Welcome back to CulinaryWoman! You’ll notice that our logo is now wearing a mask. Please wear a mask, and follow other coronavirus protocols. You’ll be showing respect and helping slow the pandemic until a vaccine is ready. Thank you. Lots for you this week! Let’s get started.
What It’s Like To Be A Woman Vendor At A Farmer’s Market
A few years ago, Dorie Greenspan and I toured the Hope Street Farmer’s Market In Providence, R.I.
We picked it because it was a halfway meeting point between her home in Connecticut and mine in Boston, we both love markets, and neither of us had been there before.
We saw plants, vegetables, and fresh seafood from nearby fishermen. I paused at one stand just before we left to admire its display of breads and pastries. Then, we went off for lunch.
As we were driving along Broadway Avenue, Dorie remarked, "There's that bakery you checked out at the end of market." She had spotted Seven Stars Bakery, which has four shops in Providence and elsewhere, and also sold its wares at the Hope Street market.
It struck me that I’ve seen the same pattern in a lot of places, from Ann Arbor, to Phoenix and Chicago: growers mixed in with local businesses, some of which got their start as farmer’s market vendors.
I realized something else: a goodly share of the vendors at the nation’s 8,200 farmer’s markets are women. I decided to chat with some of the ones I knew and see what their experiences have been like.
Hoosier Mama At The Market
One of the places that I first discovered at a farmer’s market was Hoosier Mama Pie Company, which has grown to two shops in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois.
I didn’t meet the owner, Paula Haney, at her market stand. That came later, after I had bought lots of her pie at the Green City Market in Chicago’s Lincoln Park.
Our mutual friend, Peter Sagal, the host of NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, threw a big bash to celebrate his 50th birthday and ordered pie for the occasion.
She actually recognized me across the crowded floor (cue “Some Enchanted Evening”) and since then, Paula has been a wonderful guide in helping me understand how culinary businesses work.
Paula says that because she was working with local farmers, it made complete sense for her to sell her pies at farmer’s markets.
“It was comparatively inexpensive to get started, and it wasn't a long term commitment, which was also very attractive,” she says. “If it hadn’t worked out, we could have quit after one season.”
She also was able to take her children with her. “My twins have been going to farmer’s markets since they were four months old,” Paula says.
Farmer’s market sales make up about 20 percent of the revenue at her Chicago bakery, and that has held up despite the COVID-19 pandemic, when her overall sales are down. She stocks the Green City stall with items baked in her Chicago store.
“Farmer’s markets built the Chicago shop. I don’t really know if we would have been successful without farmer’s markets,” she says.
The Pandemic Means Changes
In Chicago, and elsewhere, COVID-19 has meant some big changes for the markets and their vendors.
I visited the Ann Arbor market the first week it re-opened in May, after being closed for two months, and to be honest, it was a ghost town. There was only a handful of vendors, and only a few customers.
The differences were visible. There were hand-washing stations, Xs on the floor to remind customers of social distancing requirements, and the market is requiring shoppers and vendors to wear masks.
Some of the farmers complained to me that the market, which falls under our parks department, hadn’t done a very good job promoting the re-opening. However, by mid-July, things were looking much better.
All the vendors who wanted to come back had returned, the market’s assistant manager told me, even though they might be operating in smaller spaces that are meant to avoid crowding.
Individual vendors have been taking orders online for people who don’t want to walk the re-configured aisles, which now have one-way directional arrows. Customers also can do curbside pickup.
The Blueberry Lady — And A Post-Retirement Career
Carol Brooks says she’s going to have a bumper crop of her signature blueberries this summer, which she grows on her three-and-a-half acre farm.
Usually, the number she sells on summer Saturdays in July and August pays her bills for the year. Her customers aren’t only individual shoppers.
Carol sells trugs of blueberries to local organic farmers, who put them in their CSA boxes, and to bakers who put them in muffins and pies.
“People have been good to me,” she says of her fellow vendors.
Carol says she feels safe selling at the market — so much so that with her son’s help, she loads up her van around 11 pm, drives to the market’s parking lot, and sleeps there for a few hours before she sets up her stall.
One regret: a truck recently sideswiped her famous blue Volkswagen Beetle, which she had since 1998. Carol was okay, but the Beetle was totaled. You might say it was squashed like a blueberry.
On the other side of the market from Carol, you will find Ferial Rewoldt, a retired nurse who decided to channel her Lebanese cooking skills into market sales. Always a bounteous cook, she got bored once she had been home for awhile, and approached a local market to see if she’d be able to sell there.
That sparked her business preparing dishes like hummus, falafel, spinach pie and flatbreads covered with za’atar. One colorful product is her beet hummus. “I love to experiment with food, and research it and improve on it,” Ferial says.
She doesn’t sugar coat the difficulties. “It’s high risk,” she says. “It’s expensive to have to go through all the steps” required by the state to sell prepared foods.
Ferial says women thinking of trying farmer’s markets should “know exactly what you're coming into, and you have money in your pockets, and you can handle a long time without a profit.”
But, given the popularity of her lineup, Férial has figured that out.
The Gym Teacher Turned Seller
For Mary Wolfe, the Ann Arbor market is an outlet for her family’s business, Wolfe Orchard in Tipton, Mich.
Over 40 years, Wolfe had another career, as a much-liked gym teacher in the Ann Arbor public school system, often at Burns Park Elementary in my old neighborhood.
She retired in 2000 and since then has focused on selling at her family’s stand at the market, one of several in the Detroit area where you can find the orchard’s wares.
Mary discovered it can take a while for new vendors to establish themselves.
“Don’t skimp on your quality,” Mary advises people thinking about a market venture. Market shoppers don’t necessarily focus on price, “they’re there because it’s better.”
While we were talking, Mary meticulously picked through a bin of raspberries from her farm, discarding anything she felt was not perfect enough to sell. They still looked pretty good to me, as you can see in the photo.
“Even just one time, if they’re disappointed, they might decide, ‘I have my favorite vendors’” and won’t buy from her next time.
One pleasure for her is having the children she taught, and their parents, stop by her stall. And she also enjoys getting to know her other shoppers.
Says Mary: “You're always tickled to death to see a lot of your customers and have them talk to you about their personal lives.”
Think about patronizing your local markets - and make time to chat with your vendors.
CulinaryWoman Of The Week
This newsletter would not be here without Patricia Wells. In fact, she paid me the greatest compliment I’ve ever received in my culinary career.
In 2006, I had just bought an architecturally stunning condo whose kitchen needed work. I put money aside for renovations, and was sketching out the updates, when an email arrived.
Like many people, I was a huge fan of Patricia’s seminal Food Lover’s Guide to Paris. Months before, I learned Patricia offered cooking classes in Paris and Provence. I’ve been traveling to Paris since I was 16, and the idea of a cooking excursion seemed attractive.
But when I checked her site, all the dates were booked months in advance. I put myself on a waiting list and promptly forgot about it.
Now, the email told me there was one space available in a few months. I had two weeks to decide. The date just happened to fall after the Paris Motor Show, which I was scheduled to cover for The New York Times, so I could conceivably tack it onto that trip
I looked at the price and blanched. It was the same as my appliance budget. My mother, always practical, told me to forget it. My friends told me I had to do it. I took a deep breath, and sent in my deposit.
That week changed my life. Patricia teaches in an apartment converted into a cooking school. We gathered every morning for a lecture or a field trip, then we cooked at individual stations, and ate the results for lunch, with lots of wine.
The recipe and mise en place were set out at each cook top, and Patricia roamed among us, observing and correcting, like a ballet mistress in a rehearsal room.
One morning, she stopped and was watching me. I was inwardly nervous, wondering what I was doing wrong, bracing myself for her critique. Finally, she leaned forward and said softly, “You can cook.”
I lit up inside like the Eiffel Tower, glittering with lights. Patricia Wells said I can cook!
Patricia is my inspiration as a writer, and provided an experience I will never forget. I’m delighted that she is our CulinaryWoman of the Week. Merci mille fois, Madame!
A Cookbook To Know About
This week, I got to chat with chef Traci Des Jardins (another big fan of Patricia Wells). She is a two-time James Beard Award winner known for her restaurants in San Francisco. She’s also a brand ambassador for Impossible, the plant-based meat substitute. Impossible has really taken the food world by storm, but people haven’t known how to cook with it, except for burgers.
The cookbook has lots of her recipes and those from lots of other big name chefs, including Kwame Onwuachi, Michael Simon and Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. If you are eating vegan or vegetarian, it is worth checking out.
What I’m Up To
The good bacon. I wrote my first story last week for The Midwesterner. It’s a new publication launched by Jed Portman. He was previously the food editor for Garden & Gun, which focuses on the culture of the South, and his ambition is to similarly explore the Midwest.
I got to write about Nueske’s, the Wisconsin company that seeks some of the country’s best cured meats. I spoke to Tanya Nueske, third generation to run the company founded by her grandfather, Bob. Please think about subscribing to The Midwesterner and help it grow.
The best topping. I love agrodolce, the light white balsamic vinegar. For The Takeout’s Turn Off The Oven Week, I write about the way I use agrodolce to marinate seasonal fruit, like the raspberries, peaches and blackberries that are showing up at markets everywhere. It makes a wonderful host or hostess gift, and you can order it through Zingerman’s.
Weighing the options. Since the COVID outbreak, I’ve checked in regularly with Beatd Award nominated chef Michael Gulotta in New Orleans. He’s reopened his casual restaurant, MoPho, but his upscale place, Maypop, remains closed. Michael explains the options he is weighing for Maypop. I hope he can find a way to keep it going.
A good news story. Bonchon, the Korean fried chicken chain, has maneuvered its way through COVID and it is planning to expand during 2020 and 2021. I had a nice chat about Bonchon’s future with its new CEO, Flynn Dekker, and if you don’t want to order fried chicken after reading it, you don’t like fried chicken.
Farewell, John Lewis
When you visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, you come upon a lunch counter. It is from a drugstore where Black students staged sit ins across the South in the 1960s. They experienced harassment, verbal and physical abuse, sitting quietly, making their stand for integration.
One of those students was John Lewis. At 21, he was arrested for the first time at a lunch counter in Nashville. The location is right downtown and I’ve been there. I also got to hear Congresman Lewis speak in Ann Arbor in 2017, and knew I was in the presence of history.
We lost him this weekend. While the accolades poured in, I thought about him at that lunch counter, making a simple request: the right to be treated like anybody else. Let’s make good trouble, on his behalf, vote, rename the bridge, and remember him with respect.
Send me feedback and ideas!
Are there some culinary people you’d like me to talk with, or are you spotting trends I should know about? I’d love to hear directly from you. Email me at mamayn@aol.com.
Follow CulinaryWoman on Twitter @culinarywoman. I’m also @michelinemaynard on Instagram. If you let me know you’re a newsletter subscriber, I’ll be happy to follow you back. Thanks to those who have!
Feel free to share this newsletter. Stay healthy, wear a mask, and see you next Sunday.