I’m breaking up with my bank. Now, don’t think it’s anything that she did, lord knows she’s been good to me. 24 hour customer service, flashy website, free bill pay, even an iphone app! You really couldn’t ask for more. Sam, my banker at 16th/mission, is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. Always takes care of fees for me, and helps me out whenever I visit. Every time I walk into that venerable institution I’m greeted with a smile.

The problem is, we don’t agree on one thing, what they’re doing with my money.  Although they’re really just holding it for me, the reality is that they use it more often than I do. Every hard won dollar I make, from a dinner, created with 14 hour days of planning, prepping, foraging, and cooking, they invest in for profit detention centers. For a wild food walk, whose very purpose is to help people get more connected with their local environment, to know what is edible around them, they invest that money in…I don’t even know. I had to google that first example, because the reality is that I have no idea where my money goes.

I spend my life focused about food. Where I get that food, how I cook it, what I think about it, and at the core of those thoughts is a sincere belief that local food is better food. It’s better for many reasons that if you’re reading this post you probably already agree with, but I think one of the most important reasons is that through a robust local food system, we can create a robust local economy. An economy of people doing something they love, and helping each other out along the way. That’s what its all about. That’s what local is about. That’s what the Underground Market is about. It’s the center of all the ideas I have.

It’s time we realize that food isn’t the only area that we need to focus on. If we want to build something real and lasting, we need to look at who holds our money, and what they’re doing with it. Sure, convenience is nice, but at least for me, I can’t ignore the rest of it anymore.

Today is Bank Transfer Day. Join millions from around the country and transfer your money out of global banks and into local credit unions, run by locals, for locals. I put my money in San Francisco Federal Credit Union, but here are some links to a couple others to peruse.

SF Fire Credit Union

Patelco Credit Union

Provident Credit Union

If you want to take it one step further, there is going to be a protest to support Bank Transfer Day today (Saturday), at Justin Herman Plaza (right across from the ferry building) at 3pm. Hope to see you there. If you checked out the protest or transferred your money, let us know in the comments section or on twitter.

I recently downloaded The French Chef. The cooking show Julia Child created.  I know, it’s a bit cliché to talk about Julia Child, but up until this week, I’d never actually seen an episode of one of her shows. I’d seen clips, and the Saturday night live spoof, but never one from beginning to end.

They have names like “The Potato Show”, and the “The omelette Show”, where she’ll spend 30 minutes going over 5 or 6 ways to cook something specific. What’s really interesting is that it almost feels like she’s introducing these things for the first time. Which she probably was. Teaching Americans how to cook cook lobster or pan flip eggs.

Beyond the food, the production of the show is also great. No cuts, almost nothing pre-prepared, she just plops the food down on the plate, without much if any concern for presentation.  She drops things, she loses her glasses, says things constantly like “If no one is watching, you can do…..”.  It feels so much more real than an episode of Rachel Ray, and really makes me wish shows were more like that now.  It seems cooking shows now work so hard to be perfect, that it becomes more of a voyeuristic exercise than an educational one. Sure, the food looks good, and they never make any mistakes, but I think people are intimidated by that. Flaws are what connect you to a person, bring them down to earth.  I was going to write out one of her recipes, but it wouldn’t do the video justice. Enjoy:

Hello my friends from the internet ether.  I haven’t written for a while, and I wanted to give an update of the goings on at forageSF:

1. I’ve been talking to Hank Shaw, a guy who writes a pretty amazing blog called Hunter, Angler, Gardner,Cook, about collaborating on a dinner. We’re going to take 20 or so people out on a fishing boat (already pretty exciting), and then invite them to a Wild Kitchen dinner made with the catch. I’ve been following his blog for about a year now, and was really excited when I got the email from him. It will be partly an event to promote his new book Hunt, Gather, Cook, which I myself have on pre-order. If you’re interested in cooking, hunting, foraging or fishing, his blog is one to get in the google reader, really great stuff, with great pictures.  The dinner is planned for July, and we’ll be opening up tickets for sale sometime in May, so hope you’ll join us.

2. I finally sent out my own book proposal for a book on The Wild Kitchen, with recipes, stories, pictures, and a bit of food politics (never imagined just writing the proposal of what a book will be could take so long). I had a ton of help from my friend Will Schrom, who reads book proposals for a living, so I think it turned out pretty well. Sent it off to agents a couple days a ago, and already heard back from a couple!

3. I’m going hunting! My very first real boar hunt is this weekend down in Southern CA.  I am very excited, got the gun all sighted in (means I practiced at the range to get the scope to read accurately at 100 yards) with lead free bullets, got my pig tag, and huge knife.  I’m ready. This time next week, I will have become a man.  I’m planning on having a huge boar roast if I get one, so maybe Ill see you there.

4. Hiring: We got a ton of great applications for the Underground Market manager job, so Ive been sifting through those, trying to decide who to interview. Hiring’s hard, and everyone I talk to has a different take on how to do it. Ive settled on about 20 phone interviews, followed by 8 in person interviews. I’m excited about the people I’m interviewing, so probably the hardest part will be choosing who to hire.

5. Got a couple events coming up . Next Wild Kitchen dinners are the 15th, 16th, and the next market is the 23rd, so planning on getting out and doing some foraging soon. I really wanted to include wild mussels on the menu for this dinner, but at the last minute a shellfish quarantine was issued, so we’re going with herring (which I think might actually be more delicious).

6. Been talking with Slow Money, an org whoes goal is to have 1 million people invest 1 percent of their income in sustainable food projects within a decade.  They are having an event in a couple months where we may incorporate an Underground Market.  It’s a really interesting organization, with some great ideas about re-thinking the of a “successful” investment.  There are an amazing amount of people interested in starting sustainable food businesses, so a group that can connect them with the money they need to get going definitely has my support.

7.Thinking about shooting a cooking show, more youtube than Travel Channel, so look out for that on the site in the next couple months.

Thanks for reading, and come say hi if you see me at a dinner or the market.

Iso

Big day today. I just signed a lease on my first office.  Never thought I’d be so excited to have one, but there is something to be said for moving out of cafes, and into a space that is yours. Things tend to get lost when you dont have a central place.  Also signing the lease on my apartment in the Haight tonight! Spending most of the rest of the day planning my menu for the next wild kitchen in April.  Just looked at the weather, and its supposed to be a nice month, but it will also have cold nights (as always in SF), so Im going for a mix of hearty warming dishes, and light spring fare.

Iso

Hello. Chicago was good. Mainly because I had never really been there before. That sounds negative but isn’t. I would have liked more time in Chicago, to really check it out. I spent most of my time foraging (more on that later) and at the taste of Chicago. The Taste is a festival put on for the last 30 years in Chicago that means to….Im not honestly sure what it means to do. It certainly doesn’t mean to show the people of Chicago anything interesting about food. Think 40 vendors all selling the leftovers from the Des Moines county fair, and you get an idea of the culinary virtue that is The Taste.  Perhaps unfair ( I did have grilled turkey ribs that weren’t too bad), but pretty apt. Its interesting to me that you would put on an event focused on food, and have so little diversity. Or maybe I’ve just become a food snob in these past years. Ok, onto the interesting stuff….

There were an amazing amount of new (to me) plants in Chicago’s parks.  I grew up in VT, so many of the plants ( like milkweed, pictured here)

you can eat the unopened flower buds like broccoli,

It was great to walk around with Sunny, that I saw in Chicago we had back home, but this time I saw them with new eyes.  I really only started foraging when I got to SF, so it was really enlightening to learn from Sunny who’s knowledge of wild foods definitely surpasses my own (Sunny Savage has a TV show on the Veria network about wild food. She’s the reason I was in Chicago, to help her forage and cook). Mine is very SF specific, so I was lost in this new environment.

Overall a good trip, Im in NYC now (where it is 96 degrees,hence the “hell” in the title), but will be back in SF on the 7th. We just posted some new wild food walks on foragesf.com, and look out for an email about some upcoming dinners we’re doing mid July.

Also….we’re starting the CSF back up! A friend of mine, Kevin Feinstein, who is going to be managing the workings of it in the months to come, so look out for an email about that too.

Well I’m off to meet Ava Chin, a NYC based forager, who writes a column for the NY times.

Also….Just got interviewed for a Times magazine article, so look out for that! Very Exciting. Ok, enough talk.

Today was my first day in Chicago. Didn’t sleep last night in the hopes of actually making it onto a 6am flight out of SFO, so it was a bit of a long day. Im here for 4 days to help out Sunny Savage, a forager who has a TV show that is in post production. Shes on a publicity tour at the moment, and asked me to come along to help her cook/forage.  We’d actually never met before I got into today at noon, which was a bit random I suppose, but everything seems to be working out so far.

We spent most of the day today foraging for ingredients for Sunnys presentation tomorrow and Saturday at the taste of chicago. It was a lot of fun seeing the diversity of plants out here, and I am amazed at how few I recognized.  The change in climate changes things in really big ways, and all the standbys, wild radish, nettle, etc…were no where to be seen. We did find some good stuff though. The one I was most excited about was wild ginger. (which we actually have in SF, but I had never foraged it myself before):

Another plant that we have around SF, but I’ve never been sure of the identification is Lambs Quarters. You see plants that are very similar everywhere in the Bay Area, but many of them are poisonous, so its very important to have a proper ID on this plant. I’m told that it tastes like spinach (full disclosure, my pics weren’t very good for this plant, so I lifted this online:

Notice the silver sheen

Notice the shallow viens and silver/white sheen, those are both defining characteristics of lambs quarters. Be careful though, because it looks very close to some very poisonous look alikes. Another really cool plant we found today that I have definitely never seen in SF is nodding onion (below).  I imagine the name derives from the “nod” of the top, for some reason it reminds me of swans. The bulb is really a lot closer to green garlic than onion, really great plant. Well….thats it for today. Ill be here for the next couple days, hopefully finding some new plants. Tomorrow Sunny is giving a presentation at the taste of chicago main stage, should be fun, cooking and what have you.

swan hea

around the block

The first and most obvious answer to this question is yes.  If one throws an event that draws more people than your space can fit, you move up. Bigger is of course better, and in all things, we want to be as big as we can get. Right? I’m not so sure.

It’s a question I get a lot. People tell me that we need a bigger space, and the running joke seems to be that we should move it to the Cow Palace. Its definitely something we think about not the Cow Palace – when I see the hour and half wait to get in, get angry emails from customers  (actually just got my first one a couple days ago), and patiently explain to vendors for the 20th time that in fact we can’t let anyone else in at the moment, lest we all die fiery deaths as martyrs for the local food movement (translation: we’ve reached fire code capacity).

We’ve done our best to make the market accessible to as many people as possible.  We started this past December in a small Victorian in the Mission (seven vendors and 150 customers), and moved to a warehouse on Capp St. (30 vendors and 700 customers)— both still not big enough.  When we approached SomArts I thought that was it. There was no way we could overfill that space. This of course hasn’t proven true.

The space we have now, SomArts, is in the range of 5000  feet. That’s 35ft wide, and 144 feet long. It’s a large space by any measure.

We pay several thousand dollars to rent SomArts for a night and by SF standards, that’s very cheap. The next space up in size is about $10,000. That’s before shelling out for a cleaning staff, security, insurance, alcohol license, the band, equipment, and all the other less obvious costs that go into creating an event for 2,000 people.  I don’t say this to complain, but to set the stage for a fact: If we got a bigger space, we would be forced to raise the vendor fees. As it is, the vendor fees don’t cover the cost of the space, which is why you paid $2 to get in this month. In May, we lost money on the market because the event was free. We don’t need to make a killing, but a market that loses money every month will not be around very long.

“But wait,” you say, “a bigger space would mean more people, more people equals more money, so no need to charge the vendors more.” Not necessarily. A larger space would definitely let more people enter at the same time, but the number of people coming in would not be guaranteed to go up by the amount we would need to make it worth the costs.

The current vendor fee is $50, a very low bar for entry into a commercial sales space like ours, but for some of our vendors it’s a stretch to pay that cost. Our vendors are making products that they are passionate about, but are also very expensive to produce. The profit margins are already slim, and it wouldn’t feel right to charge the $100-$300 per stall that a larger space would require.

I like the size it is. The market feels more like a big party, rather than a vast trade show. I like that we can fit upwards of 40 vendors inside and still have room for a couple hundred people, while at the same time being able to see the whole space in one sweep.

I like SomArts. We have a good deal of freedom at SomArts and the people who work there. They are very supportive of our ideas, and seem to genuinely want to make things work for us. No one working on the market has much professional event organizing experience; there are a million random things to think about when planning a market, so getting some help along the way is key. A larger commercial space probably would not offer that kind of support.

I like the idea that in creating a market for the SF food community to come to together, we are at the same time supporting a venerable SF non-profit event and art space. A space that hosts the kind of events that make SF what it is. They go out of their way to court and support burgeoning orgs (like ours) that would otherwise not be able to afford such a professional space, and for that they deserve our support. Every person that walks through their door helps them to get funding from grants as well as the city, so 2,000 people coming through each month at our market gives them some real leverage.

People do have to wait. I don’t feel good about it (although most people I talk to seem pretty happy with the whole experience, meeting fellow food obsessives in line is always fun). It’s great that people come out to show so much support, and ideally we wouldn’t make them wait so long to show that support.  Note: If you want to miss the lines, come during the day next month, there will be tons of room.

Next months SF Underground Market will again be at SomArts on July 24th(this time on a weekend!).  Although there is often a wait at night (hint: for a more relaxed time, come during the day).  I want to say that I really do appreciate that people wait as long as they do. That kind of support shows the vendors that there is a market for what they make, and encourages them to keep getting better at what they do.  I do believe that bigger is not always better, and there is a really intimate vibe now that I feel like we may lose if we expand. This doesn’t mean it will always be there, but for the time being we’re staying put.  Let me know what you think. You think we should move? Did you see anything at the last market that needs changing? Thanks for reading, and thanks for coming, see you all next month!

Thanks,

Iso

photo by Robin Jolin: robinjolin.com