Bounty

Farmers' Markets.

One of the best things about living in the Bay Area is the great number of them in all nine counties. Here in Silicon Valley, we have quite a few that are open one day a week year-round. In summertime, the number of markets swells, and even more neighborhoods get their own once-a-week treats.

I went to Sunnyvale's earlier, after getting a haircut. My problem is that I always want to buy a little bit of almost everything, but I was a good boy this time around.


Our loot:

• organic red onions
• organic white onions
• white nectarines (incredibly sweet)
• white peaches
  
• smoked duck breast
• duck and peppercorn mousse (I wanted foie gras mousse but they were out)
• blackberries (a little bit tart, but very plump and juicy)
  
• chicken and garlic sausages (incredibly good, highly addictive)

What's all this food for, you ask?

Bill has already used some of the red onions and smoked duck breast to make pizza, along with some manchego cheese. The blackberry samples at the market were very sweet, but the ones I got weren't. So I turned them into jam when I got home. I'm going to make a cobbler or crumble with the peaches. The mousse will be for me and me alone, to enjoy with crackers and maybe some sauvignon blanc. The sausages and nectarines are for munching.

Yum. It's no wonder I'm fat.

Disclaimer: The wine and Manila mangoes were from Whole Foods.

Great Day In the Morning

We have mangosteens!

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord in Heaven! We have mangosteens!

I read a post on MarketManila sometime ago, which mentioned the fact that mangosteens had become available in the United States. I got excited then, but I pretty quickly forgot about it and moved on to other amusements. (Hello, ADD.)

Anyway, Bill recently found an online store that sells them. Apparently, there are two legal sources of mangosteens that are available in the US: Thailand (irradiated ones) and Puerto Rico. Yes, Puerto Rico. I guess some enterprising entrepreneur figured out that the climate in that Caribbean territory of ours mimics that of Southeast Asia pretty closely.

We received our shipment day before yesterday (8 smallish fruit for $34.99 plus shipping - FedEx 2-day required). So, yeah, it's very expensive, but well worth it for something so good. It was an excellent coming-home treat after our Tahoe trip.

We're eating them s-l-o-w-l-y. Only two mangosteens a day. Must savor the flavor.

I'm too lazy to take pictures, but trust me when I say they look really good both inside and out. Deep brown-violet outside, pearly white inside. No bruises on the "meat" whatsoever.

Mangosteen! Mangosteen!

Nuestro Perdido Eden... ¿Tienes Hambre?

A couple of weeks ago we were at Whole Foods to buy ingredients for dinner that night. Meat, vegetables, some spices, manchego from Spain, provolone from Italy, and a bottle of California wine. After paying, I looked at my receipt, winced, and said, "Damn! Food's getting really expensive! Pretty soon we're going to have to start food shopping at Wal-Mart! THE HORROR!"

Then we had a good laugh.

...fast-forward to this evening...

A clip on the evening news talked about the rising prices of food, especially now that huge swaths of the mid-west and plains states are under water from severe flooding. Acre upon acre of corn and soybean farms lie ruined by flood waters.

Apparently, the United States produces over 50% of the world's corn, and over 25% of the world's soybeans. The sudden drop in corn and soybean supply, coupled with the diversion of hundreds of billions of pounds of corn into ethanol production, puts extreme pressure on food prices. This is especially true because most of the world's meat is now obtained from grain-fed livestock.

(And by the way, in terms of energy efficiency, corn ethanol sucks. Bigtime. But the US government is too stupid to understand facts and figures and too beholden to the powerful corn lobby to acknowledge it. So now peasants in Mexico can't afford tortillas.)

We have a perfect storm: the bio-fuel craze sweeping North America, Europe, and Brazil, floods in the mid-west, drought in California, rising prosperity (and therefore food demand) in China and the Indian sub-continent, and insanely high prices for the fuel needed to transport food to all corners of the world.

Eureka moment: Aha! That's why shopping at Whole Foods is beginning to hurt my wallet!

Then came the reality check: comparative statistics.

According to the news clip, the average American household now spends 10% of its income on food. In contrast, the average household in the Philippines spends 55% of its income on food. Fifty-five percent! That was a real shock.

I mean, I always knew that food was a lot more expensive in the Philippines, especially when calculated as a percentage of income. I just had no idea it was that much more expensive.

Kawawa naman talaga ang Pilipinas. I sometimes wish I could just wave a magic wand and fix the ills of the Philippines. All that poverty is heartbreaking. Ninety million people, the vast majority of whom are poor.

So, I won't whine anymore about not being able to shop at Whole Foods as much. I will try to keep my complaints about food prices to a minimum. I'll remain thankful that I live and work here in the United States, and that I have access to some of the cheapest food on earth.

*But I will never, ever, do any of my shopping at Wal-Mart. tee hee