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 I want to pretty much congratulate myself on calling it. The New Haven farmers’ market run by CitySeed was packed on Saturday. As crowded as it ever gets. I could have told you that – the weather and all.
Surprise – not much food. It’s always a bit of a disconnect when the weather and the growing season don’t match. Although I have to say, given the number of folks using greenhouses, hoop houses and such, there were a surprising number of folks with fresh greens. And the evergreens – eggs, meats, bakery stuff, milk and cheese.
But in the end, the market was about people – catching up, being seen, not being seen. Yup, Colin McEnroe was quietly winding his way through, large black dog in tow. And Patrick Horan of Waldingfield Farm had a lot more to talk about than food to sell. David Zemelsky of Starlight Gardens was out of arugula in a half an hour. And ficelles? Forget it – all eaten.
But it’s just the beginning.
A stew of food notes is what we’re talking about here.
 Wooster Square Market Jan. 16, 2010 The Diehards and Newcomers
CitySeed’s first New Haven market of the winter season (oh thank you for those 45-plus-degrees!) had a hefty showing of the stalwarts on Saturday: Stone Gardens still with Brussels sprouts and some pristine garlic; greens from Starlight and 2 Guys from Woodbridge; Waldingfield Farm had some lovely potatoes.
And of course there were the – essentially — non-seasonal guys: Trinity Farm with the full compliment of milk products and butter! They don’t always have that. Four-Mile-River was happily long on eggs and the various cheese guys had plenty.
 And there were some welcome newcomers: Riverbank Farm from Roxbury, an organic grower with a commercial kitchen. So aside from loads of lovely looking carrots and parsnips, they had a large selection of prepared products. Riverbank is no stranger to Westport and Fairfield and a bunch of other markets, but they’re new to Wooster Square.
And an interesting surprise – Skappo restaurant in New Haven, known for Umbrian home-style specialties, also came loaded with soups and such. It’s all going make venturing out on those cold future Saturdays a lot more worth it. Market runs first and third Saturdays of the month at Wooster Square, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Warming up in Fairfield
For all the thin-blooded types who have been griping (and believe, me, I’ve heard you) about the winter Fairfield market being outdoors – good news, it’s back indoors. The market is in the Warehouse at the Fairfield Theatre Company, 71 Sanford Street, but had been relegated to the parking lot these last really, really, really cold weeks while repairs were being finished. They’re finished. Market is Saturdays 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
And speaking of FTC – Play with Your Food is back for another season at FTC, as well as in Greenwich and Westport (where it began in 2003). $42 will buy you a catered lunch and readings of one-act plays plus discussion.
Changing Hands
We reported several weeks ago that Arturo Franco-Camacho of Bespoke/Sabor and formerly Roomba in New Haven had two new enterprises planned for Branford. A deal to sell Bespoke/Sabor was underway at the time and was completed as of the end of the year. Bespoke and Sabor have new owners, new chef – all with histories in the Max Group (and elsewhere). Check out the website for the particulars. End of an era for New Haven, but as we reported – the three food carts ain’t going anywhere.
 New year – new resolutions. OK a whole bunch of the same old resolutions. But they’re good resolutions. Downright laudable resolutions. Resolutions I absolutely believe in.
And an awful lot of them have to do with food. Granted, I already run in the semi-elite end of the eating/cooking spectrum, so some might argue I really don’t have much need to be whining about this stuff. I’m a doctor’s dream – no fast food, gobs of veggies, grow my own, daily fresh fruit smoothies, and I consider two of my biggest sins the regular use of commercial chicken broth and never having made my own pasta (OK – I’ve made gnocchi). Not too shabby.
It’s all perspective. The 2010 vows – even less meat than my already bare minimum. Smaller portions. A little less coffee – hey, I like it! I’d say less cheese – but it ain’t gonna happen. More care with food sources, sanitation, organics (not always necessary, really). More daring, more inventiveness. Try those recipes I typically toss because they looked too hard. Mess around with new flavors and ingredients. Steer clear of the same old fallbacks – even if they’re really, really, really good.
And make more of my own bread. This is a longstanding vow. Bread baking for me goes way back to teenager-dom. I believe oat bread was the first. It took me a long time to even agree to rapid rise yeast, and I have never, ever used or even considered using a bread machine.
To be sure – there is a ton of good bread that I can get my hands on regularly: Judies in New Haven (the original Peasant is still the best); CitySeed’s organic breads (which are made for them); Eli’s in New York (the “health” bread especially); the Kitchen at Billings Forge in Hartford (tough to get but worth the trip); Chestnut Fine Foods in New Haven (one of the few places with anadama). I mean, Chabaso really doesn’t even rate in my book. But at upwards of $5 a loaf — really I need to break the bread-buying habit.
Truth — bread just isn’t that tough. While it’s a lot of time from start to finish, it is NOT time consuming. Easy to do between other things. So Jan. 1, 2010 – I made bread. New beginnings = fresh bread. Went back to Cook’s Illustrated amazing ciabatta – made with zero fat — from the March-April 2009 issue, and finally tried it with whole wheat (2:1 white to whole wheat).
Here’s my tweaked version of their all-white recipe. It’s seems long, but it’s not. You can double it if you have a large and sturdy stand mixer and — betcha can’t eat just one.
(And while I’m resolving here – goal is for 2 posts a week: Saturdays and Wednesdays. But don’t hold me to it.)
Whole Wheat Ciabatta
Biga
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon rapid-rise yeast
½ cup water at room temperature
In large stand mixer bowl, combine all ingredients and stir with wooden spoon until mass is uniform, about 1 minute. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature at least 8 hours or up to 24. I highly recommend closer to 24.
Dough
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon rapid-rise yeast
1½ teaspoons salt
1 cup water at room temperature mixed with
2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
Add all ingredients to biga. Using mixer with paddle attachment, mix on low about 5 minutes until mass is uniform and pulls away from bowl. Remove dough from paddle. Replace paddle with dough hook and mix on medium/low about 10 minutes until dough is smooth. It will be very sticky. Leave in bowl covered tightly with plastic wrap until doubled, about 1 hour. If you double the recipe, this will take a bit longer.
Rub large rubber spatula blade with a very thin film of canola oil. Using spatula, lift ¼ of dough from edge of bowl and fold inward. Turn bowl 90 degrees and repeat. Do this a total of 8 times – 2 full turns of bowl. Cover with plastic, let rise 30 minutes. Repeat folding process and let rise another 30 minutes.
Place dough on generously floured board. Cut in half without punching it down. Using fingers, spread each piece into about a 12-by-6-inch rectangle. Fold short ends toward center, overlapping like a business letter. Place seam-side down on large piece of parchment. Breads will be about 7-by-5-inches. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit 30 minutes.
 While resting, place pizza or baking stone on rack in bottom third of oven. Preheat to 425 degrees. After 30 minutes, use fingertips to gently poke surface of each bread into a 10-by-6-inch rectangle. Carefully place parchment with breads on hot pizza stone. Spray breads with water. Spray 2 more times during first 5 minutes of baking. Bake a total of 30-35 minutes. Breads should be nicely browned and crusty outside.
 November 2, 2009. Really!! Sometimes even life intrudes on blogging — and the regular public dissemination of thought processes just has to be set aside. Which doesn’t mean the thought processes go away – just their dissemination.
So with leaves just about down, chilly mornings de rigueur, and the clock pushed back to where it belongs I am inclined to observe … the end of summer, but not quite. You see raspberries are still growing in my backyard and in need of picking every day or so in a large – yes large — container. My freezer is packed with bags of them for use all winter (along with local peaches, blueberries and strawberries), but in the meantime I am enjoying the last fresh ones. Or at least I keep thinking they will be the last. After a summer of rain, cold and other nasty stuff, the raspberry deluge is unexpected and delightful, if full of false hope.
Around me the rest of summer’s fresh food has all but disappeared. The peppers are dwindling at the market. Lettuces and greens are shrinking. Winter squashes, turnips, carrots and potatoes are taking over. “Order your Thanksgiving turkey” – the signs say. My dairy vendor began sell eggnog two weeks ago. I am at once dismayed – but enjoying it immensely.
But all is not lost on the fresh front, as this winter will boast an ever-lengthening list of farmers’ markets. True, they’re always a little produce-starved, but better than nothing. You can check out an incomplete list here on the Connecticut Department of Agriculture website. BUT be sure to add these omissions:
New Haven: CitySeed’s Wooster Square Market runs weekly on Saturdays 9 a.m.-1 p.m. through Dec. 19. Then beginning on Jan. 16, it runs the first and third Saturday of the month 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Yes fans – twice a month this year instead of only once.
Fairfield: Saturdays, 10 a.m.–2 p.m. weekly through May 16. Indoors at the Fairfield Theatre Company, 70 Sanford Street
(across from the
train station). This market is now in it’s third year with many of the premium suppliers from the Westport summer market.
And in the world of fresh local produce, for those of you who are closer to New York State than most of Connecticut – click here to learn about New York State potatoes developed by Cornell. You may like Yukon Golds, but Cornell potatoes are designed specifically to grow in these environs.
And ask your growers – many Connecticut farmers are planting Adirondack Reds and Blues.
 CitySeed workers pack bags of fresh local produce for low income seniors. Locally grown food may be all the rage these days – but that’s if you can afford it. You’ll pay premium prices for those local organic tomatoes, specialty greens and a host of other things which means there’s a whole socio-economic group that is being priced out of the local food movement. Some have gone so far as to label the local food phenom elitist.
But at least a couple of organizations in Connecticut have taken on the mission of getting fresh local food to folks who couldn’t otherwise afford it or even get to it. Hear my whole story here on WSHU and see photos.
 Not quite seismic, but definitely a shift underway at CitySeed in New Haven, Connecticut’s premier farmers’ market system. It’s celebrating its fifth anniversary this summer and recently moved into new offices, but it is also bidding a temporary goodbye to its founding executive director Jennifer McTiernan.
McTiernan and family are headed to Berkeley, Calif. – land of Alice Waters and fresh citrus in March — where McTiernan’s husband, an architecture professor at Wesleyan, is spending a sabbatical year as a visiting professor at UC Berkeley.
It may be concerning news for locavores in the New Haven area, but totally fitting as far as McTiernan is concerned. “Berkeley is where CitySeed really began,” she said. The seed, as it were.
 Jennifer McTiernan on right In the summer of 2002 McTiernan, who was an admissions officer at Yale at the time but had already been bitten by the local food bug, wound up apprenticing at Alice’s place — Chez Panisse. “When I came back to New Haven, the one question in my mind was ‘what am I gonna eat now?’” McTiernan said. A very worthy question given the Tao of Alice – eat what’s around you when it’s in season. Of course you can get away with that big-time in California, but even now with our enlightenment, in the winter-prone northeast it can be a little problematic. “It took a year-and-a-half to answer that question.”
The answer – which McTiernan devised with three other people – was an idea for a farmers’ market at Wooster Square and a non-profit entity – CitySeed – to run it.
 Wooster Square farmers' market They started both in 2004, followed by three more weekly markets in 2005. And now CitySeed weekly brings more than 45 Connecticut farms and producers to the markets.
But CitySeed has become more than just — let’s face it – fresh food for folks who can afford it. More uniquely than most other markets – it has developed as its mission a whole commitment to bringing fresh food to the underserved population that either can’t normally get it or can’t afford it.
To that end there is a whole range of educational and service programs that delivers fresh produce to economically challenged people, runs food and farm education programs for pre-scholars, has been a model for allowing WIC and Food Stamp use at markets, and generally has created a market system paradigm that other communities in the state are now trying to emulate.
“People say to me: ‘you changed what people eat in New Haven,’” McTiernan said. And I say: ‘really?’ And they’ll say ‘yes,’” McTiernan almost giggles.
“Honestly, I think I’ll have a deeper appreciation and understanding for the kind of work we’re engaged in with CitySeed once I get some distance from it.”
Erin Wirpsa
Eisenberg is already on board as executive director – though she was introduced with pizza in the office parking lot and an open house August 3.
 CitySeed offices McTiernan said it would be good to have a fresh set of eyes and someone with different skills in the position.
And looking back on the five years during which CitySeed went from a startup to an established organization and the markets themselves gained recognition as among the nation’s best, McTiernan said that what really strikes her is she’s helped make people feel more connected to food and where it comes from.
“Over the past five years the culture of eating in New Haven has changed — everything from farmers’ markets to school foods,” she said. “I feel like the biggest lesson I can take from CitySeed is this powerful idea that a community can make change.”
The official count is 123, but I wouldn’t hold the Agriculture Department to that. They might have missed a farmers’ market or two. No matter how you count them, there are a lot.
Jeez, there are only 169 cities and towns in the state.
All of which begs the question — are we at critical mass yet? I mean how many farmers’ markets can the state handle?
“Well Rick thinks that every year,” said Ag Department marketing representative Linda Piotrowicz of her fellow rep Rick Macsuga. “It’s anybody guess. Rick has said many time he thought we were maxed out many years ago and we still get more every year.”
It might be the family thing Piotrowicz surmised – markets with activities, themes, entertainment, ways to make a day of it. Sunday markets also seem to have some kind of magic to them – scooping up vendors who are otherwise tapped out on the more popular market days like Saturdays and Fridays.
Coventry, which opened last year, started the trend attracting record crowds. It has activities at each market – this week is Frugal Frolic – doing more with less. There are craft vendors and it’s all on the grounds of the Hale Homestead.
“You get people to make a day of it, or part of a day,” Piotrowicz said.
New and notable this year:
 Hill-Stead Farmers' Market July 12. Hill-Stead: Sundays on the grounds of the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington. With guest vendors and activities, uber-vendors like Wave Hill and Bantam breads, and George Hall farms. They also snagged first-time vendor Tulmeadow Farm – which of course is known for its ice cream, and it’s now the only place to get Urban Oaks products other than at their New Britain farm. Market manager Peggy Hall said about 1,100 people showed up for the first market July 12. “All the stars were aligned,” she said.
Chester: Sundays, on that cute strip of downtown. Features music and events and many of the top market vendors in the state. In an effort to get top quality meats and seafood, market manager Nancy Freeborn picks up scallops from Stonington Seafood harvester, making the market one of the few places you can get Bomster scallops other than at their dockside facility in Stonington. And they’re also picking up meats from Soeltl Farm in Salem. “We just liked the idea of Sunday being a quieter day,” Freeborn said.
Bozrah: Friday evenings at Maples Farm Park. Mostly vendors from the immediate area.
Wethersfield: Thursday evenings in Historic Wethersfield.
It’s looking like a few of these have the momentum to join the ranks of the big boys.
 New Haven Farmers' Market, Wooster Square. Those would be markets like New Haven run by the non-profit CitySeed. These are some of the largest markets in the state, which through go to great lengths to help lower income people shop there.
Westport got so popular it’s had to move this year from the parking lot of the Westport Country Playhouse to the parking lot adjacent to the Woman’s Club. There are usually cooking demonstrations and other features.
 Litchfield Farm Fresh Market, July 4. The Litchfield Hills Farm Fresh Market has moved from Friday to Saturday this year and is packed with chef demos, kids activities, and all manner of entertainment.
If none of these are convenient, interesting, or fill-in-the-blank, there’s now a county-by-county farmer’s market guide the Connecticut Department of Agriculture website under publications. Or use the Buy CT Grown link here or on this website for a fully interactive way to figure out how and where and when to buy fresh anything in Connecticut.
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I want to pretty much congratulate myself on calling it. The New Haven farmers’ market run by CitySeed was packed on Saturday. As crowded as it ever gets. I could have told you that – the weather and all.
