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Local pies go to your thighs

Posted in events, food, locavore, photo, tagged , , , , , , on October 7, 2011| 1 Comment »

Let them eat pie! The heart shaped strawberry tart took first place.

For the second year in a row, Slow Food Miami held its pie baking contest. This year there were a few changes. The event moved to the historic Barnacle House in Coconut Grove, and your ticket also got you a fried chicken dinner prepared by Sustain restaurant, with sides from Whole Foods. But the heart of the event stayed the same — to choose the best homemade pie made with local (Florida) or home grown ingredients.

Jan Anderson Treese and her grandson baked the blueberry-lemon curd-cookie crust pie.

Sixteen contestants rose to the challenge and brought unique, delicious pies filled with avocado, guava, and muscadine grape, to name a few. Jan Anderson Treese and her grandson made the lemon curd-blueberry-cookie-crust pie. “I used local eggs and lemons and butter,” she said, and sourced Florida grown blueberries. “My biggest thing is local food and fresh food. I’m a chef and I’ve preached that all my life.”

Even the judges were local. Food celebrities Lee Brian Schrager (founder of South Beach Wine & Food Festival), Hedy Goldsmith (executive pastry chef, Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink), and Ariana Kumpis (president, Les Dames d’Escoffier Miami) had the really tough job of grading pies on appearance, filling, crust, and overall creativity. And of course, judges had to keep entries to the rule of using “a main ingredient that grows in Florida.”

Blueberry-lemon curd-cookie crust pie!

In last year’s competition, some entries had used non-local main ingredients (chocolate and apple don’t grow here), and there had been some grumbling as to why those pies weren’t disqualified. This year the pendulum swung in the other direction. There was a moment of controversy about the rhubarb pie, whether the filling was local or not, and should it be disqualified. But that contestant claimed she did manage to grow rhubarb in her garden. (Who knew that rhubarb can grow this far south?)

Controversy aside, two of the the three finalists used the ever beloved mango. Third place was mango ginger, and second was mango crumb. The winner was a strawberry tart with a heart shaped crust — definitely scoring points for appearance and creativity!

All the contestants posed for a group picture with their prizes.

Each contestant received a Breville pie maker, and the three top finalists won additional kitchen appliances. After the prizes were awarded, pies were sliced up so guests could get a taste. This is always the best part of the event, to sample pies and make your own decisions on which were best. Slices and slivers of the winning strawberry pie just flew, and by the time I ambled up for a taste, it was all gone, just crumbs left in the pan.

Avocado pie (foreground) and scorecards.

Slow Food Miami did a good job with this year’s competition, which is maturing and evolving. Including lunch was smart. It kept hungry guests from mobbing the pies. The raffle was also new this year. If you bought extra tickets, you got chances to win a food basket from Whole Foods, or one of several pie makers.

And to complete the circle of eating local, two local growers and one vendor — Bee Heaven Farm, G.R.O.W. and Seriously Organic — brought fruits and veggies, sprouts, eggs and honey.

Slow Food members did a lot of work to make this event better, and it showed. Looking forward to next year!

Elke Zabinski of Seriously Organic

Thi and Bill Squire of G.R.O.W.

Sampling monstera fruit at the Bee Heaven Farm Tent, with Sara Willoughby and Margie Pikarsky.

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A little off the sides and top

Posted in farm, fruits, photo, tagged , , on October 3, 2011| 1 Comment »

Avocado grove getting trimmed.

The avocado season is over at Bee Heaven Farm. The last of the big, plump Donnie avocados got picked weeks ago. The lull between picking fruit and and blooming season (usually around January) brings off-season maintenance. Almost every year the tree trimmer comes to cut back all the avocado trees. Call it their summertime haircut, with a little off the sides and top.

Trimming happens for practical reasons. Farmer Margie Pikarsky explained, “You don’t need a tall tree to produce fruit, and you don’t get a proportionally greater harvest just because it’s tall. Harvesting a tall tree is way more labor-intensive and requires special equipment — at minimum a tall ladder, at best a cherry picker.” Avocados are picked by hand, and Margie’s pickers either climb the tree or go up an orchard ladder, which has a tripod-like leg to keep it standing up by itself. Margie added that “a shorter tree (about 15 feet) is MUCH more hurricane resistant.”

A little off the sides.

When you have a grove of 90-some trees, you need to bring in some serious cutting power. The man who trims trees showed up early one morning with a very impressive machine. Imagine a bobcat whose operator not only drives the machine but also controls an articulated arm mounted at the top. This arm can reach up or down, swing around from side to side, or turn from horizontal to vertical. At the business end of this arm is a revolving metal piece, and three spinning circular saw blades are attached to it. Those revolving blades cut through branches smoothly and easily. The whole rig looks like something Freddy Scissorhands dreamed up.

And a little off the top.

The tree trimmer drove his cutting machine up and down the shaggy rows of the avocado grove. He maneuvered the arm to first trim the sides of the rows, and then made a final pass to level the tops. Branches fell onto the safety cage of the bobcat and onto the ground. Scraggly trees transformed into huge boxy hedges, like something you might find in a giant’s formal garden.

Sadie (under tree) and Pedro (with pitchfork) gather cut branches.

Once the tree trimmer was done, there was a mess to clean up. Pedro used a pitchfork to grab and pull out cut branches that had snagged in trees. Sadie went after branches lying underneath. They were tossed on the grass in between the rows. Then Margie came with the bush hog to chew up fallen branches and turn them into coarse mulch. (A bush hog is a tractor attachment that looks and works like a large, heavy duty mower.) Margie made a few passes up and down each row, and gestured for me to step aside, but I stood my ground, taking pictures. I quickly realized that it wasn’t a good idea for me to stand off to the side as the bush hog went by. Twice I got hit by bits of flying branches, once on the foot and once on the arm. No blood lost, just a moment of surprise. (I think Margie was trying to warn me not to lose a camera — or an eye.) Lesson learned: don’t stand too close to a working brush hog!

Margie mulches branches with the brush hog.

What looks like a severe trimming is not bad for the tree. In fact, trimming keeps trees healthy and vigorous. They will grow new branches and look less and less boxy as the months go by. “Avocados flower and fruit on new growth, so trimming after harvest is finished gives them time for a couple of new growth flushes before blooming begins, thus increasing chances of a good yield next season,” Margie explained. More new growth means more fruit and more deliciousness in summer!

After the trim.

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Mystery pears

Posted in fruits, market, photo, tagged , , on September 14, 2011|

Pineapple pear

Nothing says autumn like a fresh, crisp, juicy pear — from Florida. Yes, pears grow in the northern part of our state! Farmer Ara Morenberg recently delivered five bushels of two different varieties of heritage pears from 3 Rivers Farm. Her fruit is available at several local farmers markets this week, and online from Bee Heaven Farm.

These Florida pears don’t look like your typical grocery store pear. They are shaped much like an apple, and their skin is spotted similar to an Asian pear. They stay hard when ripe, with only the slightest give. Their flesh is crisp and juicy and only slightly sweet, not meltingly soft and sugary like a Bartlett pear. In fact, these old Florida varieties are a hybrid of Asian and European pears, bred for disease resistance.

Ara recently purchased a five-acre property in Lake City, which came with an abandoned grove of heritage pear trees which hadn’t been sprayed or cared for in years. The parcel was originally part of a 100-acre orchard, and she thinks there are several varieties of pears growing on it. “I am guessing that we have Flordahome, Hood and Pineapple right now. The previous property owner said we had five to six varieties but did not know the names,” Ara wrote in an email. “The extension agent said that they could be even older than the above named varieties, and that we may never know the specific varieties other than calling them Florida pears, because the property has had pears on it for a minimum of 50 years.”

Ara (right) explains the differences between two kinds of pears to Margie (left).

Of the two varieties that came this week from Ara’s farm, Hood might not be one of them. A quick internet search revealed that Hoods are light green, do have the typical long neck, but don’t have reddish-brown spots. However they could very likely be Pineapple pears, which match having a short-necked shape and spotted color, and have a bit of tartness to their flavor. They are huge for pears, about the size of a softball.

And… they could be sand pears, or at least that’s what Farmer Margie Pikarsky was told when she was selling them at the Pies & Thighs pie contest on Saturday. She told me that “a couple of people, upon seeing them, immediately exclaimed ‘Sand pears! I grew up with these!’ ” They are called that for their gritty, hard texture. Sand pears (pyrus pyrifolia) could be any of several varieties commonly grown over 100 years ago in the old South.

Sand pear

Whatever the names and cultivars, Lake City folk call them canning pears. “What they mean by that is that they can be cooked with,” Ara explained, “and they don’t eat them fresh, but instead baked, relishes, chutneys, canned, etc.” I found an easy recipe for apple tart that could be used with sand pears instead. Or you can skip the formalities and eat them raw, and enjoy their mildly sweet flavor as is. I cut up a sand pear and put it in chicken salad, instead of using apple or celery, and it added crunch without any obvious, strong flavor.

Delicious, nameless, ancient pears of mystery and delight! You can order online no later than 3 pm on Thursday Sept 15 from Bee Heaven Farm’s Summer Store. (Pickup in person at the farm or another location.) Or, look for them at the FIU, Verde Gardens and Upper Eastside farmers markets this week and taste a bit of old Florida history for yourself.

FIU Farmers Market, Maidique Campus, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami. Wednesdays, noon to 3pm.

Homestead Harvest Market at Verde Gardens, 28000 SW 127th Ave., Homestead. Fridays 4 – 8 pm.

Upper Eastside Market, NE 79th St. and Biscayne Blvd., Miami. Saturdays 9-2 pm.

North Florida pears at Upper Eastside Farmers Market last Saturday.

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From caterpillar to chrysalis

Posted in animals, photo, tagged on September 11, 2011| 3 Comments »

Stopped by Margarita’s farm stand on Krome Avenue a couple weeks ago to get some bananas, and saw some potted rue plants off to the side. One had a handsome caterpillar on it, with bright green and yellow stripes, but I put that plant aside. Didn’t want any hitchhikers…

Sneaky giant swallowtail caterpillar browsing in rue.

Discovered the next morning that the rue plant I brought home also had a caterpillar! It was big and had black and white blotches. I knew right away that it was a giant swallowtail caterpillar, much like the one I saw back in May at Possum Trot Tropical Fruit Nursery.

The caterpillar begins its transformation into a chrysalis.

The caterpillar had a good appetite and devoured several branches of rue leaves for the next few days. (Giant swallowtail caterpillars feed only on citrus and rue leaves, so if you want them in your yard, grow rue.) Several days later the caterpillar looked different. It was hanging from a branch with what looked like two strands of monofilament connected to just below its head area, and its tail was firmly wedged against a stem. It had begun its transformation into a chrysalis! The following day the transformation was complete. Its skin had turned dark brown and rough. The chrysalis looked like a bit of a brown tree branch — protective camouflage.

Chrysalis, day 5. That knob of old wood doesn’t look like it would have anything to do with a butterfly.

I carefully clipped the branch it was attached to and put it into a large jar, and with a piece of cheesecloth on top so air could get in. The plan was to take it to a good place with lots of flowers. The giant swallowtail butterfly that would emerge would need sustenance in the form of nectar. In my neighborhood, there aren’t that many things blooming this time of year, and come to think of it, I haven’t seen any butterflies around.

Chrysalis, day 7. Released into the wild. It has acquired subtle green markings.

Farmer Margie offered to host the chrysalis, and I brought it to Bee Heaven Farm. We scouted for a good spot. It couldn’t be near the ground, where something might eat it, and it had to be close to the farm house, where it would be easy to check. Finally we picked a shrubby tree near the kitchen door, and tied the chrysalis to a branch with the cheesecloth from the jar. The butterfly is supposed to emerge after 10 to 12 days. Margie promised she would check the chrysalis twice a day. Hopefully she’ll be there with a camera when the butterfly emerges.

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Tale of two markets

Posted in food, market, photo, tagged , , , , , , on August 31, 2011|

A two foot long jakfruit split open.

Last Saturday I shopped at two markets, one small and friendly, and one big and corporate. First, I stopped by to see what was new at the Upper Eastside Market, and it was loaded with good things to eat. Who says it’s too hot to grow anything here in the summer? Over at the Nature Boyz juice stand, Clive had a couple of good sized jakfruit available. They are starting to mature this time of year. Further down the row of tents, I found locally grown okra, collards, calabaza, lemongrass, fresh akee and annona fruit. You could get callaloo and plantains from Three Sisters Farm in Redland, sweet potatoes grown on a small farm in Kendall, and loads of starfruit from a garden just down the street in Miami Shores. The eggs were from hens kept somewhere in North Miami, shhhhh! They even had bags of white and brown organic rice grown and milled in Belle Glade. Almost everything at this market is local — sourced either from Miami-Dade County or somewhere in Florida.

Local avocados grown for Uncle Matt’s.

My next stop was Whole Foods in Aventura. I’d heard there was local fruit in the stores, and wanted to see for myself. I easily spotted a nice heap of shiny and fresh green avocados carrying the Uncle Matt’s brand, and grown locally by Murray Bass. Nearby were medium sized mamey from Health and Happiness Farm, but their pints of longans had sold out.

The fruits looked pretty good, but specialty items were another story. Packets of allspice leaves and berries from Bee Heaven Farm were starting to look a little brown. Bunches of wilting garlic chives, also from Bee Heaven, were piled in a shallow basket in an open cooler. They were starting to wilt, and looked in desperate need of a mister. One shelf up were boxes of extremely perishable edible flowers from Paradise Farms that looked flat, dried up and inedible.

Overall, I have to give Whole Foods credit for making a good effort to support local growers. They are doing an OK job of sourcing local fruits this summer. But, by the looks of things, their produce people could use training on how to handle delicate specialty items. And of course, there’s just no comparison to shopping at the neighborhood farmer’s market, which has plenty of extremely fresh, locally sourced items!

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