If you love produce as much as I do you know that living in the East Bay is better than living in San Francisco. I realize I could start a riot here, but I've lived in 3 out of four directions of the peninsula, in various neighborhoods and cities, and no matter where I was, no matter if I was in possession of a drivers license or not, I made it to Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market, and/ or the Berkeley Farmers' Markets, because there was more to see, smell, taste, touch and procure in these markets.

And until I moved to North Berkeley myself, I was a tried and true Berkeley Bowl Trooper, from the old school-- back when it started in the old bowling alley. I still love to get there when I have my list in Excel spreadsheet form and the time is early enough before rush hour clogs the insane parking lot and creates lines worse than LA traffic.

But now I have been seduced by Monterey Market. I used to laugh at its size, comparable to Rainbow Grocery but tiny compared to Berkeley Bowl. But then. But then I found its buried treasure. One day two summers ago I stopped by for a few things and bought an entire flat of the best boysenberries I have ever seen, smelled or tasted! I went home and ate about four baskets, made pie with a few more and froze the rest. Returning just a day or two later I found that I had bought something which would not be back again until the following year... Sad...but also something to look forward to.

You can go to the same place day after day, year after year, and find everything ok, get what you need for the price you like and shrug shoulders at the prospect of change.

Until. Until one day you pick the best looking toad you can find for toad soup and when you get through checkout you realize your bag is exploding with a Prince and your car has been moved closer to the horizon, where a pretty sunset awaits you.

A few days ago is a perfect example. I needed some citrus and butter and cranberries. I like to stock up on cranberries before they disappear so I can whip up a batch of my favorite walnut-cranberry-orange bread, which I love to toast and smother with butter. (It really can be whipped up-- it's a one bowl and wooden spoon recipe!)

I'm in love with citrus and I always look at what's going on. Scratch and sniff is the best way to learn about new citrus. Both blossom and skin will tell you what unique flavor and perfume are awaiting you. While scanning high bins of yellow and green and orange globes my eyes did a double-take on a gnarly looking fruit.

YUZU! Fresh, California grown Yuzu were staring at me. Like a collector at a yard sale discovering a priceless chair, I monitored my breathing and tried not to look around frantically. I bit my tongue when I wanted to jump up and down and yell, "Hey?! Do you see what I see?! Look! It's fresh Yuzu, here, in Berkeley, California, yours for the having!! Can you believe such a thing? It's so wonderful!!!!!"

But instead I kept walking and went back nonchalantly, looking puzzled on the outside and then hunkered in and bought at least 5 pounds.

Yuzu is a fruit I only saw one of once, while living in Napa. A famous chef I knew had smuggled one in from a recent trip to Japan. Like Bergamot, it's an ugly mottled fruit, but it's exquisite perfume and flavor lives in every molecule of its being.

Monterey Market is a cold market, mostly outside and seemingly unkempt. But it's a facade, truly, because you never know what you will find there. Bill Fujimoto buys small and large shipments directly from farmers single and corporate. The back room, unseen by the average consumer, is a carefully organized chaos of fruit and vegetable back-stock/ cases, available to restaurants, chefs and caterers who want to buy direct and avoid (or amend as the case may be) produce companies or farmers' markets.

And if I haven't sold you yet, I beg of you to rent or buy Eat At Bill's, a lovingly made documentary about Monterey Market and its beloved workers. Watch it just to see the massive pumpkins, which get brought in on elephant transport trucks and the joy so many people share about cherry season, and one particular cherry in particular.

When we talk about shopping and eating local we often overlook our markets with rooftops. But Monterey Market, Berkeley Bowl, The Food Mill, Rainbow Grocery, Bi Rite market, Farmer Joe's and so many more in the Bay Area are all about shopping locally. These businesses are still independent, many of them family and/or co-operatively owned. If you can't get to the farmers' market, find your CSA box lacking this week or next month, or just want to see that there are a dozen kinds of sweet potatoes, countless citrus varietals, far out and funky shaped mushrooms, head over to a new market for countless fruit and veggie adventures. They await you in one corner of the bay or the other...

Apricots Almonds
Leeks vinaigrette
gentle flavoured grains
sweet fresh rice.

almond blossom tea
green and black
the cathedral inside the fig trees
leaves like large hands
blush striped
and blue black purple figs
ripe and heavy
the heft of grapefruit
tangerine oil, when peel is pulled back
scent of lemon in my hands
eucalyptus honey
bay laurel leaves, definitive green
juniper berries and pinecones
their nuts burrowed deep inside
Quince perfumes house at dusk
leave me wandering
in oily night blooming jasmine.

One crushed cardamon pod at the bottom of inky thick coffee
hot and dark
four
crisp
doughnut
fritters
shiny with ferocious oil
browning, expanding
caramel buttery salty
chocolate melting
like paint on cheek insides
a woman's face against mine
like peaches
or green almond husk
plums with reds and purples
mixed inks
flesh and skin
sour and sweet
love affair with citrus.
the dream of bergamot
one shot of Royal Mandarin juice
limes and kumquats
whole and wagon wheel shapes
quarters, eighths, whole.

Crunchy Hot toast
Crab apple, autumn scented
pears picked once
cold, green, ready.
A Comice's fair complexion
bruised by insults uttered
Walnuts and dried fruit compotes
fireplace warmth
mittens and woolen scarves.

the cherry that protects its stone
and one tiny almond lives within it.
bees who sex flowers to fruit

Thick Arms on Mango Trees
pulp and juice to my elbow
avocados underfoot
i'll take green or ripe guavas
challenging loud seeds between uncertain teeth
lychees in porcupine skin
k'nippes camouflaged in their own canopy.

Demure berries
the most delicate of all
needing sun but not heat
rain but not downpour
bees not birds
fingers but not hands
o raspberry, where art thou?
ripe blackberry?
bloody forearms
mosquitoes in ears, on sweaty neck
blue-purple stains every which way
the pleasure is grand
but fleeting -
Strawberry soup
smooth and seedless
exquisite small strawberries
crawling on the ground to find you -
Summer drunks me with berries promise.

Clamming in Long Island with my Grandfather
they spit and pee and pull you down
The immense strength of mollusk
Seagulls repeatedly dropping from great heights
smashing open tightly sealed lips
our roof a beach
the ground outside the door, white
My mother feeding me the salty sea
raw clams
taste memory
connected to swimming in ocean alive
sand sharks against shins
schools of fish turning in unison
inquisitive little fishes nibbling toes
learning to drive boats first
salted eyelashes and brows
smoked gold fish for lunch.

lox and bagels
gefilte fish
and what does that fish look like?
Scales stuck to my clothes like sequins
guts on the dock
birds at its wooden edge, eager.
Flounder is flat
the swordfish above my bed is very blue
lobster was always delicious
steamers and their liquor
hot roiling boiling steamy sea
chewy, soft, gritty, sweet.

My love for you
as delicious as
all this.

-- March 2001

April is Poetry Month.
For more poems by Shuna Lydon, check in with Eggbeater through this link all month.

I heard a rumor from a farmer: we're supposed to have very warm weather all week. Is it possible our government planned an environmental change? To coincide with our new, nice and early Daylight Savings Plan? Hey I'm not being paranoid, if I were them I'd warm things up a bit too. To encourage people to actually spend that new hour outside, picnic-ing, giving the dog more exercise or just basking in a later setting sun.

I love the warm weather. It makes me think I live in sunny California; the one many of us imagined when our plane landed here from coasts with harsher climes.

I'm not fooled. It's not summer. In fact Spring hasn't even truly begun. (I know this because March 20th, the Official First Day Of Spring, is my birthday.) Sure I'll put on shorts and open all my windows. Maybe I'll even tempt our foggy fate and put away my long underwear.

But I'm not about to start buying strawberries. Or any other berries for that matter. I don't care that they're in season a few thousand miles away. The fruit that makes the most sense to me right now is citrus. I had the best time going to Berkeley Bowl last week. Walked down 8 foot displays of yellows, safety-oranges, ochres, deep red-oranges, chartreuses, lime greens and red- blushing pale yellow shoulders of shiny grapefruits. I bought little tangerines with pretty leaves and stems, crinkly skinned large pored seedy mandarins, dusty wax-less outy belly-buttoned Minneolas, and baseball sized navel oranges. I perused, tasted, peeled and nibbled.

Whether fruit appreciation is your own private secret, or you could shout your love from the mountaintops, Berkeley Bowl will not disappoint; it is a temple for fruit worshipping. A church where the fruit prayer is answered. A freshly gilded Mosque dome for paying homage to seeded creatures. An outdoor pagan meadow complete with ancient rocks for free-spirited fruit raves.

And what better way to refresh one's electrolytes and vitamin C cravings, than with these bright and dangerous fruits?

As a citrus afficionado I tend to like sweets that err on the puckery side. If I'm going to eat a Minneola, I'm looking forward to a swift "kapow!" of distinct flavor characteristic as well as a brief, but perceptible jolt, like the volume has been turned up loud for a nano second.

In kind, I offer Lemon Sherbet, a dessert bridging our new gift of warm weather and the fruit that is actually in season. If you don't have an ice cream maker, check out the Glazed Meyer Lemon Cake recipe in the Winter 2007 Edible San Francisco issue.

LEMON SHERBET

1 1/2 Cups Lemon Juice
1 1/2 Cups Whole Milk
1 1/2 Cups Organic Cream (my favorite is Clover)
1 1/2 Cups Sugar
7 each Lemons Each Zested

1. In a food processor fitted with a blade attachment, whir lemon zest and sugar until the lemon scent is powerful.
2. Whisk all ingredients together and let sit overnight in the fridge.
3. Before churning, give liquid a good whisk and pass through a fine meshed sieve.
4. Churn in ice cream maker per manufacturer's instructions.
5. If you are going to make an error in the time it takes to churn Lemon Sherbet, err on the side of being under churned. If you over churn sherbet there is no saving it, as it is not an emulsion the way creme anglaise is for ice cream.
6. Lemon Sherbet is best eaten the day it is made, but like all frozen treats, it will last for an awful long time in the freezer.
7. If it becomes frozen solid, "temper" sherbet back to a scoopable consistency by placing container in the fridge until desired texture. (It's a trick we do in restaurants so that we can make perfect hand spooned quenelles.)

Happy Citrus Celebrating!

If you don't have an ice cream maker and you don't want to bake the cake, head over to Ici where Mary Canales is making some of the best citrus ice creams, sorbets and sherbets in the Bay Area!

I wandered into the Whole Foods Market on California and Franklin the other day where I was greeted by giant stacks of citrus. The clementines caught my eye, which was quite easily done due to the sheer volume of the little fruits-- boxes upon boxes of them.

I love tangerines, so I grabbed a box. Ideas kept popping into my head as to how I would use them. Sliced up and drizzled with olive oil, tossed with salt and toasted walnuts, made into pudding, squeezed for juice in the morning and, of course, eaten right out of my hand. Vinaigrettes, granitas, dipped in chocolate and crushed salty cashews. I planned on being one busy fellow in the kitchen.

When I got them home, I grabbed one out of the box, peeled off the skin and popped a segment into my mouth. I turned my back to the other surviving clementines, not wanting them to witness the disappointment that had immediately registered on my face. What I had just eaten tasted flabby and rather anemic. Then I remembered something fairly significant in terms of citrus purchasing:

Wasn't there a terrible cold snap a couple of weeks ago?

I went online to look up the what happened to the California citrus harvest this year. Nearly three-quarters of our state's citrus crops were destroyed when temperatures dipped into the 20's about two weeks ago. This year has not been good to citrus farmers. I was, however, glad that I had paid my $7.99 as some sort of support. I then realized that I had given Whole Foods Market my money and wondered how much of that actually went to the farmers. Whatever the answer, I thought I should go and make the best of my clementines.

I grabbed another clementine. It felt heavy in my hand for its size, as all good citrus should. It was sweet and juicy and unyielding. The first fruit I peeled must have been an anomaly. I decided to go ahead with my first recipe.

There is a buttermilk pudding cake I love to make once or twice a year when meyer lemons are good. I thought I might see how one made with clementines would turn out. There is a very good reason the recipe calls for lemons-- they are, by nature, tart and high in acid-- things critical to the success of the recipe. Clementines, on the other hand, are very sweet and low in acidity-- something I chose to ignore when preparing the dessert. I was so intoxicated by the smell of fruit's rind, which I kept scratching with my fingernail, that I thought enough zest would somehow make the alteration in the recipe work. Sadly, I was wrong. Sadly? Not really. I learned something about why certain foods work in specific situations and why others do not. It wasn't a total wash out. Besides, it at least looked good. Remind me to share the lemon recipe with you one of these days.

As I mentioned earlier, I love tangerines. I automatically assumed clementines were a type of tangerine. I was wrong again. While both are members of the Citrus reticulata species, the clementine owes its existence to the cross breeding of the sweet orange and Chinese mandarin and its name to the man who first accidentally bred them at an Algerian orphanage in 1902, Father Clement Rodier. Tangerines, if you hadn't guessed, got their name from the Moroccan port city of Tangiers-- the source of import for most of Europe's supply of the fruit. I suppose citrus growers should be grateful that Pere Clement had a catchy name, otherwise, they might today be growing algerines. Not quite the same market appeal as "clementines", to be certain.

I went back to the market to buy a tangerine so I might taste it side-by-side with a clementine. The clementine tasted dull when compared to the sweet-tart flavor of the tangerine. Tangerines have sass. Clementines are vaguely cloying and given names such as "cutie" or "little darling" and tend shed their clothes too quickly-- possibly the type of fruit appropriate for a one night stand. Tangerines, at least, make me want to come back for more. The fate of the clementine-- at least its role in my life-- was sealed. A few lines of a song made so popular by Huckleberry Hound popped into my head:

How I missed her, How I missed her
How I missed my Clementine
Till I kissed her little sister
And forgot my Clementine.

I'm going back to tangerines. Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

Though not specificallly clementine in nature, the following link is citrus related and made me extremely happy. Check it out if you have nothing better to do. See the opera-singing orange.