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Occasional Saturday Market

The Santa Rosa Farmers market welcomes the Sonoma County Meat Buying Club. All of the Meat Buying Club producers raise their animals within a 25 mile radius of Sonoma County and do not use any hormones or antibiotics.

The Sonoma County Meat Buying Club is a collaborative effort between US Cooperative Extention Farm Advisor Stephanie Larson and local meat producers. Learn more from their website

Never mind the calendar, summer is officially here when the first corn comes to the Santa Rosa Farmers Market.

Corn, early girl tomatoes and squash

Seasonal
Saturday Market

The Santa Rosa Farmers Market will be open on July 4th. The easiest 4th of July picnic ever is available at the market from corn, tomatoes, desserts and locally produced meats from the Meat Club, a new vendor at the market. Don’t feel like cooking at all? There are plenty of options from Mi Fiesta’s wonderful tamales to Mirella’s fresh pastas.

Bring your out of town guests for a great way to kick of your July 4th celebration.

Via BiteClub

In conjunction with Local Harvest, Care2 is giving away $5000 to a top local food market based on votes. Take a second and vote for Santa Rosa, Sebastopol, Windsor or Healdsburg — whatever your favorite happens to be. (Read my April article on the markets). And feel happy inside.

Vote Here

Santa Rosa Farmers Market Vendors with squash blossoms.
Bernier Farm, Cresent Moon and Ortiz Bros. all had beautiful squash blossoms.

“Squash blossoms are edible raw or they can be incorporated into a variety of recipes. But once you’ve clipped them out of your garden or brought them back from the farmers market, don’t tarry long. “Be warned,” writes Kate Heyhoe, of Kate’s Global Kitchen. “Squash blossoms live about as long as mayflies—at worst a few hours, at best a few days, and only in ideal conditions.” Heyhoe has stored them successfully for as long as two days, “but not without rinsing them, letting them air dry on the kitchen counter, then wrapping them in paper towels, carefully nesting them in a sealed plastic storage container, and refrigerating them in the crisper at a precise controlled 34 degrees.” This site has five recipes.

From Chez Panisse

Paula Downing, Santa Rosa Market Manager, is part of a panel following the opening of Food Inc at the Rialto, Friday June 19th. Please visit the website for additional information.

Bite Club of the Press Democrat has full information on the panel

Food Inc.’s website had a trailer and additional information about the film produced by the same folks who brought us The Al Gore film The Inconvenient Truth.

“If what we eat is produced in inhumane, unethical ways that strip the food of its nutrition, how does it then nourish our bodies and souls?
Food Inc. rends the veil of secrecy that hides the ugly part of America’s food supply from consumers. It’s like that cliche, “You don’t want to see how sausages are made..” Or your chicken sandwiches, or beef. Or anything made with corn–which is just about everything we consume.
Food Inc. shows how our food is the end product of a highly mechanized system, where workers are expendable, where 80% of the production of our meat is in the hands of four major companies, where chicken farmers are simply sharecroppers raising leased chicks for slaughter, where the rise of eColi can be directly traced to poor handling of meat and the overfeeding of animals with corn.”

“There are benefits to the current system; as Pollan points out , Americans spend less than nine percent of their income on food — less than any other people in history. But, he adds, the benefits have come “at an exorbitant cost, because the system depends on cheap fossil fuel to work. The system depends antibiotics to work. The system depends on abuse animals to work. And if people want to pay those costs for cheap food, that’s great, but let’s tell them about the costs first.”

Food Inc can help to raise awareness but it is up to each of us to make our food dollars work to change the system to provide better, safer food for all of us.
Farmers markets are a key ingredient in achieving that goal.

Pepe Farm has organically grown tomatoes from their farm on the outskirts of Santa Rosa

Shoppers at the Santa Rosa Farmers Market can get tomatoes that taste like tomatoes all year round thanks to Parsons Homegrown Tomatoes.

Big beefsteak tomatoes are also available from Schletewitz.

Rhodes Family Farm and The Peach Farm are bringing a wide variety of tomatoes to market, Cascade, early girls and heirloom tomatoes.

It’s not too late to plant tomatoes. You can harvest tomatoes into November. Plants are still available from Triple T Ranch and Farm, Skyview Nursery, Nature’s Spirit Garden and Ma and Pa’s Garden.

You can also get clever “tomato teepees” to support your tomato plants

Bob Gekas cooks up the best recipes for traditional Greek souvlaki and baklava.
Saturday Market

Have the ultimate souvlaki at your next event !

Ultimatesouvlaki@gmail.com

DeSantis Farms offers many unusual varieties of citrus during the course of the year including Buddah’s Hand but that’s not all. This week sour grapes, perfect for pickling, green almonds and three kinds of figs.