Olive you!

Katrina D: In a historic Weird Vegetables moment, Erin and I are blogging in the same post. We're up in Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare Festival with my parents. Erin is mercifully standing in as my proxy sibling/ambiguous bed-time companion.

Erin K: When we're not oohing over the unexpected charms of our B & B (warm chocolate chip cookies at midnight! toilet paper wound into rosettes!), we're inventing activities outside the realm of our normal city-dwelling routines — like shopping for novelty shower curtains and searching for versions of our aged selves. This evening, on our way into The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, Katrina spotted the woman she wants to be at 65.

KD: Or just will be regardless of my own wishes. She wore a stripey t-shirt dress outside of the Kat Wok, a saucy pan-Asian restaurant, sushi bar, and nightclub. But back to vegetables. Wait, are olives a vegetable? Either way, we should talk about the Olive Pit in Corning, CA, an exciting mid-way lunch stop on the drive from San Francisco to Ashland.

EK: I thiiiiink olives are a fruit, but since I use them regularly as spicer-uppers of veg cuisine, they occupy a spot on vegetable spectrum in my mind. Regardless, the Olive Pit's got jars and jars of green gems, flavored in strange and delightful ways, identifiable thanks to signs with catchy names and handy drawings. I think the illustration of almond-stuffed olives looks like an ogre toe.

KD: Yeah, that place was nutty, kind of like the Nut Tree, only with olives. I felt like we were in an Andreas Gursky photo (lower right). Here's my Forrest Gump listing of all the flavors they had: Pitted, Green Pitted, Spiced Pimiento, Martini, Manzanillo, Queen, Garlic Style, Smoked Style, Kosher Style, Dill Kosher, French Style, Italian Style, Onion Stuffed, Almond Stuffed —keep reading, dahlings, it's only gonna get crazier — Smoke Flavored, Brine Greek, Cuban, Ranch (ew!), Cracked Sicilian, Napa Valley Wine, Mild Mustard, Hot Spiced, Jalapeño Style, Texas Hot Chili, and finally, Deep South Cajun. Whew! My fingers hurt.

EK: Strangely, after snapping photos and marveling at the various signs, we didn't manage to buy a single jar. This can be explained by the phenomenon of bulk-food turn-off —when I encounter anything edible in massive quantities, it loses its appeal. An obvious example is a vat of gravy, dispensed by hand-pump (I really saw it! In Ely, NV) but even a hotel pan of seared duck breasts can seem gross because there's just so many of them.

KD: Clearly, you do not share my mom's passion for the temple of consumer gluttony also known as Costco. I enjoy building my sense of superiority by lecturing her on the evils of buying gallon jugs of o.j. but then secretly grab a bunch of bulk-bought toilet paper and Kleenex from the garage on my way out. But if I had purchased anything from the Olive Pit, it definitely would have been the Dynamic Duo: Jalapeño & Garlic Stuffed. My only question is, are you Jalapeño or Garlic?

EK: Welp, considering one morsel of each is wedged into every olive, does it matter?

Weird Vegetables - Austin Edition

Contrary to what produce-vain Californians may like to believe, Texans do know what vegetables are. I witnessed a particularly pleasing spectacle of produce worship last Saturday morning at the Sunset Valley Farmers market just outside of Austin while visiting my beloved Jenny, high school bff and fellow S.F. native. The horn-tooting section of the market's website boasts that it was listed in the top 5 farmers' markets in the country by Eating Well magazine and in the top 10 by the Audubon Society. Apparently our own Ferry Plaza market ranks among the best, along with those in Ithaca, Madison, and Santa Fe.

Jenny and I pulled into the super-sized parking lot at around 10am and I could already feel the humidity clamp down on me as I stepped out of the car. The sun was particularly brutal (the heat must have hit the mid-90s already) but the excitement of various pickled things, brilliant red tomatoes, shiny green and yellow peppers, and sweet juicy peaches soon distracted me. The market is set up in a large rectangle, with farmers on the perimeter and artisans and music in the center mush pot. I picked up a peck of pickled okra (okay, just a jar) made with love by The Square Headed Germans. In a minor tragedy, it was eventually confiscated from my carry-on at the airport security check, so I never did get to taste those spicy garlic-infused okra. [muffled sobs]

My favorite farm stand was Morning Glory Farm, where the adorable pair in the topmost photo took us on a tour of their mini-daikon, assorted greens, and tea herbs. The mini daikon is in the lower corner of the photo on the left (above). Ain't it cute?

Their assortment of greens in particular whetted my appetite for weirdness. Bunches of red orach mountain spinach and wild lamb's quarters stood proudly in their own buckets, while other greens nestled together in salad mix baggies. Gracie (with the scrunchied pig-tails) says she puts the seeds of the wild lamb's quarters in fritters, but otherwise you can just eat these leaves raw as if you were a little lamb yourself. Other strange offerings included emu oil, yellow dock root, chasteberry, and horehound.

Jenny and I decided to sample the "everything but the kitchen sink" baggie, which included the following:

- amaranth
- orach
- beet greens
- lettuces
- pea greens
- broccoli
- chickweed
- sorrel
- kale
- tatsoi

The salad was hearty though a little bitter, so I added yellow peach slices on top. The combination was delicious. It didn't even need salad dressing.

My favorite artisan stand was the charming Belle and Burger. Belle also has a blog where she gives you ideas for being crafty (watch for the upcoming make-your-own-undies demo) and an online shop at Etsy, clearinghouse of handmade items to coo and drool over. I bought a hand-sewn card with a fabric strawberry and different-colored threads criss-crossing over it.

Vegetable Parinirvana

Last Sunday, our blog team witnessed a singularly magical weird vegetable event. Or rather, we witnessed the anniversary commemoration of a vegetable tableau vivant performance that ignited a burst of envy in me verging on spontaneous combustion, the kind of envy I feel whenever I think of Fanny Waters' charmed existence, easily mockable name notwithstanding.

"Vegetable Parinirvana" was a cosmic meeting of the minds between 18th-century Japanese painter Ito Jakuchu and present-day San Francisco artist and Tartine employee Rachel Corry. (That last detail is relevant for the simple fact that the statement "I work at Tartine" is another way of saying "I am wildly more beautiful, stylish, and artistically inclined than you or anyone you can honestly claim to be friends with. Now be a lamb and eat your brioche in the corner. Be sure not to drop any crumbs." I write this, of course, with the utmost affection for all things Tartine.)

Corry was inspired by an encounter with Jakuchu's circa 1780 ink-brush painting Yasai Nehan, or Vegetable Parinirvana to stage a live version in Golden Gate Park last June. The painting was part of a show at the Asian Art Museum on Kyoto painters of the Edo period.



The Jakuchu scroll portrays a dying Buddha surrounded by his followers, a religious scene commonly depicted in Buddhist art, only this version casts the Buddha as a reclining daikon (big white radish) encircled by all his best veggie mates, like eggplant, mushroom, tomato, carrot, and quince. There seems to be some serious academic debate over whether Jakuchu's painting is a parody or a mournful meditation (with the inevitable compromise that it is both) on this scene of parinirvana, a state that Wikipedia describes as "the final nirvana, usually understood to be within reach only upon the death of the body of someone who has attained complete awakening (bodhi). It is the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice..." This Slate review of a similar show at the National Gallery in D.C. has a nice paragraph about the painting. There's also a very earnest Zen gardener who has taken an intense liking to Jakuchu's art here.

Corry began by identifying the vegetable worshippers in Jakuchu's painting and then constructed her own psychedelic technicolor costumes to be worn by her and 14 of her most vegetably able (veget-able?) friends on Strawberry Hill near Stow Lake in the park.

On Sunday, as we sat on the grass in a backyard across from Dolores Park, gazing at empty vegetable costume shells and glossy color photos strung up around the garden perimeter while guitars strummed on the sunshine, I felt a melancholy sweetness for the daikon Buddha, whose foamy carcass now looked like a gentle white shark leaning horizontally against the wooden picket fence.

Would whoever ate a daikon Buddha absorb its enlightened wisdom? Another reason to eat your vegetables!

More photos of the cutest veggies in the world here!

Your vegetables aren't that weird

"I read through weird vegetables.... I like reading your entries. You guys write about vegetables that i don't find very weird..."

Ouch. That's the sting of gloves being smacked across our collective blog face as guerrilla vegetarian chef Leif Hedendal throws down the gauntlet.

To be fair, that last sentence ends, "but i have such a skewed sense of produce," so he admits that his métier brings him into closer contact with a whole variety of veggies that the average civilian cutting board doesn't encounter. And I guess if you're the closest thing to a walking, talking, anthropomorphic weird vegetable, disguised in a beard and plaid shirt, then I'd imagine you might be a little picky about whom you accept into your clan.

My initial response:

"Our idea of 'weird' is for people who live on Trader Joe's baby carrots and who buy boxes of cherry tomatoes in December, like my mom but also me two years ago, people who kind of get in a rut of cooking the same veggies over and over. But really, fennel is a strange strange creature no matter how well you get to know it."

Upon further reflection, I realized that a bunch of our posts are just about produce in general, weird or not, and began to feel a little glum about not living up to the full potential of our blog name--until my friend Jennifer made the startling yet undeniable observation that, "All vegetables are pretty weird if you think about it."

It's true. So, in a series of soul-searching discussions over treats at Tartine, coffee at Atlas Cafe, and in the Valencia St. bike lane, Erin and I have decided not only to seek out weirder vegetables but also to further probe the hidden strangeness of those vegetables we think we already know. And now that we have the added powers of Leif integrated into our growing Voltron assemblage, our weird vegetable quotient can only multiply exponentially.

To get us all reoriented, I wanted to leave you with some choice entries on the notion of weirdness from the Oxford English Dictionary:

weird, a.
1. Having the power to control the fate or destiny of human beings, etc.; later, claiming the supernatural power of dealing with fate or destiny.
Originally in the Weird Sisters = (a) the Fates; (b) the witches in Macbeth.

2. a. Partaking of or suggestive of the supernatural; of a mysterious or unearthly character; unaccountably or uncomfortably strange; uncanny.

b. of sounds or voices. [I don't know how this relates to vegetables yet, but it does explain the "weirding module" in David Lynch's Dune.]

4. a. Out of the ordinary course, strange, unusual; hence, odd, fantastic. (Freq. in recent use.)
b. Colloq. phr. weird and wonderful, marvellous in a strange or eccentric way; both remarkable and peculiar or unfathomable; exotic, outlandish. Freq. ironical or derog.

I am particularly intrigued by the idea of vegetables having supernatural powers, kind of like that creepy mandrake root baby creature in Pan's Labyrinth. And just when you thought peas were the same ol' ho-hum, they turn up in the entry for the verb "weird." Yes, the verb:

weird, v.
3. To warn or advise by the knowledge of coming fate.

1806 JAMIESON Pop. Ballads I. 237, I wierd ye, gangna there! Ibid. II. 174, I weird thee, to lat me be were best.

Hence weirded ppl. a.; weirding vbl. n. in Comb. weirding peas, peas employed in divination.

Note: The anatomically correct carrot (front and back shot) is from this blog. The googly-eyed produce are entries in Amy Sedaris' googly-eye craft challenge.

A Morning Poem

O little pea shoot! Sweet herald of spring, Sprig of green sunshine, Glorious phantom of the garden, I welcome you into this world! I squeeze your fat belly Caress your bulging forehead Pinch your plump bottom One, two, three peas! Bashfully, you flutter your tendrils, And I pluck you away From this dusty world; Into my mouth You go! Pop!

Can you tell I've been reading Robert Hass's orgasmic nature poetry? His recent book, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005, is a beauty both inside and out.

I woke up this morning with a vision of the pea shoots I cultivated last spring in a window box when I had lots more free time than I do now but still thought myself way too busy. I bought this "icebreaker" pea plant as an experiment from Cole Hardware. I probably harvested 4 or 5 pea pods, which I think means I could have tended them better. But they were delicious. This plant originally came from the Sweetwater Nursery in Sebastopol (Sonoma County). I hope to start from seeds one day.

Bonny 'doons

Katrina's been imploring me to stop being lazy and start posting again, and we've jointly identified a need to increase the weirdness level of our chosen specimens. So, in an effort to surprise, disorient, and tantalize readers, I'm reaching back more than a month to give you cardoons.

These pale green, almost translucent stalks have graced menus at my past restaurant jobs, and I once heard a server describe them as "a member of the thistle family, like the artichoke." This is true, but really explains nothing about the flavor and does little to allay the diner's fear of the strange. (How likely would you be to order potatoes after hearing that they're a member of the nightshade family, like the eggplant?) Anyway, here's my attempt at description:

Imagine hacking away at the outer branches of an artichoke plant, the ones that reach outward and upward to embrace the thorny, flowerbud-bearing trunks in the center. Still can't picture it? Think of tall, slightly curved stalks—longer than my forearms—similar in strength and stringiness to celery or fennel, sans the feathery topknot and with a more defensive air about them. Like the ridged, whitened offspring of an aloe vera plant and the protective outer arms of a rather large head of cauliflower. With velvety, silver-sided leaves. Still confused? Just look at the picture.

Flavorwise, they're salty celery with a tangy, artichoke-tinged finish. I removed the leaves, then sliced the ones above (from Knoll Farms at the FB) into crisp U-shaped segments that I cooked briefly in salted, boiling water. Before they turned mushy (after 5 or so minutes), I removed and drained them, tossed them with a lemony vinaigrette, then mixed in a chopped soft-poached egg to balance the acid. A little trick I learned from the artichoke witch of the west. No. I googled them and stole the recipe from Mariquita Farms' website. Those farmers know their thistles.

Bok choy or Chinese Broccoli?

The setting: Dinner time, around the kitchen island at Katrina's house.

My roommate: Mmm, that looks good, what are you going to do with it?

Me: Um, probably just stir-fry it with some garlic and that salty magic mushroom seasoning my mom gives me. I got it from the Hmong stand at the farmers' market. I don't usually cook bok choy but these were so cute. Look at the little yellow flowers! (brief giggle)

My roommate: That's Chinese broccoli.

Me: No, it's not. It's bok choy. Baby bok choy.

My roommate: I used to work at the farmers' market. And I'm half Chinese. That's Chinese broccoli.

Me: You worked at the Ferry Building. Selling lavender. This is from the Noe Valley market. From the Hmongs. The sign said "baby bok choy."

My roommate: It's Chinese broccoli.

Me: [Silence.]
My roommate: [Silence.]

Now that I have the floor to myself, I'll say again, I swear it's baby bok choy. I think. Doesn't bok choy have white stalks and Chinese broccoli, green? Either way, it was fresh 'n' crunchy even after wilting in the frying pan. I also like to put bok choy in soup, like in a broth with diced tofu or with soba noodles and a base of miso, rice vinegar, and sweet sake (mirin).

I bought this little bunch from the Sunny Farm family-run stand at the Saturday morning Noe Valley farmers' market on 24th St. at Vicksburg, in the parking lot across from my favorite bookstore ever, Phoenix Books! Every time I head toward the stand, which comes at the end of the line, Erin mumbles, "I don't think they're organic," but I just pretend I don't really know what she's talking about. They admit to using Round Up twice a year but they also use compost, mint, and hand weeding. You can check out the stats on the farmers' market vendor page. Besides, the mom, Pao Thao, shares a name with my mom, Thao, so they're almost like family.