Jen Biesty. Photo by Tamara Palmer

In our continuing quest to learn more vital yet elusive tips on how to best select produce for flavor and longevity, we turned to chef Jen Biesty of Scala’s Bistro inside San Francisco’s Sir Francis Drake Hotel. When we arrived at her busy kitchen one afternoon, she had set out a platter of beautiful dark red fruit. Even though it’s February and well past stone fruit season, we found ourselves asking if she had somehow managed to pick some plums for us.

Jen Biesty holding an Arkansas Black apple. Photo by Tamara Palmer

“They’re Arkansas Black apples!” replied the Top Chef alum. “I love these, they remind me of the apples in Snow White.

“You want an apple that’s firm, with a nice color,” she advised. “They all look a little bit different and they’re not just homogenized. If you can see the pollen or dirt from the tree then you know it is really fresh and just picked within a week or a few days.”

Meat is traditionally thought of when pairing apples with a protein, but Biesty has found that they go great with fish as well; she likes to shave them raw into a salad with chestnut and parsley, an accompaniment for sea bass. She picks the Arkansas Black apples in particular up at the Alemany Farmers Market in San Francisco from Chimayo Farms.

Eric Tucker holding a Chanterelle mushroom. Photo by Tamara Palmer

Chef Eric Tucker of Millennium Restaurant, a venerable temple to creative vegetarian cooking in San Francisco, was kind enough to let us tag along with him on a Saturday morning visit to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, where he was leading a small group who had signed up for a beer-themed cooking class in honor of the conclusion of SF Beer Week. No matter the theme of a particular course, Tucker will meet students the day before to wander the market and decide on some ideas and direction for the next day’s session, a hands-on class that includes sitting down to a family-style meal.

He first led the class to Far West Fungi, which has a permanent stall inside the building. Tucker snapped up some beautiful black trumpets, chanterelles, and maitakes. Mushrooms are a staple at Millennium for their earthy, meaty qualities, whether it’s a sauce of black trumpets in a red wine reduction or oyster mushrooms simply fried. Tucker’s advice for selecting shrooms focuses on what you should avoid, which is just as valuable to know as what to pick.

“I’m leery of mushrooms that look too waterlogged or dark. Those you have to dry or use very quickly,” he said. “If you’re buying portabellas and the gills are really present and the caps are really open, you need to use those quicker than ones with tighter caps, which will have more life.”

“Or look at these,” he noted, pointing to some mostly beige Lion’s Mane mushrooms. “When they start to turn red, I associate that with some possible bacterial growth or breakdown.”

Sunchokes. Photo by Tamara Palmer

We ducked outside in the pouring rain to the Tierra Vegetables stand. Tucker started rifling through what we first thought were oversized knots of ginger root, but were actually sunchokes.

“You want the ones that are not caked in dirt, because they’re hard to clean and peel,” he explained, “And you want the larger ones.” While many like to work with raw sunchokes (shaving them thinly for a salad, for example), Tucker likes to slow bake them with white wine, olive oil, and herbs, the combination making a sort of guilt-free confit.

Golden Nuggets. Photo by Tamara Palmer

We finished at the Blossom Bluff Orchards stand, where some weird, nubbly looking mandarin oranges were about to be the subject of Tucker’s excitement.

“These are great for the zest!” he exclaimed of the variety, called Golden Nuggets. He likes to use them in savory applications, and for his beer class imagined they’d pair well with the bitterness of the hops in the different beer varieties. These can be a little difficult to pick. If they’re nubbier and heavier, they’ve got more juice, but they’ve also got thicker and more developed cell walls, so there’s a bit of a tradeoff when it comes to the insides.

Aaron London. Photo courtesy of Ubuntu

It’s still a good time of year for carrots, and chef Aaron London of Napa’s notable vegetarian restaurant Ubuntu has some valuable advice and a colorful, flavorful recipe to share. No matter what color or size your carrots are, he notes that the pigmentation should be deep and plush. Look for strong, rigid stems and leaves with some sheen to them that blossom out and don’t lay flat.

Carrots. Photo by Tamara Palmer

“If you’re at a Farmers' Market,” London says, “dirt is a good thing to see on a carrot. If it has dirt on it and any moisture, it will degrade and diminish very rapidly, meaning that if you see a soil covered carrot with all of the above attributes, then you’re really looking good because it must be super fresh. I know this sounds redundant, but it should smell like a carrot. Take that in mind and try hard to find a carrot that actually smells like one, and you will have found a winner.”

Tender White Satin and Crisp Purple Haze Carrot Salad With Strawberry Spinach, Raspberries, and Crushed Herb Vinaigrette

By Chef Aaron London, Ubuntu Restaurant

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced thin
Peel of 1/4 of an orange
1/4 onion, sliced thinly
2 oranges
1 Tbs. sugar
Mixed color baby carrots, carrot tops reserved for cooking and for garnish
1/2 pint raspberries
1 qt. picked greens, such as arugula, chervil, celery leaf, and mint
1 cup grapeseed oil
2 Tbs. crushed toasted hazelnuts
1 big handful of baby spinach
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 sprig rosemary
Salt
1Tbs. sugar
Edible flowers, or garnish of choice

For the carrot puree:

Sweat the onion, sliced large carrot, and orange peel in a little grapeseed oil with salt in a heavy bottomed pot until very tender. Add 1 pint of water and reduce it by half.

Place the carrots into a blender and blend on high until smooth and the mixture blends easily. At the end, drizzle in a thin stream of 1tsp. of oil to emulsify it and make it creamy and fluffy. Reserve puree.

For the tender carrots:

Wash the carrots and tops very well. Clean the tops off of all the baby carrots, and reserve some of the smaller leaves on the herb in ice water for garnish. Place the rest of the tops in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Lay 2/3 of the carrots on the carrot tops in 1-2 even layers, followed by the garlic, whole sprig rosemary, peel and juice of 1 orange, the sugar, enough water to cover and a pinch of salt. Cover with tin foil and cook until tender, about an hour, at 350. Once they are done, let them rest in their liquid until it is time to plate.

For the crisp carrots:

Take the remaining carrots and cut them into interesting shapes as well as shave on a mandolin. Place the carrots them directly into ice water so they crisp up and tork (twist into natural shapes).

For the vinaigrette:

Place the grapeseed oil in the freezer for 30 minutes before you need to use it. Blanch and shock the quart of “rabbit greens” (greens of choice as listed above) and place them in the blender with the oil and spin until smooth. Chill immediately.

Place the raspberries into a mixing bowl and lightly fork crush them with the micro-planed zest of 1 orange, a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper. Add in the hazelnuts and ½ cup of the green oil and let marinate for half an hour.

To finish:

Spread the carrot puree nice and wide on the bottom of 6 plates or wide bowls. The puree should be just above room temperature. Pull the tender carrots out of their cooking liquid and toss them in a bowl with the juice of one orange and a spoonful of the green oil and place them artfully into the puree.

Drain all of the water off of the raw carrots and toss them in a bowl with some of the green oil and a pinch of salt and dance them though the tender carrots, building as much height as possible.

Spoon the chunky vinaigrette evenly over all of the dishes, making sure to stir it often in order to insure even dispersion. To finish each dish, toss whatever spinaches and other garnishes with the lightest drop of oil, a pinch of salt and weave the leaves and edible flowers throughout the plates so it looks like their growing out.

Every year, usually around the beginning of February, I notice that the ornamental plum trees in Golden Gate Park are starting to burst into clouds of pink and white, covering the lawns with a pale, fluffy blanket of springtime splendor. But as much as I love how these 10-foot tall pastel bouquets line the streets, my mind instantly goes to another sign that the season is changing. Soon local farmers markets vendors will start stocking my very favorite bit of produce, which is only found this time of year: green garlic.

For those not in the know, green garlic is simply early season garlic that hasn't yet matured into a fully bulbous state. Green garlic is special for many reasons, but the reason I love it so is that it takes the strong, pungent qualities of mature garlic and lightens up the game a bit. Infinitely more subtle and nuanced than its full-grown brothers and sisters, green garlic has a less intense flavor and a sweetness that only early-season produce can impart. Perfect for both strong and mellow dishes, green garlic can be used wherever you would use regular garlic, in the same amounts. Give it a try in garlic bread or mashed potatoes. As well, green garlic's flavor is gentle enough that it can be eaten raw in a lovely green salad. Seriously!

Perhaps the coolest thing about green garlic, though, is the fact that you can eat the entire thing, from it's long, frondy leaves to it tiny root system. The younger the garlic the more tender it will be, and you'll know true baby garlic by its nearly complete lack of a bulgy, bulb-y end. As the season progresses week by week, you'll notice that green garlic at your local farmers market will get thicker and thicker towards the bulb-end, until it looks almost like a fully matured bulb of garlic with a long, green stalk. At this point you can still eat the entire thing, though the fibrous membrane that separates the individual cloves will have begun to form by this stage in its development. The cloves will have a strong, more traditional garlic flavor as they mature as well.

When shopping for green garlic, look for specimens that are long and green, without any browning or wilting along the stalk. Green garlic should be eaten within a week of being harvested for the best possible flavor, though it can be stored in the refrigerator for up to three weeks if you end up with a bunch of it. To store young garlic, I'd recommend wrapping the stalks in foil and leaving them in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator, where the humidity will work to keep them fresher, longer. If you're not planning on eating them right away, a little spritz of water in the foil every few days will help keep green garlic tender and fresh.

The best way to enjoy green garlic is in a dish where it's the star. For anything even remotely herb-y, I always try it out in a pesto recipe, where its flavor is front and center -- and in this case, green garlic plays the lead role with aplomb.

Green Garlic Pesto Pasta
Serves 2

Ingredients:
6 green garlic shoots, trimmed of the dark green tips and cut into 2 inch pieces
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup pine nuts
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons kosher salt
6 cups water
2 cups uncooked penne pasta

Preparation:

1. To the carafe of a food processor, add green garlic, parmesan, pine nuts, sea salt and pepper. Pulse 10-15 times, until ingredients are relatively well-blended, scraping down the sides in the middle of blending. Slowly drizzle in olive oil and continue blending until you get a well-combined pesto texture. Scoop into a bowl and set aside while the pasta cooks to let the flavors meld.

2. Add kosher salt to water and bring to a boil in a large pot. Add pasta and cook until al dente, about 9 minutes. Drain and rinse pasta.

3. Spoon pesto over hot penne pasta and serve immediately.

Coi’s Evan Rich surveys Page mandarin oranges

Another sunny Saturday morning found us back at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, the secret weapon of San Francisco’s thoughtful, creative chefs. The Bay Area has a wide variety of interesting fruits and vegetables growing here and near year-round, and while we’re surrounded by it all the time, you’re not alone if you have little to no idea what to look for when picking produce. We tagged along with four local culinary artists on their morning run around the various farm stands to steal their valuable tips.

Mission Beach Café’s Trevor Ogden sorts through parsnips.

Trevor Ogden, executive chef at Mission Beach Café, is currently accompanying his braised Prather Ranch lamb shank with a puree of baby parsnips, which he picks up from Heirloom Organic Gardens. When shopping for the root vegetable for home cooking, however, Ogden says size doesn’t really matter all that much.

“You can use both,” he advises. “Bigger can be better, but the little ones you don’t have to peel.” Look for clean, firm roots.

Aziza's Louis Maldonado looks at Romanesco broccoli.

Louis Maldonado, chef de cuisine at Aziza, enjoys working with Romanesco broccoli, which he prizes for its trimmings even more than the crowns. Sometimes he’ll even purchase them separately, often from Dirty Girl Produce. The trimmings work well for him because he doesn’t have to blanch or otherwise prepare some big hunk of broccoli. We’ve always stumbled around and picked huge, fat crowns, but it turns out that’s not a great strategy. Maldonado instead looks for really small crowns and roasts them whole with anchovies, lemon, parsley, and olive oil.

“When they get bigger, it kind of takes the special [qualities] away, so we just try to go for smaller ones,” he says. “The stuff they don’t make money on, we try to buy.”

Credo’s Gustavo Romero ponders the best purple kohlrabi.

Purple kohlrabi is big and scary looking, not the sort of vegetable that timid chefs would take a chance on, but Gustavo Romero, executive chef at Credo, makes it sound versatile and easy to use. Heirloom Organic Gardens is sporting big, beautiful specimens of this traditionally Lebanese, cabbage-like veggie right now.

“All the stuff they bring here is good quality,” notes Romero as we walk back towards the stand and spot the purple beasts. He picks up a few that are bigger, with cleaner white spots. “For the restaurant, I like to use the larger ones to mash them, because it’s easier and you spend less time doing it. In root vegetables, I don’t think the size especially matters unless you’re talking about carrots, because baby carrots have a lot more flavor.” Credo currently cooks a fish in parchment paper with root vegetables, including kohlrabi. He also loves to boil them and use them in a puree for a great consistency.

“Kohlrabi is great steamed in a stew with potatoes, carrots, and a chicken; it’s also great as a crudité or shredded like a cole slaw, skin and all,” adds Heirloom Organic farmer Dave Jamrock.

Page mandarin orange

Like many of his colleagues, Evan Rich, chef de cuisine at Coi, heads to the Hamada Farms stand for citrus. Right now, the Page mandarin oranges at Hamada are really good. He uses the juice for a play on a mandarin sour cocktail: Frozen mandarin ice with mandarin vodka jelly and a frozen meringue flavored with Angostura bitters.

He looks for a fruit that weighs a little bit, and says the color of the skin is important: If it’s more vibrant and darkly hued, the juice will probably be sweeter and more concentrated. He also suggests holding one in each hand; the heavier one will produce more juice.

Hamada is a reliable source, but Rich will often go the extra step to research the weather conditions around the various farms to figure out which ones might be producing the fruit with the most and most flavorful juice at the moment and then do a taste test at the stands.

“At Coi, that’s the kind of intensity we have with the ingredients,” he says. “It’s very important about taste and freshness. With fresh ingredients, there’s like an energy — it’s hard to explain, but it’s like there’s something that you can’t even notice, but it’s a subconscious thing that you just realize it’s better. And that’s why I come here.”

Previously: Bay Area Chefs on Winter Produce

Lafitte's Russell Jackson inhales the scent of Niitaka pears

Credit for all photos: Tamara Palmer

As important as growing and selecting produce is to a healthy diet and life, it's pretty stunning how few of us really know how to pick the best fruits and vegetables when shopping. Sure, we might have heard about certain items we're supposed to thump or squeeze, and we know to look out for obvious cosmetic flaws, but too much more beyond that is a big mystery for many.

We got up too early on a recent Saturday morning to find a number of San Francisco's notable chefs shopping for winter produce at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market. It was fascinating not only to see what everyone was buying and placing on their big-wheeled carts, but to watch their gears turning while dreaming up new ways to use these high quality ingredients. After several conversations, we came away confident that our local farmers do a lot to pre-select the best produce before they bring it to a market, which is why so many of the chefs are confident to purchase large boxes of ingredients on the spot. But we also got some good tips on how to select for maximum flavor and longevity.

Kristie Knoll of Knoll Farms and Annie Somerville of Greens

We think of Annie Somerville, proprietor of the legendary vegetarian restaurant Greens, as a true goddess of produce here in the Bay Area, so we met her first. She suggested we convene at the Knoll Farms stand, a biodynamic farm from Brentwood where we'd see all kinds of chefs lurking throughout the morning.

Somerville was thrilled to see the beginnings of green garlic there ("I am so happy!" she exclaimed), something she says proprietor Rick Knoll actually pioneered and is typically found after the winter. When asked what to look for, she said,

"Look for it to look just like that! Just really fresh and nice, the point is that it is the young stalks, the shoots. As they get more mature, they get longer and at the end there they start to bulb up and [wilt] and at some point you probably want to let it go. We use the shoots for sautéing. All the applications of fresh garlic, use your green garlic instead. Put it in any dish. All the tops can go into soup stock."

Green garlic

She finds it a wonderfully versatile ingredient, but seemed most excited about her plans to add it to mashed potatoes. One of Kristie Knoll's favorite preparations, meanwhile, is to cut the stalks into "knuckles" and brown them.

Horseradish root

While at the Knoll stand, we stumbled into Michael Tusk, chef/owner of Quince and Cotogna restaurants, selecting some horseradish. He says to look for pieces that aren't dried out. And, in this case of this root, size matters.

"I personally like the bigger pieces; they're easier to grate," he said. "We use it in a salad with smoked eel and with beef, but I usually I just find stuff and then I decide what to do. It's good to have inspiration around, especially at this time of year, so I try to find as many fun things as possible."

When we caught up with David Bazirgan, the new executive chef of Fifth Floor, he was hoisting up a giant bag of stinging nettles from Marin Roots Farm and explaining that he ingeniously uses them in place of spinach for a side dish of creamed nettles to accompany his new menu item, a dry aged New York steak also served with salt baked potatoes, roasted mushrooms, and red wine sauce. (He Thermo-mixes them so they don't sting.) Since this isn't an item eaten raw, picking them is a lot easier than other ingredients, but Bazirgan still suggests carefully looking through them for a vibrant, consistent color and no holes.

David Bazirgan of Fifth Floor selects chicories.

Bazirgan also uses color cues when picking various chicories at Marin Roots, selecting the most vibrant leaves; look for the whites as well as the colors to be bright. He is currently using various heirloom varieties of chicories in a salad, dressed raw with compressed persimmon, Pt. Reyes blue cheese, hazelnuts, pomegranate, vadouvan, and Chardonnay vinaigrette.

For Mark Richardson, the executive chef of Seasons Restaurant at Four Seasons Hotel San Francisco, Brussels sprouts are a winter produce staple.

"Look for the sprouts with tight-fitting leaves, with no browning or yellowing," he advised. "If you can find the sprouts still on the stalk, they will be the freshest."

His preparation for them is minimal: After blanching, he caramelizes the sprouts in a pan with some olive oil and then seasons with salt, fresh cracked pepper, and chili flakes. If you can't make it to Ferry Plaza, Richardson also suggests buying them at Mollie Stone's or Whole Foods locations.

Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Fly Trap examines white carrots.

Hoss Zaré of Zaré at Fly Trap truly shocked us when we met him to scout out white carrots. We gravitated towards the biggest ones, but Zaré said that was actually not the best strategy.

"The bigger ones are woodier and less juicy," he cautions. "Too small, and they're not going to have much flavor. You have to get the medium-sized ones so you get a lot of juice and flavor. Big ones are good for braising -- chop them up and caramelize them, but the smaller ones are juicier."

His favorite current use for white carrots is to lightly peel, blanch, pan roast until lightly caramelized, and then stack with slices of braised lamb tongue.

As we were about to leave Ferry Plaza full of new ideas and new produce specimens to experiment on, we grabbed Russell Jackson, chef/owner of Lafitte, just steps up the Embarcadero from Ferry Plaza. He was checking out the produce at Hamada Farms, the Kingburg grower whose citrus and pears seem to be the secret weapon of the chefs who shop at Ferry Plaza.

"Which kind of pear do I want today?" he asked.

"Niitaka!" came the answer from two people behind the counter, in unison. Jackson leapt over to the box and started smelling.

"Surface indication really isn't anything," he said, pointing out some visible flaws on a Niitaka. "It's really about the texture, firmness, and I'm really looking for that aromatic quality to it. You don't want something heavily bruised, but [some flaws] are just from tree hang, or where it faces the sun, or whether it's been scratched by a branch."

Right now, he's roasting pears to make a demi-glace for roasted sweetbreads and also using them raw in a salad with persimmons, chicories or radicchio, walnuts and Banyuls vinaigrette.

Where many households across the nation turn to canned goods in the winter, we have these staples and so much more ripe for the picking.

It's funny how things come full circle. My mother grew up in Glendale, CA, and when she went halfway across the country for college, my grandmother started sending her California-grown pomegranates in the mail. For four years, the U.S. Post Office carried round, ruby-skinned exotic fruits from California's sunny climes directly to the frozen tundra of Michigan.

Although I grew up in Minnesota with easy access to pomegranates (not entirely sure how that happened, since it was the 80s, but I'm pretty sure that my mother's persistence, combined with Byerly's superb produce stock, had something to do with it), my mother continued the Pomegranate Mail tradition when I was away at college in Michigan. The bulky brown boxes containing nothing but pomegranates confused my roommates and delighted me.

Now my husband and I are the Californians, so we carry on the family tradition and send pomegranates to Minnesota every Christmas.

After sniffing around various grocery stores and farmers' markets, we found that Sigona's Farmers Market in the Stanford Shopping Center carried the biggest poms with shiny, unblemished skin.

As a kid, the thing that fascinated me most about pomegranates came from Greek mythology. I thought it was cool that we got our seasonal divisions because Persephone absent-mindedly ate some seeds while taking an off-book vacation in the Underworld. I also thought it was beyond stupid that Persephone was dumb enough to eat the food of the dead, thus sentencing herself to spend half her life as goddess of the Underworld. However, in some versions, Hades is said to have tricked Persephone into eating said seeds, which isn't hard to imagine given his bald-faced abduction of her. I also liked how Persephone's enraged mother, Demeter, reacted to the vile kidnapping by shutting down the world in her own personal Amber Alert until Zeus finally got off his Olympic duff and intervened.

(Yes, in various analyses, the pomegranates seeds are really seeds of another sort in which Persephone was partaking, but I was a kid and not interested in that side of things.)

Pomegranates are included on the list of super-foods for their numerous health benefits and their seeds can be enjoyed in so many ways.

(Well, as long as you can get the little suckers out of their papery prisons -- and there are a ton of online videos out there showing you just how to do it. Pom Wonderful also offers grocery store containers of pomegranate seeds with the work already done, but I've noticed they can taste a bit fermented.)

You can add pomegranate seeds to salads, cocktails, meat sauces, and baked goods. Additionally, Jen Maiser rounded up the pomegranate recipes she found on various blogs last year.

Aside from my Lady in Red cocktail, my preferred pomegranate recipe is simply to toss juicy handfuls in my mouth and crunch down.

Enjoy delicious health!

Ever since I visited Hidden Villa, I've been thinking of CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). CSAs are programs where subscribers can receive a weekly box or basket of seasonal produce in exchange for either a share in a farm (usually paid upfront at the start of a season) or a weekly or monthly payment. These programs promote people building a relationship with a local farm so they can better understand where their food comes from and how it’s produced, while also getting the benefits of eating locally, seasonally, and organically. The box is pre-chosen by the farm and represents the most seasonally ripe produce of the week. You cannot choose what goes in it.

When we adopted a puppy last week, I decided it was time to try purchasing a CSA box. Before this week, I have always tried to visit our local farmers' market each Saturday. I love wandering through the market, seeing many of the same faces behind the stalls, and picking out what I want from the large selection we are so lucky to have in California. I love smelling the fruits, tasting the lettuces, and being part of the communal shopping effort. The problem was that sometimes I didn't quite make it there, and with a new puppy, I thought my chances of getting there any time soon were slim.

I chose to use Capay Organic as they offer a large box of fruits and vegetables that suited my needs to feed a family of four. They also deliver directly to homes so I don't have to go to a pick-up location, which some CSAs require. Although going to a pick-up location is a great way to get to know more about the farm you are supporting, I've felt strapped for time lately, so the home drop-off service was a huge selling point for me. Smaller boxes are also available, as are mostly fruit boxes. You can also sign up for anything from weekly to once-a-month deliveries. For a list of local CSAs and the services they provide see Jennifer Maiser’s excellent post previously published on BAB.

So, after a week with my box of veggies and fruits, I’ve come to realize that CSAs and Farmers' Markets offer different benefits and limitations. Following are three lists summing up my thoughts. These lists are in no way complete and I welcome any additions, disagreements, or thoughts you may have.

Why You Should Use Either a CSA or Buy at the Local Farmers' Market

1. Small family farms are becoming scarcer each year and federal farm subsidies mostly help only large corporate farmers. I believe strongly in keeping local farms solvent, and being part of a CSA or buying regularly from a farmers' market seem the best ways to do this.

2. The farming of varied local organic produce helps the local environment. For instance, honey bees are dying in record numbers, most likely because of the use of pesticides, which causes a neurological disorder in the bees, and because of agricultural “monocultures of single crops that create ‘floral deserts’ when not in bloom.” Local organic farms therefore help keep the honey bees (and birds, insects, etc.) happier and healthier.

3. Produce from both Farmers' Markets and CSAs are grown closer to home, and therefore less oil is used to get them to your table.

4. The fruits and vegetables are freshly picked and organic, with the amazing flavors that only food in peak season can have.

Why Use a CSA?

1. Having a box delivered to your front porch is incredibly convenient.

2. If you pick up your CSA box, you have the opportunity to get to know the people from the farm you are supporting and to be part of a larger food community in your area.

3. The produce is organic, seasonal, and locally produced.

4. Being limited to what the CSA delivers each week forces you to fully accept the idea of cooking with only seasonal produce, which can be fun and help you stretch your cooking repertoire.

5. You are assured of shopping locally each week, regardless of how busy you are or how convenient or inconvenient it is to get to the market.

6. CSAs often include something unique or fun in their weekly box that you might not find or think to buy at a farmer’s market. For instance, last week we got a bag of some of the most delicious salted pistachios I’ve ever had.

7. Many CSAs provide newsletters with recipes to subscribers, which are informative and can help you figure out how to be a better seasonal cook.

8. You are often encouraged to visit the actual farm, which brings you closer to the food you eat and can help you educate your children about what they eat. The farms often also have events that you can participate in throughout the year.

Why Shop at a Farmers' Market?

1. Many people, like me, want to control the quality of the produce they buy. It’s wonderful to smell a tomato, snap a bean, and taste a piece of lettuce before you purchase it.

2. It’s nice to get to choose the fruits and vegetables you want. Although I appreciate the idea that CSA providers are knowledgeable about what is ripe at any given moment, I don’t like being confined to whatever is in season only at that specific farm. For instance, when my box arrived last Friday without any strawberries or fava beans, I was disappointed. As fava beans and strawberries are in season right now, I really wanted to receive them. And when I saw that subscribers to the “mostly fruit” box got strawberries, but that my fruit and veggie box didn’t, I was a little dissatisfied.

3. The farmers' market is a great place to get my children excited about healthy food. Our trip always starts with a visit to the bounce house, which makes them excited to go there in the first place. After they take a few turns on the bouncy, they are then in great moods and primed to pick out our vegetables for the week, which in turn makes them excited to eat those vegetables later. I also like teaching them that they are part of a larger food community, and going to the farmer’s market helps them experience that community in person.

4. Going to the farmers' market is a fun event. Mine always has wonderful smells permeating the air, music from local performers, people of every type wandering around, and samples of produce that are perfectly in season to taste. You can feel more connected with the food you purchase and eat by getting to know the local vendors (who are often farmers). It is closer to how people have shopped for millennia than any grocery store you could ever walk into.

5. My farmers' market has non-produce vendors that I like to patronize. I often get my beef from the Prather Ranch stand, some cheese from the local cheese ladies, and sometimes fresh fish from the fish stand in addition to my produce. There are also cooked food stands and a small flower mart.

6. Sometimes I need more of a specific vegetable than is provided in a CSA box. For instance, if chard bunches are smaller one week, I can choose to buy two to suit the needs of my family table. If I want to bake a large blueberry tart, I can purchase two pints instead of one.

One nice way to get the benefits of both a CSA and your local farmers' market is to simply do both. You can often purchase a smaller weekly box from a CSA, or get one only once or twice a month and then supplement from your local farmers' market. I plan on doing this myself.

Btw: Interestingly, I see that there is currently a discussion about Farmers' Markets vs CSA on Chowhound.

As hard as I try to be a good diner, I try even harder to be a good customer. At my preferred grocery store, I wait my turn at the fish counter -- often giving way to customers who were definitely there after me -- I never go in the express lane with more than twelve items, and I have no problem bagging my own groceries if help isn't available.

However, I have come slap up against a quandary to which I see no obvious solution: dropped produce. As in, what the heck do you do when you accidentally knock or drop fruits or vegetables to the floor? Look, it happens. It might happen more often to me, because I'm a slight klutz, but I'm sure it happens to everyone. So, what do you do? If you're like me, you walk around with a dropped Brussels sprout clutched in your hand until you can finally bin it in the parking lot. Other times when the odd lime has bounced down as I was reaching for the grapefruits above it, I've nudged it out of the way of foot traffic and guiltily gone about my business.

Do you put the mushroom, avocado, orange, or whatever back on top of the pyramid of produce for some other unsuspecting customer to buy? Gross.

Do you leave it where it lies, passively expecting the produce guys and gals to clean up after you? Ech, I don't want to do that -- it's so rude and lazy.

Do you throw it out? Maybe, if there's an obvious garbage can for that purpose. But what if there isn't? Also, where do you draw the line? Because frankly, I don't know how I feel about trashing bigger things like oranges, avocados, or snowy heads of cauliflower.

Anxious to get to the bottom of this customer conundrum, I called around to a few discerning grocery stores in the Bay Area who stock high quality produce and carry an extensive, if not exclusive, organic produce selection.

Produce Guy #1

Him: "Throw it away."

Me: "Even if there aren't any trash cans?"

Him: "There are always trash cans."

Produce Guy #2

"Put it back. Unless it's organic or wet -- then you should give it to someone here to wash and they will put it back."

Produce Guy #3

"Don't put it back on the stand. Just tell one of the produce guys -- or anyone in the store, actually -- and they'll take care of it for you."

Produce Guy #4

Him: "PICK IT UP!"

Me: "Really? To leave for some other customer to come along and..."

Him: "Yeah! You should be WASHING it all anyway! All your meats, seafood, fruit, and vegetables -- EVERYTHING should be washed!"

Well, okay then! If I wasn't doing it before, I'll certainly be washing my stuff to excess now.

Overall, I didn't get much of a consensus -- what do you think customers should do?