Tomatero Organic Tomatoes

It was an action packed day this Saturday in San Francisco. I started the morning by checking out the Noe Valley farmers market on 24th Street then headed off to the Ferry Building to buy a few more things and chat with the people at Epicurious.

Although I have been to the Noe Valley farmers market before, it had been years since I spent any real time there. For a small market, the selection was really impressive. Many of the farms I recognized because they also have booths at the Ferry Plaza farmers market. Others I would be happy to see there.

Melons

Rosa Bianca Eggplant

I had the most fun at the Tomatero Organic Farm stand where their selection brimmed with summer bounty, especially tomatoes. I came out to the Noe Valley market to try Tomatero tomatoes because they are (drumroll, please) starting an all tomato CSA this year!

If you have ever tasted Tomatero’s tomatoes, you know how exciting this is.

Deliveries begin on August 18 and go until the end of the season. There will be 3 pick up locations, 2 in the Noe Valley area of San Francisco and one in the Lake Merrit area of Oakland. The cost is $15 per week and will include whatever varieties they have in stock. For more details please visit the Tomatero website.

Flame Grapes

White Raspberries

While I was there I also purchased some of their zucchini, spectacular white raspberries and some eggs–which I promptly left on the counter and forgot I’ll go back and get them next week.

Everything was spectacular.

Other Noe Purchases include:

• Edible flowers and lettuce (Happy Boy Farms)
• Piel de sapo melon (Happy Boy Farms)
• Spring onion (Happy Boy Farms)
• Rosa bianca eggplant (Capay Organics)
• Thai basil (Sunny Farm)
• Green onion (Sunny Farm)

Red and Green Okra

Pluots

Even though I bought a good amount of food in Noe Valley I still wanted to head to the Ferry Building. I can’t help it, I just love it there.

It was a beautiful day and I tried so many kinds of stone fruit I should have probably just counted it as my lunch. One of my main reasons for heading there was to get some Rancho Gordo beans. I asked for a new recommendation (I’ve tried many of them before) and the woman working there nearly exploded with excitement about a new bean they have from Mexico, Alubia Criollo. This is a white bean that she claims is so creamy and luxurious it is to die for.

I can’t wait.

Also exciting is that the early girl tomatoes are finally available, even the ones from Dirty Girl Produce. Folks, early girl tomatoes are the summer tomatoes that changed my life. Definitely get yourself some this season from Tomatero, Dirty Girl or wherever you can find them.

Huge Zucchini

Early Girl Tomato Frenzy

Another reason I visited the Ferry Building was to check out the Epicurious booth that will be hanging around at various SF foodie events this week, giving out free tote bags and goodies. If you haven’t heard of Epicurious, it is a fabulous online resource for food lovers.

Epicurious Booth SF

Nectarines

Apples have also appeared at the market, and there are more grapes every week. They are delicious, but it is hard for me to buy grapes when there are so many stone fruits and melons still around.

I’d love to hear what you got at the farmers market this week.

Tomatillos

Ferry Plaza purchases:

• Alubia Criollo beans (Rancho Gordo)
• Flavor queen pluots (Honeycrisp)
• Flavor king pluots (Honeycrisp)
• Basil (Dirty Girl Produce)
• Pagoda figs (Balakian farms)
• Sweet Italian frying peppers (Happy Quail Farms)
• Ginger flowers (Happy Quail Farms)
• Arctic Jay white nectarines

Tags: CSA, Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, Noe Valley, San Francisco, Tomatero Organic Farms, tomatoes

Heirloom Tomatoes

Every Saturday morning I wake up as early as I can (usually not very early) and head to the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market to buy my vegetables for the week. Seasonal vegetables are the foundation of a healthy diet, and buying them each week is the single most important step you can take to upgrade your healthstyle.

(This post is part three of the series How To Get Started Eating Healthy. Part one is Stock Your Pantry and part two is Essential Groceries. Get future posts by signing up for email or RSS updates–subscribing is always free of cost and spam.)

Why Vegetables?

Decades of research on diet, nutrition and health have universally confirmed that a vegetable-based diet can reduce your risk of (and even reverse) almost every disease. Debates still rage regarding the mechanism by which vegetables improve health (Is it because they replace bad foods? Contain antioxidants? Are low in calories? Low in fat? Low in protein? Have low glycemic index?), but for you and me the reason doesn’t really matter. The important point is that vegetables are proven to make you healthy. Those other questions are only important to people who want to bottle that benefit and sell it to you at a premium.

Interestingly, one of the most consistent findings in nutrition science is that any attempt to isolate a specific element of food and create a useful dietary supplement fails to mimic the benefits of the whole food. The lesson from all of this is that you are much better off spending your money on vegetables and other whole foods than on nutritional supplements.

Why Seasonal?

If you have ever wondered how much vitamin C is in a tomato, please stop. The idea that one tomato is the same as the next is ludicrous, yet this is the kind of logic we have accepted from grocery stores and the food industry in general.

Anyone with taste buds can immediately tell the difference between a sweet, ripe heirloom tomato at the height of summer and a mealy red beefsteak from your grocery store in December. These foods taste wildly different because of how they were grown, so doesn’t it stand to reason that they may have different nutrient levels as well?

In fact, there is a tremendous difference in nutritional quality of foods grown in the correct season and in good soil. Seasonal organic produce is substantially better for you than the conventional produce at Safeway, and this difference is reflected in how your food tastes.

For these reasons, shopping in season can do wonders for how you think about vegetables. A salad may sound boring to you, but how about miner’s lettuce tossed with arugula, Tokyo turnips, Mediterranean cucumbers, ruby grapefruit and sliced almonds? If you are more excited to eat vegetables because they look, sound, smell and taste delicious, then you will lose weight and become healthier by default. Your daily greens will be a joy, not a chore.

Seasonal produce is also more affordable than out of season produce that was grown in a greenhouse or shipped halfway around the world.

How To Shop Seasonally

Farmers Markets

As I mentioned above, my preferred place to shop for vegetables is my local farmers market on Saturday. Farmers markets are wonderful because you have access to the freshest local and seasonal vegetables available, usually just picked the day before. This means that not only are you guaranteed vegetables at the peak of their season, you can even go from stand to stand and find the batch you like best. You can also discover interesting and unique offerings (like the chocolate persimmon), and build relationships with local farmers. If you are lucky enough to have a weekly farmers market in your area, it is certainly worth it to commit yourself to go every week.

Read this blog on Saturdays to keep up with local finds in the Bay Area and California in general.

CSAs

Unfortunately, farmers markets are not practical for everyone. Some people have time constraints that prevent them from attending a weekly market. Luckily there are some alternatives available. One option is the CSA, or Community-Supported Agriculture. When you subscribe to a CSA you have pledged support for a particular farm (or sometimes a group of farms), and in exchange receive a box of seasonal produce each week or on an agreed schedule. The biggest convenience of joining a CSA is that the times arranged for delivery or pick up are much more flexible than the weekly market. There are CSAs for vegetables, as well as meat and dairy.

From what I understand, individual CSAs can vary substantially in how they are run and what they provide. If you are interested in finding a CSA in your area, I recommend spending some time researching your options and deciding what works best for you.

I have personally never belonged to a CSA and would love to hear about your experiences if you have.

Local Produce Markets

Even without a farmers market or CSA it possible to shop in season. Most cities and suburban areas have local produce markets and/or health food stores that focus on fresh vegetables. While not everything in these markets will be seasonal and local, they usually provide a nice alternative to large chain grocery stores to at least supplement your produce shopping. For more information you can read my article about how to find local produce markets in your area.

Grocery Stores

Even if none of these options are available in your neighborhood, it is still likely that the most affordable and best tasting food at your regular grocery store is whatever happens to be in season. Thus it is still worth it to keep up on local produce trends in your area.

Conclusions

Eating your vegetables is the most important thing you can do for your health, and neither nutritional supplements nor regular workouts can substitute for a healthy diet. Whether you have access to farmers markets or not, you are better off eating any vegetables than no vegetables at all. The same is true if you are considering conventional vs. organic produce.

If farmers markets are not available to you year-round there are many ways to get seasonal vegetables and fruits. But the first step is committing to your health and your future by making sure seasonal, fresh vegetables are a part of your personal healthstyle.

Read more How To Get Started Eating Healthy:

Tags: CSA, Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, getting started, grocery store, local, organic, San Francisco, seasonal, vegetables

Know anyone who is trying build healthy habits? Want to give yourself a leg up on your New Year’s resolution? Here are some simple gift ideas for anyone wanting to embrace a healthy lifestyle:

1. Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, by Walter Willett. This is my favorite nutrition book. Dr. Willett, a physician and Harvard nutrition scientist, presents a comprehensive guide explaining the basics of nutrition science and why few things are as important as what you choose to eat. His recommendations are based on solid science, but everything is explained in clear, simple language and is easy for anyone to understand. This book will change the way you think about food and nutrition.
2. Subscription to Cooks Illustrated magazine. It is almost impossible to have a healthy diet if you are eating out for most of your meals. Cooking at home can be a pleasure, but to many people it is a source of fear and anxiety. Cooks Illustrated is a resource that demystifies cooking and makes it virtually idiot proof. Their staff tests recipes over and over in “America’s Test Kitchen” so you don’t have to. The result is the easiest, most reliable method for making almost any meal.A bonus of subscribing is that they also offer product and appliance reviews. I often find myself browsing their website with my online subscription, but they also have a beautiful print magazine if you prefer to peruse recipes on the go. Because of Cooks Illustrated I feel like I can cook just about anything I set my mind to, even things I have never tasted before. I couldn’t live without my Cooks!
3. Braun Hand Blender. This is the magic kitchen appliance. If you or someone you know is not the type to buy every single piece of fancy kitchen equipment, this is the perfect item. Its many attachments make it so you have a blender, food processor and mixer all in the palm of your hand. Everything you need rolled into one tiny device!
4. CSA membership. Busy people have trouble finding the time to buy fresh fruits and vegetables every week. CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture brings fresh, seasonal produce to you. The idea behind a CSA is that you subscribe to a farm or collection of farms and pay a certain set price (varies by farm) for a box of their goods. For your fee you will be provided with a week or two worth of fruits and vegetables of the season. All CSAs are a little different, so you need to find ones in your area and contact them to work out the details. Most deliver to your house or a nearby pick up point and allow some filtering for your particular food preferences. For the truly dedicated, there are also meat and dairy CSAs.
5. In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan is a journalist and UC Berkeley professor who has spent the past several years figuring out the best way to eat in the Western world. This book distills everything he found, and his advice is surprisingly simple: Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much. In Defense of Food is a quick, easy read that is both entertaining and filled with valuable information.
6. Wii Fit. I’m not sure if a video game can really be exercise, but it sure beats sitting on your butt watching T.V. I cannot deny that on cold evenings when I have worked too long at home to squeeze in a workout I have resorted to my Wii to get the blood pumping. Wiis are not easy to acquire (I have had success with Wii Alerts), but if you can get your hands on one they are easily worth the money.
7. Pressure cooker. You probably do not eat enough legumes. People have weird ideas about beans and assume they are accompanied by foul smells, but home-cooked beans are an entirely different species. A pressure cooker can make it so you have a week’s supply of your favorite beans in under half an hour. What’s not to love?
8. Full body massage. The latest research suggests that stress may be as bad for you as red meat. Luckily getting rid of stress can be one of the best experiences of your life. Everyone loves a trip to the day spa. A full body massage is the perfect gift for that person who has everything.
9. Lunch box. Eating out for lunch every single day is not an option if you want to be healthy. But that does not mean you have to be a nerd. REI makes a great, affordable lunch cooler that is both stylish and functional. Want more of a selection? Browse the offerings at Amazon.com through the link on the sidebar.
10. Email subscription to Summer Tomato. It’s free and comes with a 25-page healthy eating guide! Get to know what fruits and vegetables are in season, learn about the latest nutrition research and discover simple and delicious recipes for health straight from my brain to yours. This is the ultimate gift for the ultimate connoisseur! (OK, I admit this is kind of a cheap gift. I recommend it, but you should probably get one of those real gifts I mentioned too

Good luck shopping and happy holidays!

Check out my 2009 healthy gift ideas

Tags: books, CSA, gadgets, games, gifts, lunch box, Michael Pollan, pressure cooker, wii