Autumn in Heels--Eating Locally, Eating Seasonally

In Southern California we don't get much of an autumn so we really, I mean REALLY celebrate seasonal flavors like, ON THE FREAKING DOT of September 1st. And by celebrate seasonal flavors I mean go to Starbucks as early as they open so it'll be sort of cool enough to enjoy a hot drink and get a pumpkin spice latte. If you happen to be in luck and it's a slightly overcast day you will definitely wear your brisk Arctic polar fleece Northface zip-up jacket, because really, when are you going to have another chance to wear it and pretend we have seasons. By October the infinity scarves and Ugg boots make their appearance, probably with leggings and the thinnest long sleeved shirt you own, because, again, it's usually in the 80s all the way through the start of November.

The relentless wild Californian Infinity Scarf develops a symbiotic
relationship with its prey before ultimately devouring her.

We hear about this "Autumn" you other states talk about and it sounds awesome. A whole new wardrobe that you only use for those three months! Dressing to match the foliage of trees that somehow change their colors?! That sounds magical. In So-Cal we have cypress trees, palm trees, and lawns. When we go to pumpkin patches they typically are big parking lots that have been covered with stacked bales of hay and a bunch of straw on the ground (which crunches satisfyingly under your Ugg boots and makes you feel all Autumnal-ly) and carnival rides to disguise the fact that you're getting the very same pumpkins you could pick up at the big box grocery stores. They even come in the self-same packing boxes. It's hard for us to find authentic Autumn experiences in the land of eternal summer--so we turn to comfort foods and things flavored with cinnamon and squash. Our myriad local farm-to-table gastropubs will reinvent the butternut squash ravioli and fried squash blossoms and pumpkin cheesecake all over their seasonal menus this month. 

So yes, yes, a thousand times yes on the pumpkin spice latte (I like a nice pumpkin shot in a chai latte, myself). But truly eating seasonally, in a way that's a bit more meaningful than gingerbread cookies and butternut squash soup, is a little more time and thought consuming. 

I first read about the concept of only eating seasonal foods when I read the Barefoot Contessa's book Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients. In the preface, Ina Garten describes her impossibly glamorous foray to Paris and how difficult it was as an American, being completely used to having any ingredient under the sun eternally available, to come to terms with having to cook only with what was available. In particular, she relates her attempt to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, when she, Ina Garten of Martha's Vineyard, was used to having access to heirloom veg fed turkeys, seventeen different pumpkins of varying colors, and wild cranberries from what I imagine is her own William's-Sonoma-crafted cranberry bog--only to find out that those things are only sold frozen and in cans in France, if at all. (Because, apparently, not all Parisians enjoy eating the cuisine of English people who were making do with things they found in the woods.) Still, I appreciated her story of gradually giving in to the season and allowing her inspiration for dinner to come from what was fresh and available where she was,of learning to cook in a way that celebrated a vegetable or fruit that was at the height of its flavor. It made me think about the December bing cherries that appear in stores like a breath of summer, shiny and rosy-cheeked and whispering, "Now you can have it all, now you can really have it all..." I remember buying a big two and something pound bag for a whopping $24, trembling with anticipation and not even waiting to get to my car before popping one into my mouth, expecting to be met with a burst of sweet juice. Instead I was met by hard, joyless lies, which eventually gave way to the sour truth--there is nothing, NOTHING, worse than a December cherry. 

Why eat seasonally, when we have access to almost everything almost all the time? It's the pumpkin-spice-latte effect. Starbucks actually sells pumpkin syrup all year round. You can get pumpkin lattes literally. Any. Time. You could have a nice hot pumpkin latte and you could even get them to put a dash of cinnamon or toffee sprinkles on top in the middle of July. The fact that it's on the chalk-menu in burnt orange chalk-pen with curlicues of green like pumpkin vines around it reminds you that you haven't had one since last fall and now you NEED that pumpkin hit like an infinity scarf needs a white girl to go with it. 

If pumpkin syrup, containing zero real pumpkin and mostly made up of corn syrup, can be so good,  how amazing could fall fruits and vegetables, cooked well and at the height of their flavor, be? This table of local fall foods got me thinking about more than just pumpkin and butternut squashes. Broccoli and cauliflower are at their sweetest and least bitter in the fall; roasted carrots (cut into matchsticks, toss with melted butter, salt and pepper, cook at 375 for 30 minutes. Seriously. Stop boiling...); brussells sprouts (Salt & Cleaver in Hillcrest, San Diego has possibly THE most amazing caramelized Brussels Sprouts with bacon, balsamic vinegar, and granny smith apples); grapes (vineyards are one of the only spots for seasonal color for us in California), pears and of course apples. All these things have become mostly season-less in American grocery stores but their flavor is absolutely amazing right now. 

Eating locally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally, and here's the thing. It's very haute to eat locally and visit the farmer's markets (in San Diego, there's a farmer's market or three on every day of the week) during the summer. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can compete with the flavor of a farm stand summer strawberry. The grocery store strawberry has just had to sacrifice too much flavor in favor of the sturdiness that lets them be shipped all over the country; its a cheap truck stop cousin to the ultra sweet, delicate strawberry you can grow in your own backyard. The farm-stand strawberry is the next best thing, and at almost the same price per pound as the monstrous, tasteless version you get at the grocery store, it's ridiculous not to get the farmer's market version. Buying farm-stand strawberries keeps that strain of strawberry alive, because in case you haven't noticed, you literally cannot buy a strawberry that sweet in a plastic clamshell at a big box grocery store. They are selling (and their suppliers are growing) an entirely different product, something you almost can't, really, call a strawberry anymore because its resemblance to a real, hot from the summer sun, strawberry is so remote. Limp, tasteless, and sometimes moldy? (I'm looking at you Vons. I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) or sweet, acidic, and complex? Hurrah for biodiversity!

Except even in California the strawberry goes out of season. The guys at the farmer's market that were selling me corn and summer squash now have kohlrabi and artichokes and brussells sprouts. The orchard people don't have cherries anymore, they have figs and pluots and pears. And while figs may not be as sexy as cherries, they're still sweet and sultry and delicious--and buying that fig from a local farmer keeps them in business till cherry and strawberry season rolls around again. 

This morning I decided to drive out to Julian, the little orchard town in the mountains northeast of San Diego proper. My visit just happened to coincide with the start of the fall u-pick season (labor day weekend) and Apple-Starr Orchards had trees dripping with Bosc, Comice, and Anjou pears before you could even get out to the gala and granny smith apple orchards. I've been to several different "pumpkin patches" all over San Diego and the neighboring areas but most are not true working farms, just patches of land where someone parked a tractor for photo ops and pumpkins laid out in a row not far from the cardboard shipping crates. These orchards were true orchards, with, yes, imperfect fruit, weirdly shaped fruit, some worm and bird damage, some bruises--but these trees also held the sweetest, most bursting-with-flavor pears and crunchy apples I'd ever tasted. We munched as we picked, developing an eye for what colors each kind of apple and pear meant the ripest, sweetest fruit, using a long-handled claw-basket pole to reach the delectable fruits at the top of the tallest branches. Without a bit of cinnamon or sugar these fruits were perfectly, fantastically Autumn. 

Laden down with "peck" bags (12 pounds) we headed into town to Julian Hard Cider, a local brewery that makes cold-press cider with only local apples, champagne yeast from local grapes and seasonal ingredients. Since it was so early in the fall we were lucky enough to find their Black-and-Blue, a blueberry and blackberry hard apple cider, and my favorite, Cherry Bomb, an absolutely explosive cherry and apple hard cider; but they also had Apple Pie and Harvest Apple, rich with cinnamon and nutmeg and all the things we love about fall. The tasting room is small, with a bar made of wood and corrugated steel from local reclaimed barns and chandeliers made from cut-glass cider bottles, and for $1 a taste we sampled everything they had in stock, finishing our hot apple picking September afternoon in a haze of Apple Pie and Razzmatazz Hard Ciders while downing carnitas from the farm stand next door.

Celebrating seasonal flavors, check. I might even have room for some kohlrabi, depending on what that turns out to actually be--after a quick pumpkin chai latte. 

Plant a Little Fruit Tree

When's the best time to plant an apple tree? "Twenty years ago!" jokes the middle aged suburban man with that piquant blend of cynicism, negativity, and smug Know-it-all-ism that makes his unsolicited commentary so sexy. Awesome. Glad I asked. I'll be over here feeling vaguely resentful and humiliated for bringing it up.

I just...I'd like to invite you in for coffee but I'm afraid you'll tell me about vinyl siding.

That's been the common urban wisdom for so long it's become idiomatic, so when I started reading about the amazing public food forest in Seattle I thought it sounded literally magical, something that they could only achieve in the northwest, like non-ironic Northface jacket-wearing. Food forests (large scale permaculture food gardens) have popped up all over Oregon and Washington, touting multi-layered plantings that all produce consumables--often a canopy of fruit and nut trees, an understory of berry bushes, and a forest floor of wild vegetables (thinks asparagus, squash vines, lettuces). Many are converted public parks using the existing landscaping budgets to care for vegetables instead of flowers, and providing fresh produce to anyone with the time and inclination to gather it. Thoughts of converting my front yard into a consumable paradise just like the ones in Portland and Seattle were what compelled me to buy blueberry bushes last year...but even as I was at the nursery choosing which cultivar of blueberry I was cheating in my heart, looking longingly down to the end of the aisle to where the fruit trees tempted me into their red light district of delights--all kinds of different apple, pear, pomegranate, fig, almond, pecan, quince (what's that?!) and persimmons, their tags boasting fragrant, delicious, visually spectacular fruit. Bing cherry trees winked at me with impossible promises of my absolute favorite fruit growing in luscious bunches outside my window. Lies, I thought, lies! It'd be twenty years before I ever tasted a single one of those quince, whatever that was, and we'd probably have moved by then. Why should I plant a delicious treat for the jerks that would someday live in our house? Those freeloaders, moving in on my fruit. Forget it. I had a barren dwarf meyer lemon tree in a pot already and I decided I'd satisfy myself with trying to make it bear this year. 

First stop, the library, where a faded, pastel-covered, unappealing little book jumped out at me. "Grow a Little Fruit Tree".. Wait, I HAVE A LITTLE FRUIT TREE. Yes! This book is for me. I checked it out and devoured it that afternoon. 

To my surprise, the author wasn't talking about growing dwarf or semi-dwarf fruit trees in pots despite the picture of her snipping what looked like oranges off an incredibly lush waist high tree. She was talking about growing regular (read: enormous and lawn gobbling) fruit trees in a way that makes them accessible for an ordinary schmo who has a little sunny corner of earth. Backyard orchard, on a small scale. Turned out, the tree in her picture was actually a nectarine tree that should have been fifteen feet tall, pruned down to fit perfectly in the backyard. My interest was piqued. 

Ann Ralph started her book off the same way, "when's the best time to plant a fruit tree twenty years ago" and scoffs at it. I was startled to read that Johnny Appleseed's famous trees were not, after all, still around after hundreds of years, feeding the tourists, and that fruit trees--yes Apple trees!--could bear the second year! I started to get excited. Her pruning technique kept the trees at a size that made them easy to harvest from and allowed them to be close together that a person could conceivably have one or two of every kind of fruit they wanted in a single small California lawn. (Note: NOT a green, getting watered every day lawn. I said a CALIFORNIAN lawn. Fruit trees need full sun and deep water, not a daily shallow water like a typical lawn sprinkler. Convert your lawn to the trees' watering schedule or find a different sunny spot for the trees.) At first I was skeptical about whether or not the trees would produce enough at that size. 

Bare root fruit trees appear in the nursery in Southern California in January--by early April they're already on clearance, so I took a chance and grabbed two Gala apple trees (convenient, since they were 50% off) the next time I was in the nursery. Ann Ralph said in her chapter on pruning not to be afraid and I had scoffed, right up until I took the loppers and went over to make the fatal cut. Ann expected me to cut off two thirds of my new sapling, contrary to everything I knew with positive certainty from elementary school science: big trees make big apples, and lots of them. Isn't this also an American indictment? Bigger better more? I couldn't do it. Even though I'd read her book chock full of anecdotes of people who hated the idea of the hard prune, tried it against their better judgement, and then we're blissfully happy with the results, I just couldn't bring myself to butcher that little clearance bin sapling, half price or not. The sad little wilted and browning leaves looked tenuous enough, like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Surely such a drastic measure would end it.

Luckily, there is a stronger stomach than mine in the house. After hearing me talk excitedly about this new small fruit tree method for weeks, my husband skimmed the pruning chapter and went out with the loppers. And then came back in, abashed. "Damn," he told me, laughing in surprise. "I couldn't do it either! It seems so wrong!"

We're sort of conditioned to think that a "tree" needs to either be a twenty five foot monster or a dwarf, and that a tree, like most kinds of plants grows best when left alone. Ann Ralph, an experienced nursery and backyard orchardist, says on the contrary: fruit trees only produce the way they do BECAUSE of human intervention. Left on its own a fruit tree will over produce to the extent that it breaks its own branches. An apple tree without anyone to gather the fallen fruit soon becomes infested with coddling moths that lay their eggs in the fallen apples (the iconic image of the caterpillar in the apple). Branches left unpruned become so thick the blossoms can't get enough sunlight to produce fruit and the tree shades itself into no productivity, and worst of all, only grows fruit on the very top of the twenty five foot high canopy--leaving you to struggle with a daily ladder and basket gathering ritual (which, again, you can't skip because the fallen fruit could become infested). Dwarf trees, like my little Meyer lemon, stay small enough to handle but don't produce much fruit (mine finally produced a couple of dozen lemons this year). Conversely, even a relatively small apple tree, just 12 feet tall, can set two THOUSAND apples. And remember, that's not spread out over the year, that's all within a few weeks. There's a reason your co-workers with fruit trees drag in bags of fruit and magnanimously give them away for free--an unpruned fruit tree produces too much for even a family to handle.

Ann Rakph suggests a knee high hard prune when you bring the sapling home, which for some trees may mean removing the top two thirds of the tree or more, especially cherry and fig trees that come bare root at five or six feet. She promised that even with the reduction in fruit production from the necessarily smaller number of boughs that the trees would still set around two hundred apples each and that the trees would be far more manageable, with all the fruit within reach. Still I couldn't do it. I headed off on a short weekend trip utterly disgusted with myself and feeling sick about the money we'd thrown away on the trees. We certainly didn't have room in our tiny lawn for two full sized Apple trees.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at my hotel and the garden outside my door was a tiny orchard of Granny Smith Apple trees--none more than five feet tall. Their boughs were dripping with fruit and everything was beautifully within reach. The trees looked completely healthy--nothing you'd be able to climb to someone's window maybe but beautiful. I called my husband enchanted with the fairy garden and the incredible bounty, the number of different trees all growing in such close proximity to each other and to sidewalks and patios, and how easy it was to pick.

He sent me back a picture of our newly, ruthlessly pruned, Apple trees.

Stronger stomach, like I said.

By the time I got home the trees had already recovered. The bulk of their browning leaves had been pruned and they had new leaf buds popping out with beautiful soft pale green leaves sprouting already. Within a few weeks new branches sprouted, lower and more spreading, with an open center to the tree. As soon as the worst of the summer heat passed we planted them in the front corner of our lawn, 18" apart so we could ultimately cultivate them into an espaliered fence by binding their side sprouting branches together. By winter we started having dreams of making our own hard cider and apple doughnuts. Our trees have glossy healthy leaves and spreading branches covered in buds already.

And then this January the new bareroot trees hit the nursery bins. The other advantage of keeping fruit trees small is the ability to have more than one type of fruit tree--in fact, a veritable orchard of your favorite types of fruit. Hesitantly I took a stroll through the bins to see what they had for sale. My tiny start on a tiny orchard, the two trees that stand proudly at the corner of my lawn were one thing. A continuation on that line of fruit trees would be a bold stroke towards a permanent dislocation of my lawn and a commitment to this project...I looked in the bins and saw figs (not my thing), more apple trees, peaches, apricots and almonds with chill requirements far more than San Diego could provide, and then I spotted them. In a bin all to themselves, two kinds of sweet cherry trees that pollinated each other and were a new strain that could fruit even in the low chill of inland southern California. (Did I mentioned I am absolutely a cherry fanatic? Read "Back Away from My Cherries" here to see what a cherry freak I am.)Even though the whips were six feet high I knew I could prune them back to match the height of my apple espalier fence and in a few years, I'd have cherries that didn't come from Chile but from steps outside my front door.

I could grow a little fruit tree.

Autumn in Heels--Eating Seasonally, Eating Locally

In Southern California we don't get much of an autumn so we really, I mean REALLY celebrate seasonal flavors like, ON THE FREAKING DOT of September 1st. And by celebrate seasonal flavors I mean go to Starbucks as early as they open so it'll be sort of cool enough to enjoy a hot drink and get a pumpkin spice latte. If you happen to be in luck and it's a slightly overcast day you will definitely wear your brisk Arctic polar fleece Northface zip-up jacket, because really, when are you going to have another chance to wear it and pretend we have seasons. By October the infinity scarves and Ugg boots make their appearance, probably with leggings and the thinnest long sleeved shirt you own, because, again, it's usually in the 80s all the way through the start of November.

The relentless wild Californian Infinity Scarf develops a symbiotic
relationship with its prey before ultimately devouring her.

We hear about this "Autumn" you other states talk about and it sounds awesome. A whole new wardrobe that you only use for those three months! Dressing to match the foliage of trees that somehow change their colors?! That sounds magical. In So-Cal we have cypress trees, palm trees, and lawns. When we go to pumpkin patches they typically are big parking lots that have been covered with stacked bales of hay and a bunch of straw on the ground (which crunches satisfyingly under your Ugg boots and makes you feel all Autumnal-ly) and carnival rides to disguise the fact that you're getting the very same pumpkins you could pick up at the big box grocery stores. They even come in the self-same packing boxes. It's hard for us to find authentic Autumn experiences in the land of eternal summer--so we turn to comfort foods and things flavored with cinnamon and squash. Our myriad local farm-to-table gastropubs will reinvent the butternut squash ravioli and fried squash blossoms and pumpkin cheesecake all over their seasonal menus this month. 

So yes, yes, a thousand times yes on the pumpkin spice latte (I like a nice pumpkin shot in a chai latte, myself). But truly eating seasonally, in a way that's a bit more meaningful than gingerbread cookies and butternut squash soup, is a little more time and thought consuming. 

I first read about the concept of only eating seasonal foods when I read the Barefoot Contessa's book Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients. In the preface, Ina Garten describes her impossibly glamorous foray to Paris and how difficult it was as an American, being completely used to having any ingredient under the sun eternally available, to come to terms with having to cook only with what was available. In particular, she relates her attempt to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, when she, Ina Garten of Martha's Vineyard, was used to having access to heirloom veg fed turkeys, seventeen different pumpkins of varying colors, and wild cranberries from what I imagine is her own William's-Sonoma-crafted cranberry bog--only to find out that those things are only sold frozen and in cans in France, if at all. (Because, apparently, not all Parisians enjoy eating the cuisine of English people who were making do with things they found in the woods.) Still, I appreciated her story of gradually giving in to the season and allowing her inspiration for dinner to come from what was fresh and available where she was,of learning to cook in a way that celebrated a vegetable or fruit that was at the height of its flavor. It made me think about the December bing cherries that appear in stores like a breath of summer, shiny and rosy-cheeked and whispering, "Now you can have it all, now you can really have it all..." I remember buying a big two and something pound bag for a whopping $24, trembling with anticipation and not even waiting to get to my car before popping one into my mouth, expecting to be met with a burst of sweet juice. Instead I was met by hard, joyless lies, which eventually gave way to the sour truth--there is nothing, NOTHING, worse than a December cherry. 

Why eat seasonally, when we have access to almost everything almost all the time? It's the pumpkin-spice-latte effect. Starbucks actually sells pumpkin syrup all year round. You can get pumpkin lattes literally. Any. Time. You could have a nice hot pumpkin latte and you could even get them to put a dash of cinnamon or toffee sprinkles on top in the middle of July. The fact that it's on the chalk-menu in burnt orange chalk-pen with curlicues of green like pumpkin vines around it reminds you that you haven't had one since last fall and now you NEED that pumpkin hit like an infinity scarf needs a white girl to go with it. 

If pumpkin syrup, containing zero real pumpkin and mostly made up of corn syrup, can be so good,  how amazing could fall fruits and vegetables, cooked well and at the height of their flavor, be? This table of local fall foods got me thinking about more than just pumpkin and butternut squashes. Broccoli and cauliflower are at their sweetest and least bitter in the fall; roasted carrots (cut into matchsticks, toss with melted butter, salt and pepper, cook at 375 for 30 minutes. Seriously. Stop boiling...); brussells sprouts (Salt & Cleaver in Hillcrest, San Diego has possibly THE most amazing caramelized Brussels Sprouts with bacon, balsamic vinegar, and granny smith apples); grapes (vineyards are one of the only spots for seasonal color for us in California), pears and of course apples. All these things have become mostly season-less in American grocery stores but their flavor is absolutely amazing right now. 

Eating locally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally, and here's the thing. It's very haute to eat locally and visit the farmer's markets (in San Diego, there's a farmer's market or three on every day of the week) during the summer. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can compete with the flavor of a farm stand summer strawberry. The grocery store strawberry has just had to sacrifice too much flavor in favor of the sturdiness that lets them be shipped all over the country; its a cheap truck stop cousin to the ultra sweet, delicate strawberry you can grow in your own backyard. The farm-stand strawberry is the next best thing, and at almost the same price per pound as the monstrous, tasteless version you get at the grocery store, it's ridiculous not to get the farmer's market version. Buying farm-stand strawberries keeps that strain of strawberry alive, because in case you haven't noticed, you literally cannot buy a strawberry that sweet in a plastic clamshell at a big box grocery store. They are selling (and their suppliers are growing) an entirely different product, something you almost can't, really, call a strawberry anymore because its resemblance to a real, hot from the summer sun, strawberry is so remote. Limp, tasteless, and sometimes moldy? (I'm looking at you Vons. I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) or sweet, acidic, and complex? Hurrah for biodiversity!

Except even in California the strawberry goes out of season. The guys at the farmer's market that were selling me corn and summer squash now have kohlrabi and artichokes and brussells sprouts. The orchard people don't have cherries anymore, they have figs and pluots and pears. And while figs may not be as sexy as cherries, they're still sweet and sultry and delicious--and buying that fig from a local farmer keeps them in business till cherry and strawberry season rolls around again. 

This morning I decided to drive out to Julian, the little orchard town in the mountains northeast of San Diego proper. My visit just happened to coincide with the start of the fall u-pick season (labor day weekend) and Apple-Starr Orchards had trees dripping with Bosc, Comice, and Anjou pears before you could even get out to the gala and granny smith apple orchards. I've been to several different "pumpkin patches" all over San Diego and the neighboring areas but most are not true working farms, just patches of land where someone parked a tractor for photo ops and pumpkins laid out in a row not far from the cardboard shipping crates. These orchards were true orchards, with, yes, imperfect fruit, weirdly shaped fruit, some worm and bird damage, some bruises--but these trees also held the sweetest, most bursting-with-flavor pears and crunchy apples I'd ever tasted. We munched as we picked, developing an eye for what colors each kind of apple and pear meant the ripest, sweetest fruit, using a long-handled claw-basket pole to reach the delectable fruits at the top of the tallest branches. Without a bit of cinnamon or sugar these fruits were perfectly, fantastically Autumn. 

Laden down with "peck" bags (12 pounds) we headed into town to Julian Hard Cider, a local brewery that makes cold-press cider with only local apples, champagne yeast from local grapes and seasonal ingredients. Since it was so early in the fall we were lucky enough to find their Black-and-Blue, a blueberry and blackberry hard apple cider, and my favorite, Cherry Bomb, an absolutely explosive cherry and apple hard cider; but they also had Apple Pie and Harvest Apple, rich with cinnamon and nutmeg and all the things we love about fall. The tasting room is small, with a bar made of wood and corrugated steel from local reclaimed barns and chandeliers made from cut-glass cider bottles, and for $1 a taste we sampled everything they had in stock, finishing our hot apple picking September afternoon in a haze of Apple Pie and Razzmatazz Hard Ciders while downing carnitas from the farm stand next door.

Celebrating seasonal flavors, check. I might even have room for some kohlrabi, depending on what that turns out to actually be--after a quick pumpkin chai latte.