Do we all have our spinach stories this week? I know I have at least three and the suspicion the real story won't be over until we get our Urban Gardens and a new Farmers Market on Water Street...fresh, local, organic produce just in time for peak oil prices to set in!
First spinach story, after the idea dawns that the bags in the frig have to be TOSSED! Supper at Thai Ginger on lovely Petaluma's downtown Helen Putnam Plaza. What is normally red chicken curry served on a bed of spinach - treat- comes out red stuff on brocholli? Wrong; just doesn't look, feel, taste the same. Dred comes that raw spinach may not be ours for eons. What if the real problem with sending tons of produce from Salinas Valley is Salinas Valley? I mean the flood waters carrying bacteria that cover the produce. Or possibly the huge (I must imagine) factory processing plants that bag the green stuff. Could they be somehow flush with cow manure? We're talking manure here as the chief suspect however you bag it!
Guessing again, I'd say the main problem is that huge industrial approach to our foods that leaves us guessing where disease comes from. Can't we just go out and pick some produce? Get the neighbors to share? Based on the quanitites of heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers and zuchinis we were given this summer, I'd say we won't starve already if we eat locally.
Second spinach consideration: selecting appetizers for Praxis Peace 5th Anniversary reception, guest the famous author, Arianna Huffington in Sonoma Sept. 30th. Our selection included spinach tartlettes. Safe cause they're cooked - but would YOU serve this to people paying $130 for dinner with someone they greatly admire? Guess is not.
And thirdly, the fact that in my own peaceful little refrig lay in wait 2, yes 2! bags of Trader Joes baby spinach a little past ripe, dripping brown liquid into the bins. Having such a tough time tossing, as I love the stuff when fresh. Never realized bagged spinach leaks the brown stuff, all too reminiscent of - the E coli stuff we're all scared of.
Am hoping the mystery will be solved and I can go back to tossing spinach into salads instead of the garbage, though I most often use it in fritattas, cooked, so guess that's technically safe, though it currently sounds poisonous!
Upshot of this is a heightened desire to visit local Urban Gardens, start new habits of buying organic/local and supporting a floating idea of a Farmers Market on Water Street, year long, in addition to our classic Walnut Park Farmers Market. What a necessary and lovely addition to the wellbeing of our town. A map of green spaces including Urban Gardens can be had at Petaluma Community Center/Luchessi on McDowell, a Park and Rec brochure. Currently, Community Gardens exist at McNear School and Westridge developments.
And a totally unrelated story: When checking out LOLs at Longs - speak loud and clear and over and over again. Was buying a few things at Long's on Washington in town when noticed a little old lady handing back stuff she didn't want to pay for as fast as she was trying to get out the door. "Those machines don't tell you anything," she said. "They don't even give you MATH!" shouting at the digital register. Cashier, a young lovely with shaking hands, seemed to feel her honor was at stake. Waiting for a LONG while for the transaction to be completed with assistance from manager, I then gave my
I'm-older-and-wiser advice to the young register person. "Probably best to talk kind of loudly and very slowly and repeat everything," I said. "It's the old person thing. She can't hear you and doesn't want to admit it and she forgets the whole transaction about half way through so she needs you to repeat it." Am sure of my rightness, hoping somehow science spares me the embarrassment in years to come and expecting old age should come with a text book. We could all start with Nora Ephron's answers for agings little questions - a funny and empathetic book, I'm sorry about my neck, just out.
