assorted local food news

I was amused reading this week's food news and ads in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. It seems Father's Day is a platform for selling more beef. Buy Dad this raw T-Bone or New York Steak - or as one ad phrased it: "serve a meal fit for a king with a juicy caveman steak..." Stereotypes persist; and I hope the Geico guys don't hear about it.

Since Memorial Day weekend I have been getting around to farmers' markets. This evening it was Cotati's. Very disappointing in the food and produce department. Two stands with a very few vegetables - mostly tired looking cool weather vegetables, though one had squash blossoms, a sign of things to come. Both had strawberries. There was also local (Sebastopol) honey and Spring Hill cheese.

Whew - the prices on those cheeses. $12 a pound for stuff that wasn't even aged.

This reminds me that in Wednesday's paper there was a report that the owner of Spring Hill will be reopening the old Petaluma creamery. Apparently there aren't enough facilities to process milk produced locally - some of it goes to the Valley for processing - so this is in part an attempt to keep local dairies in business. The plan is to produce cream, dried skim milk, and condensed skim milk, and eventually more high end cheese. This will also provide another US source of dry milk for manufactured foods. It's certainly added to a lot of confected things, and much of what is is imported. This makes me wonder - will the affluent slow foodies eat the artisan cheese, and the poor the made-up foods enriched with dry milk? Joe Matos has locally crafted cheese at $7 a pound - couldn't we have more honest cheese at a fair price?

The Cotati Farmers' Market also had a couple of stone fruit sellers from the valley. $2.50 a pound for most of it (except $8 a pound for cherries and no that is not a typo - it's eight), but I had already picked up my box of apricots at $17 for 24 lbs. On to preserving, canning, and chutneying.