There is no shortage of fun food-filled things to do on a holiday weekend in the Bay Area. July 4th weekend was no exception and due to the amazing summer weather I spent Saturday morning at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market...shooting, shopping and eating.

A good starting point...

Blue Bottle Coffee at SF Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

All Photos: Wendy Goodfriend

Stephanie at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market Berry Festival. Photos by Christina Vickory

Doing a cooking demonstration for strangers is part Food Network, part Comedy Central. The first time I tossed a salad in front of an audience, at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market back in 2001, I was very nervous. Would my knife skills be sneered at? Would I forget to add some crucial ingredient, or go blank in the middle of an explanation of whisking or macerating?

Former Bay Area pastry chef David Lebovitz set my mind at ease. "Make them laugh! They just want to be entertained; no one's going to be watching what you do," he said, just before going out in front of the crowd and doing just that. Yes, on that day, if you watched carefully, you could learn how David made his truly excellent brownies, plus a dried-fruit compote with which to dress them up. But mostly, David made the crowd laugh. They had a good time with him, and what could make a brownie taste better?

So that's what I try to do, make 'em laugh--in between pleading with them to buy fresh baking powder, use a microplane for grating orange rind, and stop storing the spices over the stove (where they dry out and turn to dust so tasteless than no one could pick the rubbed sage from the smoked paprika).

But man, sometimes you guys are a tough crowd, clutching your xeroxed recipe sheets, staring up at the counter with all the enthusiasm of an after-lunch trigonometry class on the last day before summer vacation. Are you simply in it for the samples? Or do all my attempts to squeeze a little Liz Lemon into the soup just fall flat?

Be that as it may, I was booked as the talent yesterday at CUESA's Berry Celebration, down at the Saturday Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. So, a joyful reason to cook with berries was in order.

Now, in my house, "cooking with berries" rarely happens. Why? Because the berries go fast from carton to mouth. Sometimes they make it into the cereal bowl or the pancake batter; once a summer there is blueberry pie. In my opinion, cream is the only embellishment a perfect raspberry needs, and the best blackberry is the winey, sun-warmed one you pick yourself from a dusty tangle at the side of the road.

However, topping a bowl of Grape-Nuts with blueberries, or mashing them down into a bowl of vanilla ice cream, is a little short on the show biz a cooking demo requires. No, what I needed here was a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants...or in this case, a sassy how-to for Double Berry Shortcake, with warm orange-scented biscuits layered with triple-berry jam, honey whipped cream, and fresh berries.

Now, the first thing to know about making biscuits is that they die young. A warm biscuit fresh from the oven is a heavenly thing. A few hours later, meh. Starch and butter, never a bad thing, but nothing for which to thank your mama and the good Lord for bringing you into the world and giving you a mouth. So, for best results, bake your biscuits not more than an hour or two before serving. If you can get them to the table still slightly warm, all the better. (Blazing-hot biscuits will melt the whipped cream, however, so do let them cool for at least 15 minutes or so before using.)

The second thing is that baking powder, too, has a shelf life, and if you bought it three boyfriends ago, you need to splash out and spend the buck and a half to get a new container. There's an expiration date on the bottom of the can. Heed it.

Finally, the box grater. Mostly these are useless, except to grate carrots for carrot cake or potatoes for latkes. But they have one more use, as I remembered just minutes before Saturday's little show-and-tell. Rub your cold, firm stick of butter through the big holes into your bowl of flour, and you'll get a near-instant, pastry-perfect mix. Keep your hands gentle and your touch light, and stamp out your biscuits with a wavy-edged biscuit cutter for the cutest final product.

As for the berry filling, you can make it with any mixture of raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, ollalieberries, or marionberries. The secret? Quick-cooking tapioca. It thickens the berries up without any tell-tale lumps or bumps, giving it the texture of perfectly gelled pie filling. If you have any extra berry filling, spoon it into a clean jar, refrigerate and use within a couple of weeks. Because of the tapioca thickener, it should not be sealed in canning jars for room-temperature storage like regular homemade jam. If you've never used tapioca before, look for the little red box of Minute brand next to the boxes of Jell-O.

(And then save the rest to make Heidi Swanson's creamy tapioca pudding, on a night when nothing but sweet eggy custard will soothe your battered soul.)

As for the cream, you'd be surprised what goes into the average carton of supermarket cream, from mono- and di-glycerides to carrageenan. Instead, look for the Clover organic or Straus organic heavy cream, both made of fresh, dairy-sweet local cream and nothing but.

And finally, when it comes to the berries, be as generous as you can. Blueberries for Sal! Tayberries for You! Berries, berries everywhere! You cannot have too many.

Double Berry Shortcake with Honey Cream

Light, fluffy biscuits get layered with a jammy berry filling, drenched with honey-sweetened whipped cream, and topped with more fresh berries.

Serves 6 to 8, depending on size of biscuits

For Shortcake Biscuits:
2 cups all-purpose white flour, preferably unbleached
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
grated rind of 1 orange
8 TB (1 stick or 1/2 cup) butter, chilled
1 egg
1/2 cup milk plus 1 TB (you may need slightly more or less)

For Berry Filling:
2 TB water
1 TB quick-cooking tapioca, such as Minute brand
juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups mixed berries, such as blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries
2 tsp Chambord or cassis liqueur, optional

For Honey Cream:
1/2 pint heavy (whipping) cream
1 TB honey, or to taste
a few drops of orange extract or orange liqueur (such as Grand Marnier), or 1/4 tsp grated orange rind, optional

For Assembly:
2 to 3 cups mixed fresh berries

1. To make shortcake biscuits: Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a round cake pan.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

3. Using a box grater, grate chilled butter into flour mixture. (You can also pulse ingredients together in a food processor until just pebbly.) Toss buttter-flour mixture together lightly, until butter is covered with flour and evenly mixed throughout.

3. Measure 1/2 cup milk in a glass measuring cup, then break in egg and beat together. Drizzle over flour mixture and mix gently into a soft dough. If dough seems dry, add additional milk as needed.

4. Turn out onto a floured countertop or cutting board. Pat into an even 1-inch-thick round. Using a floured biscuit cutter or the rim of a small drinking glass, cut out 6 to 8 biscuits (number may vary depending on the size of your cutter). Fit biscuits into cake pan, sides touching.

5. Bake 15-20 minutes, until tops are pale gold. Remove from baking sheet and let cool on a rack.

6. To make quick berry filling: In a small, heavy-bottomed pot, mix water, tapioca, lemon juice, sugar, and berries together. Over medium-low heat, bring to a simmer. Simmer, stirring frequently, until berries have collapsed and mixture is deep purple and jammy, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Let cool (it will thicken as it cools) and refrigerate until needed. Stir in liqueur before serving, if desired.

7. To make honey cream: Pour cream into a chilled bowl and whip with a whisk or hand-held electric mixer until beater begins to leave traces on the surface of the cream. Add honey and extract or rind if desired. Continue beating until cream is thick enough to mound up on a spoon.

8. To assemble shortcakes: Using a small sharp knife, split biscuit. Put bottom half on biscuit in a shallow bowl. Spread with a generous spoonful of preserves. Top with some fresh berries and a spoonful of cream. Top with top half of biscuit, more cream and fresh berries. Repeat with remaining biscuits.

I love living in San Francisco. In what other major city does the ouster of a sausage vendor at the farmers market become a platform for public debate?

First of all, a little background: This week, the Chronicle reported in a column by CW Nevius that the Aidells booth at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market was being asked to leave by the end of the month.

Aidells is the popular sausage company that was begun in 1983 by Bruce Aidells. In her book Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl recalls first meeting Aidells, having no idea that one day he would become the "sausage king of America." Fast forward nearly thirty years, and Aidell's is a $20 million operation with sausages available in your corner store. Aidells sold his interest in the company in 2002.

Each year, CUESA, the organization that oversees the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, assesses the applications of all market vendors (they must reapply each year) and makes decisions about what vendors will participate in the market. Needless to say, a spot at the Saturday market -- one of the biggest and most lucrative markets in the country -- is highly sought after, and participation in the market can bring a farm or purveyor into the spotlight.

CUESA takes this responsibility seriously. The vendors who have come into the market recently -- Drinkwell Soda, 4505 meats, and Catalan Family Farm, for instance -- are small business with fantastic, sustainable products and a ton of potential.

The ouster of Aidells is causing a public outcry, replete with signature gathering and a threat of protest by a sausage-dressed human this Saturday.

All day, every day, I make difficult decisions about what I am eating: whether it is sustainably grown, whether it was produced well and whether the people who grew it were treated correctly. The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is one place that I would like to go where I don't have to think about whether the food I am purchasing meets with my exacting standards -- I know that the vendors have been vetted by a full-time staff who has my best interest at heart.

This morning, I wrote an email to CUESA executive director Dave Stockdale (dave@cuesa.org) thanking him for making the tough decision:

"A 10-year market shopper here saying that I support your decision to move Aidell's out of the Saturday market, leaving space for smaller, more sustainably-run vendors. When I go to the FPFM, I want to know that you have done the work for me -- asked the tough questions of vendors -- and that I can trust everything I buy there. I appreciate your making sure that all vendors meet the strict FPFM standards."

I don't think that Aidells is a bad company, and neither does CUESA. An email from Stockdale stated,

"Aidells is a story of success. They started with us as a small local company. They are now a national brand with annual sales reported in excess of $20-million, whose products are available in 46 states, including 31 stores in San Francisco and several area farmers markets. We are proud to have been one of the early venues for the company's products and we're thankful to Aidells for helping our market becoming a success. We see our market as an incubator for local businesses, and we want to use our limited space to provide this same opportunity to other local companies."

CUESA is simply trying to stick to their own mission, which is to shine a light on impeccably produced food from the best our region has to offer.

Further reading:
If Aidells is out at the Ferry Plaza, shouldn't Scharffen Berger have to go too? SF Weekly, 01/21/10
CUESA makes its case against Aidells. SF Eater, 01/21/10
Hotdogging earns Ferry Plaza booth an ouster. SF Chronicle, 01/19/10

I started working with preschoolers a few years ago, not long after I quit my office job. These days, I help out in a pre-k classroom at a school downtown, close to Rincon Center. The boys are obsessed with Star Wars, even the original movies, and the girls sport headbands like Lynda Carter-era Wonder Women. Some of their families call San Francisco home; many live in Marin, south of San Francisco, or in the suburbs of Oakland. A lot of them eat catered school lunches; others lug boxes and bags inevitably embellished with culturally significant images -- Yoda, Tinkerbell, Dora -- and stocked with kid-friendly things: string cheese sticks, raisins, fruit, lunch meat, hummus, and miniature yogurt cups and juice boxes from Trader Joe's and Costco.

Our relationships with food begin when we're very young. We're shaped by what our parents give us. We like what we learn to like. Foods in fun packages -- like pigs-in-a-blanket and eggs-in-a-basket -- are universally appealing. Foods we associate with good times -- like Popsicles -- are as well. Childhood memories are powerful things, our therapists tell us. Chefs know this too. That's why Grant Achatz of the esteemed Alinea in Chicago served, on his restaurant's opening night, a whimsical riff on an American lunch-box staple: one peeled grape, warmed, still on its stem, dipped in a peanut puree and wrapped in brioche -- the mad scientist's peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich.

Every Tuesday morning, the class visits the Ferry Building. We teachers gently prod our shifty little charges into the loose winding semblance of a line and lead them, meandering along the sidewalks, dashing through crosswalks. "Smells gross," a boy once sniffed as we passed Yank Sing, the damp, slightly acrid scent of vapor hissing from steamers inside. "That's only the best dim sum in San Francisco," I almost blurted out incredulously. I remembered, of course, that I was walking with under-sized humans who still cried for their mommies and wet their pants on occasion. They'd never pecked a tiny hole in the soft translucent skin of a perfect Shanghai dumpling and slurped -- with greedy, Dracula-like precision -- the sweet, concentrated broth within. Divorced from that experience, the smell was, in fact, a little icky. An iron grate covers a patch of pavement directly outside of Boulevard, on the Mission St. side. The kids like to jump on it as they pass because it clangs noisily. A waiter inside polishing glasses -- readying for the lunch hour rush -- inevitably chuckles. Their small heads bob just barely into view with every leap.

I wonder if marching into the Ferry Building farmer's market flanked by a posse of adorable 4-year-olds isn't a bit like rolling into a club with a bunch of professional basketball players. You receive a lot of attention but it's all purely by association. Beaming retirees and fanny-pack-toting tourists -- this scene's coterie of doting fans and relentless paparazzi -- hover, stare, cluck, and coo. When cameras come out, teachers act swiftly, more like security personnel than hangers-on. "No photos, please," we say firmly. "They're minors." Once, a very old woman wheeling her husband -- a man in much less robust health -- sidled up to me winking, her face as round, wrinkled, and fuzzy as an over-ripe apricot: "Do any of them need a Jewish grandma?" she practically pleaded. "Yes," I responded. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Potato," by Reese, age 4. She drew a potato and started to scrawl the word, but decided to write "green bean" instead.

For the kids, a Tuesday trip to the Ferry Building is an overwhelming assault of sensory delights. They grab at anything within reach. They swivel their heads as they walk, twirling constantly to see what's happening behind them, mindful that they're always missing something. Things fall apart; the line cannot hold. The other day, we were leaving the farmer's market, heading for the lobster tanks inside, when a girl prone to dawdling dawdled. I asked her to catch up. She stared up at me and offered a retort for which I had no rote teacher-ly rejoinder "I'm just looking at the world." At that moment, Incanto chef, Boccalone owner, and Food Network presence Chris Cosentino glided by, pushing a produce-stacked cart. A small blond boy sat on top of the cart, giggling. "Weeeee," said the kid. I thought of Old Mcdonald's Farm -- the mooing cows, quacking ducks, and oinking pigs, and what Chris Cosentino would do with them if he had the chance.

This week, we checked out the mushroom mini-farms at Far West Fungi. "Eeek, blech," said a girl, scrunching her eyes and nose, tilting her head to properly appraise the craggy shitake caps poking out from what looked like a wizened loaf of pumpernickel. "You don't like mushrooms?" I asked. "I like mushrooms, but not ones with yucky shells," she explained, cackling, waving her hands at me as if I were a dunce and she was making perfect sense. She noticed a poster of wild mushrooms hanging outside the store. "I like this one," she said, pointing to a particular 'shroom. "That is a shitake," I said. "It's just like the ones on the log you said were yucky." Three hours later, she woke up from a nap and grabbed my leg as I walked past her mat. "Actually, I only like two kinds of mushrooms," she said, as if to clear up a misunderstanding. "I like the big ones and the little round ones." "Okay," I responded. 'The rest are yucky," she added, sighing conclusively as she rolled over to fall back asleep.

As part of the weekly ritual, we pick out vegetables and fruits for the kids to enjoy for a pre-playground snack after nap. The kids make choices, which is good for them to do. We try to present attractive options: produce to provoke curiosity and wonder -- like lemon cucumbers, sweet gnarled bell peppers sporting psychedelic hues, little damson plums, and baby carrots in leafy bunches etc. At snack-time, they're excited but picky -- especially when it comes to vegetables which, unlike most fruits, aren't usually sweet and, on some level, candy-like.

"Green Bean," by Stella, age 4. She drew a green bean and then turned it into an airplane.

I am reminded of a story my mother once told me. She had a nasty 3rd grade teacher with a favorite adage -- "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" -- and she took pleasure in invoking it whenever students dozed, doodled, or clowned through her class. The saying has drifted through my mind at snack-time, though in this case, it expresses patience, not exasperation. To rope in another livestock platitude, the vegetables kids adamantly refuse -- no matter how sustainable, delicious, and healthy they may be -- are not pearls cast before proverbial swine. You can't force much with kids and food. You can lead them to water, and while you can't make them drink, you can drink yourself, in front of them, and tell them how good it is. If you're funny and sincere enough, sooner or later, they'll get thirsty. Breathlessly extolling their virtues between bites, I practically wore out my molars chomping purple peppers before a boy took pity on me, kind of shaking his head as he reached out a small pudgy paw for his own sliver.

4-year-olds don't know that much yet. They also have a pretty limited vocabulary. Yet they're -- like George -- endlessly curious, and constantly -- unlike George -- growing and honing new tools for comprehension and conversation. As a result, they're very good at asking obvious, simple questions that actually require difficult, complex answers. On Tuesday, halfway through the afternoon, two children, a boy and a girl, argued. The boy yelped imperiously, "Did you know that if dinosaurs were alive now, they would eat us?" The girl guffawed in disbelief. "Eat us?" she snorted, probably, for once, not on purpose. "No way! Why would they eat us? We're not food." The boy nodded solemnly, closing his eyes as his head swung up and down. "They would. Do you know why? Because we have meat in our bodies." The girl started to say something, then paused, her eyes wandering down to the arms hanging at her sides. She lifted her left arm with her right hand and let it flop down, limp. She picked it up again and squeezed it slowly and deliberately, feeling bone and muscle, her fingers crawling all the way up to her tiny shoulder. You could tell her brain was working hard. She was thinking about meat -- what she knew of it, where she thought it came from, what it looked like, what it tasted like. Grilled chicken. Pepperoni on pizza. Ham sandwiches. Shrimp. She yelled at me from halfway across the room: "Do we have meat in our bodies for real?"

I tried to pretend I hadn't heard. She yelled again. I took a deep breath. I walked over and knelt down on the carpet. I didn't mind talking about it; I just wasn't sure where to begin.

Well. It's been quite a week for the folks that love and hate the Ferry Building Farmers' Market. First, there was the revelation that a new book by Carlo Petrini (the founder of the Slow Food movement) was downright rude about the farmers and their customers, who work, shop, and food-stroll their Bay Area Saturdays away.

Then there was the CUESA follow-up meeting that attempted to get stuff hashed out between the offender and the offended.

This was followed by blog reaction all over the Bay Area and possibly the country. And finally, yesterday came some signs that maybe Alice Waters was Jimmy Cartering her way through the ugly muck and hurt feelings; possibly composting what was said and using it to feed new growth. Mum until just recently, Alice Waters was reported in the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday as weighing in with her opinion on the whole nasty mess.

"I don't think he was wrong about his perception that food is more expensive (at Ferry Plaza)," Waters told Scoop on Monday. "But I think he's wrong in his analysis of why it was."

The cost of raising good, fresh food and hauling it to market in the city "is something that's important for all of us to talk about," Waters says. And while she wishes Petrini hadn't written what he did, she supports him 100 percent.

The Chronicle notes that Petrini had apologized in what they term a "politician's type of apology" by saying he was sorry "for any offense caused by this passage." Which, I have to agree with the Chronicle, is sort of like that old wheeze, "I'm sorry you feel that way," which definitely removes the offender from acknowledging any blame whatsoever. As to the poor surfer-farmer that Petrini "outed" as specifically gouging customers just to support his surf habit?

Petrini insists he meant to give a "positive impression." He blamed his writing, and the translation, for distorting his efforts to illustrate the complexities of slow food in a fast world.

So...maybe what Petrini needed was a better editor? Interesting defense.

So far, I haven't subjected anyone to my own opinion about the kerfuffle. For one, there are plenty of opinions to go around and I'd just be adding to the noise, but for another, my opinion isn't really incendiary or original.

I frankly adore the Ferry Building Farmers' Market. Back in Boston, we didn't really have an equal to it. I mean, there was the one in Haymarket, but it smelled so much of rotting fish the one time I passed by that I never really wanted to go back.

However, the FBFM is so...pretty. Even in dank and drizzly weather -- my favorite time to shop there, actually -- it's just painfully beautiful to amble by the delicious, nourishing sculptures gently coaxed out of the simple dirt. The visions of bright tassels of radishes, the soft green piles of lettuces, shiny unblemished peppers, peaches that make you feel warm all over just by touching them. Even if I never pull out any money, I just feel at peace gazing at so much earthly beauty as the water laps the pylons. It's my art museum, and I can't get over it. I hope I never get over it. But maybe I'm naive or satisfied by simple things. After all, I still hunt for four-leaf clovers and hold buttercups under my husband's chin to see if he likes butter. (He does.)

Is the Ferry Building Farmers' Market expensive? Well, yeah, but so are Jimmy Choo shoes and Hummers and diamonds and memberships to Slow Food. It just happens to be where I choose to spend my money. Would it be nice if prices were lowered? Duh. Of course it would, but until I completely understand how much it costs to coax a small, organic farm to produce, transport, and sell the lovelies I put on my plate, I don't feel qualified to complain about it.

In fact, I've always been chuffed by the fact that my knowledgeable mother-in-law -- who can keep a vast number of figures in her head -- looks at the prices at our farmers' market and pronounces them to be competitive with what she pays at her farmers' market in Washington, D.C.

As other people have pointed out, if the Ferry Building Farmers' Market prices are so repugnant to people, there are so many other places to get good produce: Alemany, San Francisco's Civic Center, Marin -- and that's just the few I know about.

It just doesn't seem like the most productive plan of action to attack and tear down farmers and shoppers, call them names, assume motives and wallet size, and backbite.

I know what the real problem is here: we're all just crabby because the summer tomatoes haven't quite come in yet.