more nutritious; local food is unprocessed, seasonal, diverse, and delicious even if it isn’t durable enough to ship to Delaware.

But Mom and Dad are in their eighties now, and they no longer sew or keep a garden. Nor does Mom bake the dozens of loaves of bread she made weekly when I was a kid growing up with my four siblings.

Mom’s reasons for going to the market have changed, and now include the social and sensory elements that as a busy farmer and mother, she never really had time to appreciate back then.

Today, I know our trip through the market will be slower than if I was there on my own. Mom will stop in front of each and every booth and table. “What do we have here?” she’ll say, even if we were here a week ago. Then she’ll scrutinize the wares as closely as any French-born chef. When samples are offered, as they often are, she tries everything, scrunching up her nose at pungent breakfast radishes, smacking her lips over fresh Okanagan apricots from the fruit truck. Then she’ll ask the vendor how sales are, how the weather is, how the bees are keeping, how the farm is doing. Eventually she’ll ask the baker if there are raisin tarts today, and the gardener for more of the yellow plum tomatoes she enjoyed last week.

When it’s time to pay, she will set down her walking stick and her tote bag, get out her wallet and her coin purse, and count out loonies and quarters and dimes. She laughs when I tell her I always feel like I’m getting something for free if I can pay for it with coins. Sometimes a few nickels escape, and I scuttle around on the grass at her feet, looking for them as if they were the Holy Grail. Eventually her coin purse will be stowed, her expanding totebag safe on her arm, and we will move on to the next vendor. There’s no rushing her, and I have accepted that it’s pointless to think I should want to. I am hanging out with my mom, and that’s a good way to spend my day.

I’ll be older eventually, and I’ll want my boys to take me to the market, too. I’ll still want to cry over the perfect peaches, smell the inveterate sugar junkie’s fix of caramelized cinnamon buns, admire the impossible pink blush on new-crop apples. And I won’t want anyone rushing me, either.

Summer Market Garden Salad

Salad as supper during summer is dependent on the garden – or the farmers’ market. Don’t try to get the whole garden into the bowl. Be selective: several salad greens, a fruit or berries, a seasonal vegetable or two, and a protein, maybe left over or cooked in advance or on the grill. And olives, of course, and a handful of fresh herbs. Then instead of making a vinaigrette, choose a good oil – I am partial to olive, but you may like Canadian-made camelina or cold-pressed canola oil – and an even better vinegar. Make it pretty on the platter or toss it all together.

Arugula

Red leaf romaine or other greens

Radicchio leaves, torn or chopped

Olives

Grilled chicken wings, steelhead trout, chickpeas, soft/hard-boiled eggs or tuna

Sweet bell peppers, diced

Cooked potatoes, cooled and cubed

Sugar snap peas, steamed and cooled

Watermelon, diced

A handful each of tarragon, chives, cilantro, basil, parsley

Olive or other good oil

Fruit-infused, balsamic or sherry vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

 

Arrange all ingredients on a platter and drizzle with oil and vinegar. Season to taste and serve.

 

 

 

Grainews: First We Eat: Reasons for Cooking

On a Friday over lunch after our weekly trip to the farmer’s market, I asked Mom what her favourite desserts were. Her 82^nd birthday was rolling around soon.  I’d already decided on the main course – cioppino, Mom’s favourite fish dish.  It’s a tomato-broth-based, Italian-derived fisherman’s stew that’s been part of our family’s repertoire since the mid-60s, when, Lila, Mom’s sister, moved to the San Francisco Bay area. (Simple, simple.  Make a big potful of an herb-scented tomato sauce rich with garlic, leeks and onion. Add a variety of sliced or diced fish and shellfish to the hot broth.  Frozen fish is fine.  Don’t overcook anything.  Serve with crusty bread to mop.  And napkins.)

“Cupcakes and berries with whipped cream,” Mom said in response, “or black forest cake,” (which is chocolate cake with cherries and whipped cream).  A theme had emerged.  I went home and rummaged my recipe file.  I decided on a trio, so everyone could have a choice (and more than one!): vanilla madeleines; red velvet cupcakes, devil’s food cupcakes.

Madeleines are made with a sponge cake batter. They are baked in dainty scalloped indentations, a shape meant to honour pilgrims, in a pan called a plaque. Well, pilgrims: that’s all of us, travelling through life. Muffin pans look plainer but work just fine if you don’t have the fancy scalloped pan.

When I was a little kid, Mom had shown me how to measure and sift, how to cream butter and sugar, how to shape cookies.  Later, she taught me to start spuds in cold water and green vegetables in boiling, how to roast a piece of beef, how to fry an egg.  She had no time or patience for anything fussy, but she did know the mechanics, if not the science, of cooking.

At the time, home cooking was still the norm. It should still be. I believe we owe it to ourselves to be able to feed ourselves. And we owe our kids the knowledge of how to feed themselves. It’s like swimming – a necessary life-skill. But it’s more than that: cooking gives me control over what I ingest. It’s the simplest and most effective form of control over our diets we have.

Another of the great things about being a good cook is that I can feed myself and my best beloveds.  And I don’t mean just knocking off batches of homemade granola for breakfast or tuna salad sandwiches for lunch.  Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things – in fact, they are both staples in our home.  But I mean stuff I really want to make and eat – stuff I see in restaurants or online, and think, “Hey, let’s have that for supper!” (And usually at a fraction of the cost, and without the hassle of driving to town.)  You may find cupcakes – or madeleines – at the local bakery or farmer’s market, but this is a simple dish made the better for being homemade.  One of the greatest pleasures of cooking is observing someone I care about enjoy what I have created.  And sharing the meal.  So first we eat cake.  Then we open the presents.  Happy birthday, Mom.

Madeleines

This is made like a sponge cake batter. Chilling the buttered pan, then the batter-filled pan, ensures a higher rise, as does baking on a preheated baking sheet.  Madeleines really are best the same day they are baked, best warm, in fact; so make and chill the batter in advance, but don’t bake them until after your main course is eaten.

Makes 12 3½” madeleines

2 T. + ½ c. melted salted butter

2 large eggs

½ c. sugar

1 t. vanilla extract

2/3 c. flour

1 t. baking powder

 

Brush a madeleine pan with half the 2 T. butter.  Chill and repeat.  Chill.  If you don’t have a madeleine pan (plaque), line a full-size muffin pan with parchment cups, or butter and chill a mini-muffin pan.

Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla on high speed for 5 minutes.  Sift the flour and baking powder.  Thoroughly fold the dry ingredients and remaining butter into the egg foam. Use two spoons or a piping bag to fill the pan’s indentations with batter.  Chill for an hour.

Place a baking sheet on the middle rack of the oven, then heat the oven to 425 C.  Remove batter-filled pan from fridge and put the chilled pan on the hot baking sheet in the oven.  Bake for 8 minutes for 3 ½” madeleines; briefer for 1 ½”; about 8-15 minutes for cupcakes, depending on size.

After you take the pan from the oven, use a small knife to remove them from pan.  Invert and serve warm.  These are good with a glaze (icing sugar mixed with coffee; icing sugar and lemon or orange juice; icing sugar, vanilla extract and water) or with whipped cream and fruit compote. Do as Marcel Proust and dip them in tea the morning after.