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Peace and Peaz, and much Love!
Calliope

Hello!

Having just realized I’ve not even posted here in February I thought I must catch you up a bit before the month runs out. I’ve not been out on San Francisco’s free food circuit much lately but do have an update for you, and I’ll tell you in just a minute why I’ve been so busy lately.

This morning I decided to finally see what’s up at Martin de Porres House of Hospitality (Martin’s House). I’ve heard nothing but good reports about the food here but kept thinking it was down in the Mission district. Actually it’s just a few blocks south of Trader Joe’s and the Co-op at 225 Potrero near 16th, on the #9 busline. They do Breakfast, Brunch or Lunch every day of the week, and you can reach them at (415) 552-0240.

You enter through a gate in a wooden fence just like you’re going the back way into a friend’s house. The large patio is covered on the far half with plenty of plants growing everywhere, local art, and prayer flags across the roof covering. The crowd gathered was pretty chill for people waiting to eat, and I waited as they called the numbered tickets in groups of 10. As I arrived I smelled something onion-y being cooked and considered this a very good sign.

We were ushered in and served by some very friendly, smiling people. As I surveyed the kitchen and serving arrangement I got a very good feeling about what was going on here. These people know what they’re doing, and seem to be doing it with much joy. When my turn came I was served a heaping, steaming plate (on a real plate!) of brown rice topped with black-eyed peas, some just made cole slaw on the side, and a generous helping of fresh fruit including green and red grapes, blueberries and raspberries. The food was bland but certainly yum, and salt and pepper was on the table. While a certain degree of bland is quite normal for food these days to accommodate everyone’s preferences and dietary restrictions, I have found that spices are one of the hardest ingredients to come up with if you are working the food bank for ingredients or using donated food from other sources. Perhaps this is another good time for making a pitch to grow some local herbs in unused spaces in the city.

I left feeling full and satisfied with warm food in my tummy, and didn’t even have to use the ticket I’d been given for seconds. I was impressed with the whole affair here at Martin’s from the energy of the place and staff, to the warm, wholesome, delicious food, to the pretty chilled out vibe from those in attendance. Talking to the guy across the table he mentioned with a smile on his face that he was headed to the Embarcadero for some of those pancakes and sausage I told you about before. That smile on his face told me a lot about why these better free food events are so important to those who find themselves a bit detoured, if not completely off the track, from the mainstream of our society. If you’re living outside without a way to cook, and probably not much money to buy food, these serve as maybe the only hot food you get on any kind of a regular basis. All the sandwiches you can eat are not going to take the place of some hot food once in a while, especially on a cold day like we’re having here in San Francisco this weekend.

One can also see some friendly, often familiar, faces at these servings and you don’t have people yelling at you to “get a job” or “get off the sidewalk”. For this man I shared breakfast with, as well as many others, this free food circuit means some decent hot food, kindred spirits, and a respite from the people who think they are part of society’s problem, not a victim of it.

So Martin de Porres, Good Job! I applaud what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. I’ll be back to visit soon. And I’d like nothing better than to send the cooks from the shelters I’ve been to down your way to learn how to make and serve food. They could learn much from you.

As for where I’ve been hiding lately, I’ve been taking a little culinary training myself. That’s right, I have finally made it to culinary school. It’s not the Culinary Institute of America or even the California Culinary Academy, but the C.H.E.F.S Culinary Training Program, and with all the guest instructors we have that are working in some of the top places in town, if not teachers themselves, the instruction is top notch. Most of it so far has been review for me as I knew it would be having taken this long to get to culinary training, but I have to tell you I finally got to roast some bones and make some brown stock, something I’d never had the opportunity to do before. As with most cooking things we’ve heard of that are “hard to do”, making stock, even brown stock, is a piece of cake. Maybe I’ll blog about it in some more detail soon and offer some courage for you to try it yourself. Nothing will take your cooking to the next level like having your own stock to cook with, and it’s very doable even for home cooks. Just like making risotto and sauces like Hollandaise (which we’ve also had guest instructors in to teach) the urban lore that these things are hard to make is so untrue! You can be making these too with just a few tips. We’ll talk more later.

Another guest instructor we’ve had recently is Executive Chef Blair Warsham from Graffeats. Blair was there to teach us blueprinting, or how to design a new dish. This is a subject very dear to me, and in fact I’d spent much of the previous weekend doing some blueprinting when I got some sudden inspiration from reading “Culinary Artistry” by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, a book I’ve been waiting to read in detail for a couple of years. Definitely a keeper, my head has been overflowing with interesting combinations of tastes since I started reading it. In fact, I think in one evening I came up with the basis of an entire cookbook I want to write. Isn’t this how the Beatles got started? haha I’ll keep you posted.

Back to Chef Blair, he is doing something I am just fascinated by lately, and that is pop-up restaurants. You can read more about that scene in this article from Business Insider, including a mention about a couple of them in our very own Mission District. And take a look at Blair’s fabulous Graffeats website and see what he’s doing with pop-up food.

As for me, I’m planning on finally making it today to that Firehouse food thing I mentioned before. Really. Seriously, I’m really going to go this time. haha. Actually the official name for it is Missionaries of Charity at 1300 3rd Street, and they do dinner every nite of the week from 3:30-5:00 pm, except Thursday. And hopefully I’ll be back to tell you about it before another month goes by.

Peace and Green Pea Gazpacho,
Calliope

Curry not Worry was no less than fabulous. This is what I’m going for, fabulous, simple, hot food just for asking, lots of regulars, some folks show up that make music…and it’s a scene! I think this is what we want, small parties that move around and serve great food-for free! This one is on Tuesday, 6pm till the food’s gone, West end of UN Plaza near the Simon Bolivar statue. And some tasty fare it is, rice, soup, potatoes, garnish, naan, and desert!

On the UN Plaza that night as well was the Norte Dame food kitchen serving up a couple different kinds of sausages, and carrots.

This past week saw a few more trips to St. Anthony’s where I find the food consistent if not always fabulous, and I got to say hello to those lovely folks at Food not Bombs where they were doing their regular Monday night serving on UN Plaza. 6pm I think for FnB’s

Last weekend brought a new favorite, a Sunday brunch serving buckwheat pancakes and syrup, sausage and coffee by some good-hearted souls serving breakfast on the Embarcadero, just South and across Embarcadero from the Ferry Building. I haven’t found a listing of this one, but they said they’ll be there “next week” which is tomorrow. Think I’ll plan to stop by again. Something like 10:30am till noon, but not quite sure.

There’s been good reports about a Sunday dinner at someplace called the Firehouse. I didn’t quite make it there last week, but plan to this week. Rumor has it this is the best food served on the circuit.

Just this morning I got out to Macedonia Church on Sutter near Steiner, and had a great chili dog lunch with green salad, canned fruit cocktail, and lemonade.

Taking the Fillmore bus down to Oak I set off for another monthly serving that I found to be on hiatus until Feb 26.

This has been a great time to finally get out and see some of the food being served around town and discover some new neighborhoods at the same time. I’ll be back soon with more, and I’ll also tell you about the St. Ignacius kitchen I’m going to volunteer in on Feb 12.

And this is my latest obsession…wok cooking!!

From the ‘bucks in San Francisco’s Civic Center,
Bon Appetit! now get out and eat!

Before you rear up in fright, know it doesn’t have to represent the chow hall out of a low budget prison film-although there is a place or two like that nearby; this is those doing food on the cheap, for those out on the town on the cheap. And it can be good. Like Curry not Worry who serves a free curry meal on the UN Plaza across from the library on Tuesdays at 6pm where I’m headed tonight.

And that is a great segway to what is really hot right now in SF, and everywhere else-food carts! Whether it’s an actual cart, a lunch truck arrangement, or just a mobile kitchen that can be set up quick somewhere people gather, this is street food!

I’m going to be on the lookout for other innovative offerings of street food, including locations for my own cart idea. I’ll be back soon with more, and while you’re waiting check out and see what’s happening in SF with carts.

See you soon!

I found the City Center kitchen after a good friend recommended I watch the video “How to Cook Your Life” by Edward Brown (Thank you good friend!!) A large part of coming to San Francisco was to work in this kitchen, and after spending time there I find their kitchen practice is what I’ve been trying to do with food for a few years now.

The Zen Center also owns Green Gulch Farm a few miles north of the city, where they have been farming using organic and Biodynamic methods since the 70′s. I haven’t had much urge to come out of the kitchen since I’ve been in SF, but I fancy myself spending time at Green Gulch one day. They farm with the intention I was trying to, and it just seems right that we should hang out a bit.

I’ve also been spending time in the kitchen at Project Open Hand. This is one of the most chill commercial kitchens I’ve ever been in, and they take extra time and care to put Love into the food. Some pretty wonderful people work and volunteer here and it’s been a joy to work with them.

Not so sure what 2011 will bring but there are some lovely options starting to take shape.

Oh, and did I mention I finally found the Zen practice I’ve been looking for?

Have a fabulous 2011! See you soon!

Om,
Calliope

I can’t tell you how cool it is to be finally spending time in San Francisco as a resident, although a wandering one. I feel such a connection with so much of the culture here, and I’m thinking this is the place I’m going to finally put down roots. Or at least close enough to get to the city on a very regular basis.

I spent yesterday at a couple of SF gardening events that are definitely worth a mention. This was in conjunction with the 350.org “10/10/10 Global Work Party”.

The first stop was where we spent most of the day doing some gardening at the Alice Griffith Community Garden at Bayview Hunters Point. In the shadow of Candlestick Park and just feet away from the tailgate parties for the 49′rs game, we built some raised beds and prepared the area for them, sheet mulched some fruit trees, did some weeding, watering, and picked some produce that was ready including some especially yummy Strawberries!

This video will show you more about what’s going on at the Alice Griffith Garden, and why what’s happening there is so important:

http://www.youtube.com/user/earthactivistas#p/u/0/3bdKgBt6LbE

Next we were off to another 10/10/10 Garden Action at Hayes Valley Farm, an amazing urban farm built around a still standing off-ramp of SF’s Central Freeway which was compromised in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and finally demolished years later. We were just in time to accompany Project Director Jay on a tour of the farm, and got to learn much about the vision and numerous things going on at the site. The farm and volunteers are doing so many things right here, particularly keeping the energy flowing and new efforts happening by essentially taking the attitude of “Why not?” when a new idea for the farm presents itself. Check out the website and see for yourself. I intend to spend much time plugging in to things going on here as I take my urban farming to the big city.

I am also finally getting a chance to work with my latest interest in growing food, and that is Aquaponics. I’ll be working on a pilot project at a residence in San Francisco in a couple weeks, and definitely plan on hooking up with the folks at kijiji grows who are doing some fab work with Aquaponics here in the Bay Area.

So, greetings from San Francisco! I’ll be in touch soon.

Peace and Peas,
Callioipe

The farming I’ve been involved with for the last couple years is something else again. It’s a full-time gig requiring full-time focus on just farming. I’m very happy to have experienced what that is like, to be that focused on growing the food. It’s strengthened and deepened my connection with food, and taught me a whole new way of looking at ingredients and cooking. But it took me away from the kitchen for too long, and too often, and the kitchen is where my soul sings. I fall in love with cooking and feeding people over and over again, and this past year has really been like that. So I’m back to the kitchen being the place in the growing/cooking/feeding people process that is where I’ll be. This is the place that food makes the most sense for me.

As you”ll see from the new website, at it’s new domain,  www.calliopeztable.com, I haven’t given up growing food, but just changed the scale a bit. For me, the difference between gardening and farming of any size is just the scale. I am more convinced than ever, that we all need to be growing some of our own food where we live, and Kitchen Gardens have been the way that’s been done for a long, long time.  A Kitchen Garden can be grown at your house (or close by),  for your cooking and eating, and includes enough variety of veggies and herbs to be your own farmer’s market. It’s also the right size for feeding your family, and if done right won’t take any more time than your trips to the farmer’s market. So I’m adding the planning, planting, and care of Kitchen Gardens to the services offered as a Personal Chef.

Pantry Makeovers and kitchen organization are something I’ve done for clients all along, but it  now has it’s own spot on the website too.

Another aspect of coming full circle is that this new evolution of Calliope’s Table will take place where my roots are, and that is Southern California; San Diego to be exact. My eight years in Cascadia have been nothing less than transformative, as it’s here I’ve reconnected with cooking and gardening as my life work. But the pull to more familiar weather and more familiar culture has increased over the past couple of years, and I feel it’s time to head home.

I’ll do my best to keep you updated here as I rediscover San Diego and all that is going on there with local food.

Oh, and give some love and support to your local farmers who are growing the good stuff using practices that heal the earth. You might be surprised how long and hard they work, and the other opportunities they’ve given up to grow the best food around for you. You’ll find a few of my favorite farms on the Links page of the website. Supporting them by buying your produce directly from them will support local food, local farmers and get you the kind of produce you can only get these days from a farmer.

Peace and peas,

Calliope

For me, that’s cooking and feeding people. Calliope’s Table started life as a Personal Chef service, and my search for good ingredients led me to farming. Those few short years ago it felt like no one understood what I was talking about when I said that we all need to be growing more of our own food, supporting local urban farmers, and using unused and underutilized land to do so. Now, this idea has really spread wings. So many people get it now and are putting energy into embracing these things.

So I come full circle. I find myself understanding and totally agreeing with what Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton say in “A Nation of Farmers”, and that is that possibly the most important tools in feeding ourselves could be a kitchen knife and a cooking pan. As a culture we are losing our ability to cook food “from scratch”, work with raw ingredients, and understand how to intuitively make scrumptious meals with whatever is on hand that day. Your farmers eat this way as a lifestyle and it is one of the reasons we are farmers is that the food doesn’t get any better than this.

Since those Personal Chef days, I have taken a greater interest in canning and preserving since I know how to get the good stuff now. I no longer buy anything that is not in season, preferring what I’ve preserved from last season when things were at their peak. Other strategies play into this like growing greens all year round and planting enough root crops to be able to harvest all the way through winter until the new crop of spring vegetables emerge.

We are planning a new outdoor kitchen at RiverHouse Farm for this season, and plan to continue with great enthusiasm the tradition long held here of gathering people together for food and music next to Crystal Springs Creek which runs through the land.

CSA information will now be available at the RiverHouse Farm blog (http://riverhousecsa.wordpress.com/), and as the season progresses cooking and preserving info at Calliope’s Table (http://www.calliopes-table.com/). There is other exciting news about what is going on at RiverHouse Farm including our new association with GeerCrest Farm (http://www.geercrestfarm.com/) in Silverton. You can read all the latest at: http://riverhousecsa.wordpress.com/news/.

Thank you for your continued support. We couldn’t do what we do without you!

Peace,

Calliope

I hope you’ve all been staying warm during the very cold weather. The 2009 CSA season for Calliope’s Table ended just before Thanksgiving, and the very wintery weather seems to have provided a closure to the season with beds being covered and tucked away for winter. It’s also given me an opportunity to get to work on plans for 2010, and you can now see those changes on the website.

Here are some of the changes for you:

The 2010 CSA season is now underway and you can find subscription info and all the details on the CSA page. The CSA distribution will be moving to the RiverHouse farm in Sellwood where I’m now in residence, and there will also be some new options for picking up your produce. Among them are a delivery option that will get your CSA share to your doorstep and also a Sunday pickup at the Hawthorne Urban Farmers Market.

There is also a new 2010 CSA Info Sheet that has all the details of the 2010 season including an updated crop list. Among the new things that will be in your CSA share this year are herb and vegetable starts and cut flowers.

I’m keeping the CSA the small, intimate size it was in 2009 which is going to give me time to do some other food and farming things I want to do like more cooking and canning the harvest, feeding some folks that need a good meal, helping to get some new folks started growing some of their own food, and raising a few chickens. I talk more about this on a new Foodshed page. There’s a new video there that talks about Neighborhood Foodsheds too.

I’m going to be doing more farming this coming season with my friends Marie of Sellwood Garden Club and Nikki from RiverHouse CSA which will help all of us accomplish more and give us more time for the other things we want to do. We’re quite a combination of experience, philosphies, and temperaments, and we love working together.  Among the projects we’re already working on together is doing a remediation and creating a garden space at Radius Studio in Portland’s industrial eastside. We’ll keep you updated on our progress. We’re also working on building some raised bed gardens for folks while we have a bit of spare time this winter, offering 100% sliding scale to accommodate those that really need some help getting some food growing. You can read more about how we’re planning to do that on a new Garden Box page.

I’ve also learned a lot this past season about growing food in other folks’ yards, and so I’ve added a new Yardsharing  page to talk about those things and find a few more folks that want to have us grow some food in their yards.

We’re planning a gathering here at the RiverHouse sometime in late January when everyone gets back from the holidays so we can hang out and eat some food in this wonderful space. I would love for you all to visit and see what amazing things have been done here and are planned for the future. I’ll keep you posted on that.

I thank each of you for the part you played in one of the best years I’ve had in this life. I feel it’s just the beginning of a fabulous life as a farmer. I also wish you the best of the holiday season. See you soon!

Peace and peas,
Calliope

I have been taking a break from as much technology as I can since you last heard from me. Farming activities have evolved from keeping crops alive during the record number of 100 degree days we’ve had this year, to the planting of this year’s winter crops, to the continuing staple foods harvest which will be the focus this week due to the window of sunny weather we’ll have. If you’d like to help harvest staple crops, get in touch with me or Farmer K of Sunroot Gardens.  Everyone that helps in the harvest gets some of the crop.

While I’ve been away I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and a lot of thinking about what has worked well this season and what I’d like to do differently. There are a few changes happening that you should know about.

One of the most important changes is a new addition to the CSA. Many of you have met Annette who lives at the garden where the CSA distribution is held. Annette is back from her summer job and has agreed to help me run the CSA. Much of what you see manifest in that lovely garden space is due to Annette’s energy and contributions, and I have really enjoyed working with her. Her absence this summer was very noticeable. Thanks Annette! It’s good to have you back!

Having help with the CSA is going to allow me to work on some other projects that are important to me such as cooking and feeding some people, preserving more of the harvest, developing some more variety in what’s growing such as staple food crops and medicinals, and organizing some skill shares to pass along things that are working for us.

I’ve also been spending time with Nikki of RiverHouse CSA in Sellwood and we’ve decided to do some farming together as well. The gardens there are truly magical with Crystal Springs creek running through the land. The first time I visited I knew I wanted to help preserve and add my energy to this wild space in the city. It’s also a likely place for skill shares and cooking and eating, so I’ll keep you posted.

I’m very happy to be continuing my work with Sunroot Gardens as well. Collaborating on growing more crops in bigger spaces where the work is shared has been a very successful part of the season and the huge amount of winter crops now growing shows that. Sunroot is also where I find the most innovative approaches to growing enough food to matter, and what’s turned out to be a very important part of the farming, getting the food to people that are going to eat it.

One aspect of this that I believe is unique to Sunroot is the Friday “helper” pick and distribution. If you are someone that contributes to Calliope’s Table in a non-monetary way (land-lender, garden helper, bike mechanic, healer, etc.), you can join us on Fridays 4pm to dusk for fresh produce, impromptu socializing, and usually some farm cooking. It’s at the Firepit garden in the Hawthorne district, another wild space in the city you should see if you haven’t. Get in touch for directions, etc.

Just a reminder, the 2009 Spring/Summer CSA runs until Thanksgiving week in November, with weekly distributions on Wednesdays from 4-7pm. If you can’t make it by 7pm, or at all, get in touch and we can arrange something.

After Thanksgiving week the CSA will be converting to a monthly subscription that will offer produce year round. More details soon.

Enjoy the beautiful autumn weather!

Peace and peas,

Calliope