(Photo by trp0.)

There’s been a lot of buzz lately in San Francisco about planting gardens at Civic Center and bringing in a special farmers market for Slow Food Nation’s big Labor Day blowout. No surprise that the farmers market just across the street, the one that’s been a neighborhood fixture for the past 26 years, isn’t good, clean or fair enough to take part.

Truth be told, some of us were happy that the Heart of the City wasn’t getting an all-star makeover. It’s fine the way it is, humming along in its quiet, humble way as a workaday market. The Tenderloin shoppers don’t need to worry about mobs of tourists elbowing their way in for bits of free fruit, Whole Foodies complaining about the smell of live chickens or lines of groggy hipsters waiting for their espresso drinks.

Residents have been actively fighting gentrification, the inevitable physical and cultural displacement that accompanies economic development, and the neighborhood farmers market is their newest battleground. On Thursday, at a special meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, one seemingly innocuous agenda item — “Revocation of Permit for U.N. Plaza Farmer’s Market” — had to be tabled after public outcry, including a flood of calls from local residents and market vendors.

Mayor Gavin Newsom’s quickly reversed his proposal for City Hall’s Real Estate Division to assume control of the Heart of the City Farmers Market. No residents, vendors or shoppers were consulted. Market manager, Christine Adams, who has been heading the market since it first opened, learned about the City’s idea when it sent her a job application.

Change is always difficult. As the oldest continuously running farmers market in the city, there’s certainly room for improvement. An overworked and underfunded nonprofit currently manages the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market. The key, though, in any type of development, is respecting all stakeholders while weighing the benefits of short-term gain against long-term goals.

Schoolkids learning about strawberries from Yerena Farms.

From the City’s point of view, the permits are stale. It would like to increase the nominal $1 lease to $5,000 to help cover the cost of cleaning the plaza, double the stall fee from $25 a day to $50 a day, and — most contentious of all — take 2% of profits. Farmers currently sit on the nonprofit management company’s board of directors, so the City has offered to include farmers on an advisory committee. By combining operations with the Alemany Farmers Market, also run by the Real Estate Division, it expects to increase efficiency and economies of scale.

Opponents counter with the age-old question: Why fix something that’s not broke? The market only makes $13,000 a year, which it currently spends on outreach and compostable bags. It seems a rather cheap blow to try filling city coffers from the pockets of small farmers and from low-income residents who are just trying to find some fresh produce in the middle of one of the city’s most arid, asphalt-ridden food deserts. With the rising cost of gas, the smallest farmers will be the most vulnerable when faced with increased fees. On the other side of the market transactions, shoppers are pinching pennies more and more as the dollar becomes ever weaker.

Talks continue. There’s a good chance the Real Estate Division will back off, and there’s hope that the City will arrive at a compromise with the market management on fees.

Raj Patel, policy analyst for the think tank, Food First, and author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, says that despite the neighborhood’s ability to push back the City, it’s hard to know just how big a victory this is. “There’s no guarantee that this farmers market will be around five years from now. What’s actually needed is a comprehensive city plan for sustainability, to keep the market at UN Plaza and to encourage the formation of small farmers’ markets in other neighborhoods.”

Toronto has a Food Policy Council and Oakland has its Food System Assessment.
Isn’t it time that San Francisco stop playing around with pretty exhibition gardens and boutique markets? Let’s lead the way with bringing fresh food to as many of its citizens as possible.

We have plenty of good and clean. It’s time for fair.

*Update (6/23/08): See comments to read a statement emailed from Slow Food Nation.

In case you’ve been living in a well-stocked bomb shelter for the past few weeks, you’ve most likely heard that the California Supreme Court voted 4-3 to legalize same-sex marriages.

Well, hooray and all that, but it’s got me a bit troubled. I’m not so much bothered about those clowns at Save California and their terribly irritating November ballot measure because, for some extraordinary reason, I’ve recently been instilled with an unreasonable amount of faith in the majority of California voters. For now.

No, what troubles me is this–

What on earth does one feed a banquet hall full of homosexuals? That’s a dilemma that would strike any sane wedding planner apoplectic. Individually, a gay man might respond to foodstuffs in a manner similar to that of a straight man, but get five or more in a room together and watch out. Have you ever baked a birthday cake for a gay man’s birthday party, only to find thirty or so other gay men moaning about carbohydrates, telling you that while the dessert you’ve just put your heart and soul into looks great, they’ll just have to pass on it, while patting their stomach? Well, I have, and what I have since learned is this: Guzzling vodka = good carbs, eating a tiny sliver of polenta cake= It-will-make-me-fat-and-then-no-one-will-love me-or-think-I’m-hot bad.

No, cake is out of the question. Perhaps a wedding protein shake would be more fitting. Of course, there’s the problem of slicing.

How does one approach a gay reception? For one couple I know, I imagine there would be a chilled Ketel One fountain splashing about. Would others prefer a Teddy Bear Picnic motif? I think the traditional menus might need a going over. Instead of fish or chicken, the invitations should request a preference for either no-carb or sauce on the side.

And what on earth do you feed a roomful of lesbians? There is only so much quinoa to be had in any given season, you know.

Entertainment? If Melissa Etheridge is too busy with her own wedding or too highly priced to perform at yours, will gym teacher-turned-songbird Ann Murray do? I don’t know for certain if she is a lesbian, but she’s Canadian and not as busy as she used to be, and that often works in a pinch.

If you are planning a wedding and you want it gay-officiated, gay photographed, and gay-catered (I’m going to assume you’d be picking a gay deejay anyway), one resource with possibilities I’ve found is the Golden Gate Business Association. Hound them. While there is so far no specific section of their website dedicated to gay wedding needs, I think it would be wise for them to throw one together. Like now.

Of course, chances are, your wedding planner might be a gay man with some inside channels, one might hope. And then there’s the gay florists and caterers, who tend to be busy in the June wedding season anyway. Citizen Cake, for example, has been flooded with wedding cake orders this month– gay and straight.

Hypothesizing same-sex wedding scenarios is time well spent, but this is what really bothers me…

When I contacted the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Center of San Francisco for information, I was told by the gentleman who assisted me that the Center was “so overwhelmed with Pride” at the moment to do anything about same-sex weddings. So overwhelmed with Pride. It’s as busy and as gay a month as anyone can imagine. And so emotional, apparently.

The Big Gay resource centers do not yet have a handle on this new marriage business. I can’t say I don’t understand, since it was all rather unexpected and came at a time when everyone was already too excited by the selection of Charo as our Gay Pride Grand Marshall to think of anything else. But time’s a-wasting. The weddings start happening on June 17th. Or, as rumor has it, the evening of the 16th.

The fact of the gay wedding matter is our selection of go-to wedding assistance is very limited. There’s always GayWeddings.com. Its a good starting point, certainly, but theyre Washington-based. What we need is something local. So you’ll just have to go through the traditionally straight channels to plan that day you’ve always dreamed about but never thought would actually happen.

And that’s a big, crying shame. The fact that the Gay BLT Center or whatever it’s called is too “overwhelmed” with, um, Pride tells me that they really don’t have their priorities, um straight. From an historic point of view, this is a big, big, BIG moment for San Francisco’s Lesbians and Gays. From a financial point of view, same-sex weddings are a booming business. Tens of thousands of gay couples will be flocking to our state– and our city– to get married to the tune of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars over the next couple of years. Sure, parades are fun– wave a flag, wear some hot pants, and shake your ass on a corporate-sponsored float all you want– it’s a damned parade, for Christ’s sake. I just don’t want us to miss the real parade that might be passing us by.

Or the gravy train.

Of course we won’t really miss it. Businesses will pop up like so many mushrooms: gay wedding planners, gay photographers, gay divorce lawyers. Perhaps The Midnight Sun will rent itself out for receptions. I just hope that, after the drunken haze of Pride Season clears, we can focus on what should really make us proud (Sorry, Charo, it isn’t you)– that we are finally equal under California State law. We can have our own weddings and, even better, attend those of our straight friends and families without that sad, nagging “I can never have this” feeling– whether you want your own wedding or not.

Until November, anyway, when we’ll have to fight again.

You know why I’m fighting? Because the next time a guy introduces his “hus-bear” to me, I can ask to see the rings as proof of their wedded bliss. I only hope to God they show me the ones on their fingers.

The summer months are a great time for thinking about and eating all those lovely fruits and vegetables that are ripe and in season. But what if you couldn’t afford to buy cherries, peaches or watermelon, let alone milk or peanut butter? What if the rising costs of fuel and food made is so that you could no longer adequately feed your family? This scenario is increasingly becoming a reality for many people in the Bay Area (as well as nationwide), which is why our community food banks are now, more than ever, so important.

I spoke with Suzan Bateson, the Executive Director of the Alameda County Community Food Bank, so I could learn more about food banks and hunger in the Bay Area. I focused on Alameda County as it’s where I live, but also because it covers such a large area. Here’s what I learned:

• 1 in 3 children in Alameda County faces the threat of hunger each day
• 38% of food bank recipients have at least one working member in their family
• Calls to the Alameda County Community Food Bank are up 34% from last year
• The number of people calling in April of 2008 was 1,890, compared to 1,059 in April of 2006
• The average number of calls has been steadily increasing since last July, with each month establishing a new record
• Since the beginning of 2008, the Alameda County Community Food Bank has received 1,188 calls from people who have never called before

These statistics are disheartening, to say the least, particularly when you consider that as more and more people sign up to receive aid, less and less food is being donated by the federal government to food banks nationwide. As we’ve all been hearing, the crop surpluses of years past are over. Excess grains are now being used to create fuels and are also being exported to other countries. Food banks now receive 34% less donations from the USDA than in 2003 because of these changes. People are also donating less money individually to food banks as they struggle to feed their own families. The outcome is that our food banks are increasingly in need of help.

But wait, there’s also some good news. Local food banks are increasingly trying to find fresh and local produce for families to eat. It’s not just canned beef and creamed corn anymore. Because of people like Suzan Bateson, there is an emphasis on providing fresh produce to recipients. I was surprised and excited to hear that 50% of the foods provided by the Alameda County Community Food Bank are fresh fruits and vegetables. This is possible because of a network of local growers and distributors who provide year-round greens, sweet potatoes, and citrus to the food bank for literally pennies per item. The food bank then distributes this food to over 300 agencies, who then get it to the people who need it most. Ms. Bateson also has two nutritional experts on staff to provide information and training to help people cook and eat more healthfully.

But as great as this is, local food banks really do need your help to keep their operations running. Luckily, they are staffed with dedicated and very organized people who have come up with many different ways for you to help make your local food community a stronger and healthier place. Following is a list of some things you can do:

How to Help

• Volunteer: If you have some extra time and are looking for an opportunity to make a real difference in people’s lives, give your local food bank a call. Most rely on volunteers to staff food help lines; sort food in warehouses; provide help in their administrative offices; and help plan special events.
  Volunteer in Alameda.
  Volunteer in San Francisco
• Donate: If you have some extra cash to spare, a cash donation can really make a difference. Food banks are usually able to provide around $7 worth of food for every $1 donated because of their low operating costs and agreements with local growers and distributors, so even the smallest donation can really help out.
  Donate to the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
  Donate to the San Francisco Food Bank.
• Start Your Own Food Drive: Donated nonperishable food items are an essential part of keeping any food bank going. You can help provide these materials to your food bank by collecting these goods. This is actually easier than it sounds. Just call your local food bank and ask them to deliver a bin to your office, school, church, or any place you’d like and then ask people to pick up an extra item or two while grocery shopping so they can add it to the bin. This could be a great summer project for kids.
  Start your own food drive in Alameda.
  Start your own food drive in San Francisco.
• Advocate for Change: Write or call your representative, senator, or governor about food issues that concern the poor. Too often these programs are an afterthought, but if enough people call, they will become a priority.
  Learn more about advocacy for the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
  Learn more about advocacy for the San Francisco Food Bank.

You can also support your local food banks through the following upcoming events:

Upcoming Events

Empty Bowls
Alameda County Community Food Bank
7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland
Thursday June 5 at 5:30 – $40 for a family of four to attend or $20 a person
A great way to get your kids involved, this event allows you to select a bowl that was hand-painted by the children at Redwood Day School, enjoy a delicious soup and bread dinner, and take part in a family art project with your children. There is also a silent auction. You can register online or contact Pam Gidwani at 510-635-3663, ext. 328.

A Rockin’ Night of Music
Brava Theatre
2781 24th Street (at York), San Francisco
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Rockfeeds is a group of dedicated musicians who volunteer their time and effort every year to produce a grassroots benefit for the San Francisco Food Bank. Amateur singers are challenged by their friends by way of donations to get up on stage and sing a song in front of an audience, backed up by professional musicians. To participate, donate, or to find out more information about the event, please visit the rockfeeds.org.

Family to Family Volunteer Day
Alameda County Community Food Bank
7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland
Saturday, August 23, 9 -11 am
With an age-appropriate lesson on hunger for children 5-10 years old, an art project, and a food sorting activity, this event is a great way to inform your kids and also get your entire family involved in your local food bank Space is limited and registration required. Just call 510-635-3663 ext. 308 or email volunteer@accfb.org.

Go to Bat Against Hunger
Oakland A’s Home Games
The Oakland A’s have set up food bins for each Wednesday’s home games. Bring two nonperishable food items to these games from June to September, and you’ll receive a free ticket to a future game. Drop off your food donation before each game at food drive barrels located at the Coliseum BART Plaza and at gates C and D.

To find information on the many local food banks in the Bay Area, go to Bay Area Hunger.

For the past couple months, I have been attempting to diet. I say attempting because I’m not really succeeding, but that’s fodder for a different post. Anyway, I go to the meetings when I can. At one of the meetings, members of the group were advocating throwing away food so that you don’t consume it. And I can see their point — I would rather not have the tempting food in my house. But I have major issues with just throwing food away.

A few months ago, I noticed that Jocelyn linked to a San Francisco based website encouraging people to “replate” their food. By the website’s definition, replate is:

To place unwanted leftovers, typically in a doggie bag, on top of the nearest trash can so that they don’t go to waste.

So that’s what I’ve started doing with my leftovers to avoid bringing them home and consuming them. For years, I’ve looked for someone to give my food to when possible. And I’ve always had good experiences doing this. But sometimes you can’t find someone, or as a single woman in the city sometimes it’s just too late or scary to walk around looking for a person to give food to.

Replate’s founders, Axel Albin and Josh Kamler, don’t claim this is a new idea. “We didn’t invent the practice,” Axel told me on Monday. In fact, Josh remembers his parents replating leftovers 20 years ago. But they have given some structure to the movement. “The purpose of our project is to start the conversation,” said Axel. And start the conversation they have. Look around on the Internet and you’ll see varying opinions about whether replating is a good idea.

While the practice may be debatable in rural areas where leftovers may spoil or become litter, many of us live in cities where we see people digging through the trash for food on a regular basis. And packages I have left near my home are gone within an hour. A post on Serious Eats garnered a suggestion that people write “EDIBLE” on the outside of a package before leaving it out.

Albin and Kamler are calling this movement “open-source activism” and are hoping that interested parties take the seed that they’ve planted and run with it — creating stickers to put on replated items, changing the logo, or lobbying government for participation.

I find it refreshing, and can truly say that reading about replating changed the way that I act with my leftovers. And being able to plant an idea that results in a change in behavior is no small feat.

One of the most exciting pieces of food news this year is that “locavore” has been knighted “word of the year” by the Oxford University Press. However, I absorbed the concept of the Eat Local Challenge before I did “locavore,” which, in all honesty, I thought had something to do with the phases of the moon and the lycanthrope society. (It’s possible I’ve watched one too many Frasiers.)

The first time I heard about the Eat Local movement, it was over two years ago, and since I was still trying to ferret out where to buy my favorite French nut oil, Mexican ginger beer, and New England pumpkin ale, I felt totally overwhelmed.

Did I really need to think about each and every food product that came into my kitchen when I was just starting to find my cooking legs in San Francisco? Of course not. If you give the smallest crap about eating local, it’s not necessary to ensure that every food product — salt, coffee, flour, sugar, produce, meat, Diet Coke — in your kitchen is from local purveyors. If you give the smallest crap about eating local, you just think about what you’re buying and wonder if it’s local. Because you care.

That’s all you need to do to effect change: start thinking about it. Start caring about it. Then maybe, you’ll start acting on it. Frankly, if it hadn’t been for Jen Maiser, I’d still be just thinking about eating local and not actually doing anything about it. Not only does Jen blog about eating local at her own site, Life Begins at 30, she’s also the editor of the Eat Local Challenge blog and has worked at various farmers’ stands at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market.

After my failed first attempt at participating in an Eat Local Challenge, I started following Jen’s efforts more and more. Her passionate, yet refreshingly frank and evenhanded writing style drew me in deeper and deeper, and before I knew it, not only was I examining every tag, sticker, and vittles visa at Andronico’s, but I was delivering earnest, flushed-cheek diatribes to my Minneapolian parents and sister about why they should think to ask, “Where did this come from?” before they stuck anything in their mouths. It got to the point when my mom was collaring the hapless meat guy at Whole Foods and demanding to know why he was offering her lamb from New Zealand and not from Minnesota.

Jen shares her information widely, energetically, and — most importantly — nonjudgmentally. She embodies the sentiment that you don’t have to harvest your own coffee beans, dry your own salt, or refine your own sugar to be a conscientious eater, you just need to wonder, “Where?”

In fact, “Where?” is the sentiment of the newest Eat Local Challenge. According to Jen, the next ELC — set to be unveiled early next year — is: “a challenge focused on where our everyday foods are sourced from. Instead of challenging participants to eat food from as close to home as possible, we will be asking them to take everyday items that their families eat — processed foods like crackers and potato chips, mass-produced products, and fast food items — and try to find out the source of the product ingredients. I think it will be interesting to learn what we can, and can’t, find out about our food.”

I’m thrilled that “locavore” is being recorded in the annals of history, but without the Eat Local Challenge spurring me to think, question, act, and eat, I have a feeling I’d still be assuming that locavores howled at the moon and stuffed pillows with their own hair.

On my way home from Thanksgiving dinner, I walked down Capp Street in the Mission, fully bloated and lightly buzzed from an over abundance of great food, good wine, and a mild case of self-satisfaction over having won two games of Celebrity. I had just spent the past eight hours feasting and laughing with friends. As I turned the corner onto Mission Street, I saw a man sitting on the sidewalk. He stared at me and I stopped in my tracks and stared back for a moment. He didn’t ask me for anything and I realized then that I didn’t have anything to offer him. No leftovers, just a bagful of dirty dishes and a book of short stories by Saki. The warm, fuzzy glow of the evening I had just spent evaporated and all the casseroles, turkey, and pie turned to cement in my stomach. It was clear that our respective celebrations of the holiday differed. I felt thankful that his experience was not mine and impotent to do anything about improving his. The exchange lasted about three seconds.

If you are reading this, chances are you own a computer and pay for online service, which means that, in all likelihood, you can afford turkey and, if not all, then some of the trimmings. Like me, you probably spent Thanksgiving with friends or family or both, either sitting about a giant dining table stuffing yourselves silly, or milling about a party, drinking and grazing your way through relish trays and pumpkin cheesecakes (Please tell me you didn’t spend the day locked in your bedroom, quietly drinking). Whatever the case, the chances are slim to none that all the food was consumed.

What can you do wth the leftovers? Apart from salivate over Madame Laidlaw’s ideas from yesterday’s post (I am a sucker for a good quesadilla), you might think about donating food to your local food bank, if your feast of plenty was too plentiful.

Of course, most places aren’t going to accept a couple of slices of pie or a pile of turkey skin. Most food banks request items that are in some sort of packaging, but I wonder, since there was a shortage of deposits at local food banks this year, according to Maris Lagos of the San Francisco Chronicle. When you are shopping next year, buy an extra thing or two and just give it away– nearly every grocery store has some sort of food drive happening.

I suppose we should think ahead to next year, not that one need only give on Thanksgiving. If you’re saddled with cooking dinner for 20, why not push that number a little higher. Feed an extra person or two. Or twenty. If you are affiliated with a particular church or mosque or temple or glee club for all I care, find out if they are involved in any feeding programs, like Glide Memorial Church, for example.

If there are organizations that accept cooked food from private homes, I would very much like to know. Why not bake a pie for a total stranger? It’s a not-so-random act of kindness.

If you are in the restaurant industry and have a surplus of holiday fare, contact Food Runners in San Francisco, they’ll know what to do with your leftovers.

During this time of year, we’re supposed to take time out of our lives to think upon what it is we are grateful for. Last night, among other things, I was grateful I wasn’t that guy sitting on the sidewalk on Capp Street. I have promised myself that next year will be different. Not that I will be that guy sitting on the corner, mind you. I’ve just realized that I actually can do something, which is get up off my lazy, self-involved ass and give something, whether it be time, food, or money. Most likely time or food, since I don’t have any money. I suppose it would be unethical to suggest that, while you are giving food and time to those in need, you make large monetary donations to me. I am thankful that I know better than to make that particular request.