Foraged and Found Edibles

Every Saturday, late morning or early afternoon, the Chef and I pass the mushroom stall at the University District, then double back. Even though Jeremy or Christina will be delivering another bag full of mushrooms to the restaurant later in the week, the Chef might just need some that night for the fish special. Or for pickling, then placing them in a paté. Or maybe we just want to say hello, again.

Jeremy and Christina run Foraged and Found Edibles. For the most part, they make their living by digging in the rich earth of the woods around Seattle, and finding the best mushrooms growing at the moment. (When mushrooms are not growing, they take catering jobs.) They sell chanterelles and lobsters, oysters and porcinis, whatever is yielding itself to their hands that week. And then they make their rounds of the best restaurants in the city, walking in during the afternoon, before dinner service, and handing over mushrooms only hours away from the forest to the chefs ready in their kitchens.

Including my Chef.

I love these two, the way they have made their living through food. And their mushrooms are incredible. These chanterelles? Mmmmwhaah. (That's the sound of me kissing my fingers into the air.)

Also, they're just plain beautiful.

University District farmers' market

Spring is definitely in the air. All around the city, ebullient-looking couples are holding hands and staring into each other's eyes. People talk about summer vacation as though it is just around the weekend. Even the air feels sprightly.

The world is alive again.

And for me, one of the best signs of this exuberant time happened yesterday morning: the University District Farmers' Market opened for business at nine am.

All winter long, when I drove by in the rain, I looked forlornly at the empty parking lot on 50th Street. Winter is necessary, I know. How else could everything grow without the dormant time? I try to live every moment fully, not longing for something else. However, when I saw that empty parking lot, I'd have a little pang of sadness. It's not springtime yet. Summer is a fading memory. There is no farmers' market to attend.

Seattle has spectacular farmers' markets. All throughout the spring and summer, dahlias bloom in plastic buckets in profusion. Greens lie on wooden tables, pungent and just pulled from the earth. Fresh goat cheese awaits us. Every Sunday afternoon in summer, I stroll through the Ballard farmers' market, an entire city street blocked off, the sun shining through red and yellow banners, music playing. Moving slowly, I look at every stall, ask questions of every farmer, sample all the foods I can eat. The farmers’ market is a social occasion for me. I introduce friends to the joys of local and organic, as we stroll around with cups of coffee or glasses of fresh cider. I make new friends every week, over the beauties of broccoli or the joys of juicy raspberries. And I learn the stories of some of these farmers, stories of making goat cheese every week east of the mountains or growing arugula near the city. I love buying produce from the same hands that have pulled it from the ground.

I learned how to eat well from the farmers’ markets of Seattle. I have always been an enthusiastic cook, but I didn’t really start to explore until I had to stop eating gluten. When first faced with a life without wheat, rye, or barley, I was not daunted. Strangely, I feel lucky that I had been so violently ill for months on end. When I cut out the gluten, I felt better within three days. As soon as found my strength, I was greeted with spring sunshine and a world of possibilities. I started wandering through the farmers’ markets and buying anything that called to me, any fresh food that did not contain gluten. In the past, I might have simply bought the vegetables I knew I liked, the easiest fruits to eat whole, and gone home with one bag. But with my blossoming health, I began opening to new foods. Chinese spinach. Kale. Beets. Slow-roasted tomatoes. Every week, a new vegetable seemed to show up on every stall, and I was convinced to buy it, whether or not I knew how to cook it. I learned and learned and ate and learned. As my health began to feel as strong as July sunshine, I realized that I would never go back. I was alive.

Knowing this, you might understand why it was I wanted to skip into the University District farmers’ market on Saturday morning. The first day of the market being open after months of dormancy, ready for business at 9 am? My dear friend Dorothy and I were there at 9:04, our senses open and our wallets ready.

And we’re off. Baby leeks. Vivid tulips. First lactation goat cheese. Chervil. Strawberries. Women with babies. Men in Tevas. Families ready to eat. The breeze was still cold on our faces, the sky was overcast and grey, and summer is too far away to even begin to hope. But the farmers’ markets are open now.

Three cheers for spring and the farmers’ markets of Seattle.

Open Saturdays year-round (yay! that's a recent innovation)
9am to 2pm
at the corner of University Way & NE 50th
in the playground of the University Heights Center for the Community.

Silverlake Farmers' Market

I can’t visit a city without visiting a farmers’ market. Just down from Madame Matisse was the block-long Silverlake Farmers’ Market. Small in comparison to my local stomping grounds (Ballard or the University Farmers’ Market), this one was still sweet. Even sweeter for being in the middle of LA, somehow. Sharon stocked up on fresh corn and flowers. And I stopped to sample fresh bean curd at the Vietnamese Soy Cafe stall. Wow. I’d never tasted such supple, subtle bean curd, lightly flavored with ginger. I thought about ordering a glass of pennywort juice, since the woman running the stall told me it would clear out every toxin. But in the end, I chose more toxins: Vietnamese coffee, with sweet condensed milk. Ah, a small slathering of heaven.

Every Saturday from 8am-1pm
3700 Sunset Blvd
Between Edgecliffe Dr & Maltman Ave (intersection of Griffith Park Blvd)
For more info, call (323) 661-7771

the Cheese Store of Silverlake

Later, after strolling through small stores with hip clothes, intriguing antiques, and startling window displays, Sharon and I felt a bit peckish again. And she was eager to share her favorite food store with me. The Cheese Store of Silverlake is stocked from floor to ceiling with gorgeous gourmet foods from around the world. Vosges chocolates. Arborio rice from Italy. Apricot toffee. A local candy maker called The Little Flower Candy Company that makes sea salt caramels, vanilla caramels, and (my favorite) cinnamon-sugar marshmallows. Ah. Barrels of olive oils. Persimmons. And then, the cheeses. Sharon and I bought two small slices of two cheeses, each. I found some Drunken Goat, from Spain, which I simply adore, and Sharon had never tasted it before. She wanted me to try the Bar Durro, a hard cheese with a nutty quality. We stocked up on little gifts of food for ourselves, and we nibbled on them all weekend.

3926-28 West Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90029
323.644.7511

Pioneer Organics

Just after I stopped eating gluten, I started receiving a big, brown box of organic produce on my doorstep every other Tuesday morning. Pioneer Organics is a wonder, one of my favorite parts of living in Seattle. They bring me always-organic, usually local, and just-in-season produce. Right now, my kitchen is filled with sunlight and possibilities of meals all week long. The quality is extraordinary. I'm never disappointed. And it lands on my doorstep.

DeLaurenti's

DeLaurenti’s is a gourmet, gluten-free girl’s dream. Stuffed with unusual foods, expensive olive oils, and more luxuries that will soon become basics than any place I have ever been, DeLaurenti’s always tempts me. As I walked by with some friends today, they suggested we stop in. “Oh no,” I said. “We have to eat lunch first. If I go in there hungry, I spend $140 without even thinking about it.”

Ballard farmers' market

The Ballard Farmers' Market is one of the wonders of Seattle--the weekly farmers’ markets. Nearly every neighborhood in Seattle has one running, from May to October. On Sundays, several streets in Ballard are blocked off to traffic. White flags wave in the breezes. People stroll with dogs and kids, everybody smiling. And there are thirty or forty booths, filled with fresh rasberries, spicy arugula, golden beets, and goat cheeses. Hippie-looking women sell hand-crafted candles and pink sandstone jewelry. And there are hot crepes, pizza slices from brick ovens, and sauteed Asian vegetables. Men with long hair talk philosophically with their short-haired girlfriends. And everyone looks like they live in Seattle: little makeup, fresh-scrubbed faces, wide-open glances, dressed in environmentally friendly clothes, and kind. Sometimes, a little insufferable with how earnest they are trying to be. But the peaches are so juicy that they drip down my fingers when I eat them. The blueberries burst open. And the bing cherries taste sweeter because I know this is the last week of the year I can have them. I came home with a bag full of fresh fruit, a handmade blue cheese, and a bouquet of sunflowers. You have to come see it for yourself.

So this afternoon, for lunch, I had a giant salad made entirely of fresh greens and local produce. Arugula, sliced French radishes, ripe avocado, soft goat cheese, kalamata olives, some fresh lemon juice, and olive oil. And sea salt. I also had a dash of that on the organic corn on the cob I ate, with just a touch of clarified butter.

Anyone who complains about the gluten-free diet needs to come to my house in the summer. This is about abundance, not being denied. I've never eaten so well in my life.

Central Market

Once I realized that it was just a giant grocery store, and not an entire city of food, the way it had been described, I calmed down and started shopping. In the bakery section, I ran to a refrigerator unit that stood under an enormous, dangling sign: "Vegan and Gluten-Free Desserts!" My god, has the world morphed into a gluten-free one for my benefit? Most the desserts were merely vegan, but they did have a good supply of Flying Apron bakery goods. I love their work, but I can buy them in Fremont.

The grocery store part of the store really is just ordinary. They don't even have any gluten-free cereals! However, they have an extraordinary array of Asian foods, rivalled only stores in the International District here. I saw an en enormous pickled radish the size of a small baseball bat, flourescent yellow and shrink wrapped in the refrigerated section. It frightened and fascinated me. And I did buy some edamame from China that I cooked today.

But the shining glory of the place, and why I'll go back, is the produce section. An entire warehouse of organic fruit and vegetables. And not just the ordinary ones, or the ones we consider exotic at other stores. Mizuna leaves. Thai eggplants. Dark green leafy plants I had never heard of, and no idea how to cook them. (If you'd like to see more photos of the fruit, take a look at my flickr account.) A jolly man was dispensing bites of fruit at its peak, and I happened by as he was handing out golden cherry tomatoes. I don't even like those in any other time of the year, but I raced to the part of the produce section for an abundant pint of them.

I went home happy.