Some days are baking days, some are not.

With, "All apologies" to Amazon Kindle, artists Ashley & Little, and proof in the power of advertising, I can't get the Kindle song out of my mind.

Yesterday I spent the afternoon baking - proofing a blackberry custard tart recipe for the store. The whole time, I hear, "Bake Me Away..." on loop in my head.

I think this was an autonomic reaction to baking with 3 Jack Russell Terriers under my feet - I needed a stress diversion. You can't bake when you're stressed. Ever seen a Pastry Line Cook? "Bake Me Away!"

This blog entry is a shout out to home designers. Sure, I get the, "Be in your kitchen and be able to talk to your guests thing." However, whomever came up with the idea of an open plan kitchen/family room/dining room combo clearly does not use the kitchen 'area' very often! Or they don't have dogs/cats, kids, or curious spouses. File this under, "What we want is not what we need!"

So, before I hang up my apron, home designers, please, either start a new trend for 'private' kitchens, or come up with a solution for us to be able to close them off.

Go ahead, "Bake My Day!"

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Sunday morning. Early. Left the family sleeping in a bed of dog hair and slipped out to grab a coffee, do some food shopping, prep us some juices, check on the web stats and get home before I'm missed, and the heat of the day hits (or at least gets above the 80F it was at 6am). Ughh...

All of this made me realize, despite what y'all may think, being a food market owner is not all world travel and glamour. It's a lot of wild ride, rollercoastin', fun, persistent, put your big boy pants on hard work. The bennies are rare, but one I treasure, I get to food shop without a line! I can slip into our juice bar and juice up some Valencias and make it home with fresh organic O.J.. All just in time for a family breakfast with the goodies I've hit up from the store: produce, bread, milk, eggs, meats, wild Alaskan Sockeye Salmon. Yum!

So, taking a break from the shopping, I check our web stats while (st) catching up on past episodes of The Splendid Table. A few weeks back, host Lynne Rossetto Kasper talked with Anthony Bourdain asking him the question we love as listeners, but if asked ourselves are not quite sure if etiquette, business concerns, or don't pee in your own backyard issues will come back to bite us. Let there be no metaphor that go un-mixed!

So, back to Bourdain. In an uncomfortable, but guilty pleasure question (thank you Splendid Table, good interview!), Chef Bourdain was asked what he thought of his peers? An impressive laundry list! I put my coffee down, thinking, "This is going to be good!" It was. Good, that is. Diplomatic, inciteful, and honest. Considerate. Even appreciative comes to mind. Watered down, no. My favorite was the question, followed by a long pause, regarding the provocative, elegant, impactful, Chef Alice Waters. I believe the words, "Shoot yourself in the foot" were used! The discussion regarded Chef Waters' reply when asked if eating organic produce was feasible for all people, because of the, "Expense?" For example, organic grapes at $6 a lb. versus conventional at $2 a lb less. Don't get me started on "expense" - it's my day off and I need to stay calm! Chef Waters apparent comment was that we could cut down our cell phone minutes and eat better. Wow - you go, there!

My first thought was, "Where are you shopping?" Organic Grapes at $6 a lb. ? Clearly not Good For You Market !

My second thought was that I have a love-hate relationship with my cellphone, but this is not a discussion about the evils of cell phones, nor bashing those who do (love their cell phone). It's about prioritizing resources. Sometimes tact just doesn't cut it!

Thank you Splendid Table. Thank you Chef Bourdain and Chef Waters. Your work, and comments are much appreciated by this food market owner. Good For You, Good For Us All!

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My maternal Grandmother was quite a character. It's been 28 years since she passed, but I can still picture her rolling down her stockings on returning from a shopping trip. I can still hear her laugh: deep, unabashed, guttural, sudden. Nana was a pure delight for us kids, full of eccentric ways of doing things her way, which I'm sure was frustrating for those one generation removed, but for us grandkids, pure joy. Nana used a saying, once quite popular in the UK, "She's all furcoat and no knickers." I use it to this day, and it's been 17 years since I moved to the US. This idiom is used to denote someone putting on airs and graces, a social climber if you will. It sounds a bit mean spirited, but my grandmother was not a mean person. I took this to mean more of a self-effacing way of saying, "Pride comes before a fall." Or, don't let your aspirations wander further than your attention!

Why did I think of this today? Sometimes when I'm using social media to highlight a new product we've got at the store, I have to be economical with words. Twitter enforces 149 characters, so I link up my Twitter to my Facebook and I'm forced to be brief there also. So, when I post an update on a new product I love that happens to be sourced from Italy, I think of my Nana and her saying, and wonder if she'd remind me to put undergarments on with my (faux) fur coat when referring to, "Artisan this," and "Imported that?" I remember Nana's caution about airs and graces and laugh to myself and post anyway. You see, for me, it's not about pretension when it comes to food and ingredients. It's about finding awesome, authentic foods, and being tickled pink that I get the opportunity to share them with my (adopted) home community.

One hint of mean-spirited exclusivity is a sure fire way to get on my goat, idiomatically speaking. Come one, come all, the imported, the artisan, the grow it yourself, dirt under your fingernails veggies, come on in. You're welcome. Now where did I put those knickers?

Here's a link to a photo I posted to our Facebook Group: Beach Savvies. It is of ants enjoying yum artisan pastries and imported Italian Marmellata Extra di Mandarini on china from the British Airways First Class cabin. That's orange marmalade to the lady in the fur coat! Salute. Grub up!

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=4933513&id=327062746569

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I was recently asked why I blog? The fame? The accolades? The enormous amount of business the blog brings to my store? Yeah right, about that day job?

This blog is about, "We Know Yum! Musings, reviews, tips, hints on: food, recipes, articles, green living, organic gardening and farming from Good For You Market and Farm, Lewes, DE." It's mostly about food, since, well, that's what I mostly do! It's my experience of making a business out of my interests, and out of necessity. I could not find authentic food and ingredients at the beach. I started a 'natural food store,' and it evolved into a good, food market. Gourmet schmourmet. It's food after all, let's not take things too seriously, but let's get it right, food should taste like it should taste! That being said, if I buy cheddar cheese, I want to know it's a good cheddar cheese. "American Cheese" is not cheese. Cheeses that are made in America are American Cheese, and we in America have many fine artisan cheese. In fact we have a cheese revolution under way in the USA. I digress. If my cooking club has dealt me the appetizer course for Italian American Heritage month (October, by the way!), then I want to know where to get good Mozzarella, and do I need Perle, Bocconcini, or Ciliegine? What about Buffalo Mozzarella? Is it made in Buffalo, NY? Chiogga Beets, Broccoli Rabe, Fennel? Where do I get them and what do I do with them?

I may Know Yum and own/operate/manage a food market, but at the end of the day, I have the same learning curve and time pressures we all have. I love to eat, I'm insatiably curious about the world around me. I'm fascinated by technique. I love to write - it helps me process what I'm doing, sort through what I'm learning, figure out where I need to prioritize available time to delve deeper. It keeps me on my toes and keeps inertia at bay. I thrive on being busy and having lots on the go at once. Blogging is a way of me to categorize, preserve, make sense, share what I've learnt in the hope that it may stimulate others to try, or share their experiences.

We all eat, right? Life's too short to eat bad, inauthentic food. I want my food to be as authentic as possible. Take cheese for example. I find the more I learn of fine cheeses, paradoxically, the less quantity I eat. I'm learning to appreciate subtlelties in flavor that are just lost if I over do it.

Right now I'm on a wine and a Spanish food kick (not necessarily Spanish wines). I've had enough of the confusion over 'varietals' and the financial/quality crap shoot when buying wine. If the store couldn't tell me, I decided to educate myself so I know the questions to ask at the wine store. I picked Pinot Noir to start with. I'm having so much fun learning about where the Pinot Noir grape is grown, and how local climate affects the resulting wine. Now I understand why Pinot Noir seems to average a higher price than other wines: it's a fussy grape, low yielding and difficult to grow. So if I'm to spend $50 on a bottle, I want to know what makes it a $50 bottle and why that's different from the average of $25 a bottle. My reading tells me that New Zealand and Oregon have similar climates so their Pinot Noirs are very similar. So, I should notice that, right if I buy a bottle of each region? I should notice the similarity between a French Pinot (don't even get me started on the Bordeaux path - oy!) and a Californian? Why is that New York state grapes (Pinot Noir included) have a higher level of resveratrol than others? I find that fascinating. I'm a complete food and beverage geek!

G4U Market is entering the world of Charcuterie (separate blog entry on that one!). No Charcuterie department worth its salt (pun intended!), would not carry the world's finest cured hams: Jamón Ibérico and Proscuitto. IMHO, Jamón Ibérico is the superior, but hey, Proscuitto - not too shabby either. If you're going to pay the premium price that Jamón Ibérico commands, then you'd better know you're in good hands, right? You want your deli guy/gal to know when, where, and how. You want a story with your ham, Ma'am? Spain, I'm learning, is a fascinating country, with no one identifying cuisine. Geographical and historical concerns have painted a palette of regional food culture. The impact of geography and religious groups on Spanish cuisine is a fascinating story. I'm fortunate to be in the position of researching this for a living (hopefully!).

I'm fascinated by what I'm discovering and I couldn't imagine someone else wouldn't be also. QED - blog. How much cured Jamón Ibérico does one need to round out a stew? How much pushes a salad over into a taste explosion? Can you really taste the difference between the three grades (and prices) of Jamón Ibérico? There's Jamón Ibérico Bellota (with the Black Iberian Pig foraging in the wild for black acorns), Jamón Ibérico de Recebo (pastured pigs fed a mix of grain and acorns), and Jamón Ibérico de Cebo (pastured pigs fed only on grain). When shopping around for spices for my store, I've enjoyed a fascinating diversion into the world of Moorish Spain. Andalusian cuisine is much the richer for cumin, coriander, nutmeg, and of course, saffron. Where would the rest of the world be for Saffron were it not for La Mancha? Did you realize the majority of the world's garlic comes from La Mancha (sorry China!). I also learned this week of the exchange of crops during Columbus' Voyages of Discovery. Where would Spanish cuisine be without the early patronage of Queen Isabella? We don't know much of Spanish cuisine in the USA. Consider, however, where our popular dishes would be had Columbus landed much further north. We might be living in a land of Spanish delis instead of Italian!

So, in a world of 24x7 google and smart phones, why do I add my voice to the mix?

Short answer. I blog because I want to share the yum! I'm fascinated by technique and all things food and drink. In life, anything I do, I want to do it well, and want it to be authentic. As a retailer and grower if I'm to carry a product, or grow a variety of vegetable, I want to know everything I can about it. I enjoy cooking because it's a hobby, it's makes me better at my job, it calms me, and it feeds my family (and occasionally my staff and customers!).

Longer answer. At the risk of hubris, it's my voice. This is my experience - grown out of my particular circumstances - I own a specialty food market in an area of the country quite some distance from the choices urban areas typically bring. I want to know that in this area, if I need saffron, I can find it. Decent cheeses, bread, oils, vinegars. Got that covered. I want to be comfortable that the product is fairly priced and works for my budget. I want to know that the person selling it to me knows what to do with it and how much to use, how long it stores.

So, is the blog a shameless plug for my business? Of course, I need to earn a living! I'm trying to earn a living doing what I love. However, you can listen to my radio ads if you're interested purely in an ad for my business. This blog is about sharing my experiences. There's a reason the header photo is of me slugging the wine in my home kitchen and not me in the store. My experience is dualistic: retailer and consumer. I take the same approach to learning about food whatever side of the retail counter I'm standing on - retail buyer or consumer. So, as I dabble and learn, I share along the way. It's not about what I'm not (I'm not a professional chef, for example). It's about what I'm learning. For example, if having the appropriate knife and cutting technique helps me in the kitchen, then I learn knife skills. Or is that, life skills?

Some people have complained to me that my blog entries can be too long. I wasn't aware of a mandate. Some are short, some long. I don't editorialize in the way that I'm forced to when covering the same material for say, a magazine article. My blog is my opinion on my experiences. I hope it is of value to someone.

Experiment with Yum. Be fearless. Be curious. Curious people are so stimulating to be around.

Now, back to the annual Matanza in La Mancha. Poor pig. Thank you for your gift. I hope it was quick and painless.

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I wanted to post something to show we are hard at work. Here's our new logo. In my opinion, you can see in the logo our evolution from our humble, crunchy origins into the fine food market we are destined to become. We are well on our way. Yum is a journey not a destination to go all philosphical on you. I can't wait until we launch the new website and able to complete our move to our (as yet), 'undisclosed location.' You wait until you see the new online store and 'bricks and mortar' store. Then you'll appreciate the fine work Fine Line are doing for Good For You Market, it will all fall into context!

By the way, my blog template puts the orange borders around the logos, they are not part of the logo.











The new logo.









The old logo. Not too shabby, but we've outgrown it.

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What's up? After I moved to the States, it took me years to learn how to answer that friendly question. Colleagues would glare at me as I stood stammering, blushing, or simply walked away in defeat. "Fine thank you" became my muttered reply. I figured I was being asked, "How are you?" Or, "How are things today?" Turns out, like many sayings, it can mean whatever you want it to mean. I settle for, "What's been going on since we last spoke?" The British just say, succintly, "How are you?" Or, as my grandmother said, "'ubby?" Short for "How be (you doing today)?"

So, what's up? Can't say I've been doing much cooking of late, but I've sure been curious! The busyness of being in business has kept me busy, busier than my perennially busy Mother-in-law! Busier than the sweatshop apiary that keeps me in local honey! That's a JOKE Rick - I know Buzzter and the crew get meal breaks.

I'm busy planning our move to our, new 'undisclosed location.' I'm busy working with the fine guys at http://www.finelinewebsites.com/ getting our web site redesigned and relaunched. I'm busy being our Produce Manager, Store Manager, HR, IT, and Marketing departments, and well, busy 'Knowing Yum!' I'm having fun right now learning all about grape varietals with the objective of understanding food pairings better and reducing the crap shoot that buying wine often is. I'm finding out all sorts of (often confusing) information. Did you know the French were the first to sequence the genome of a fruit? It was the Pinot Noir grape, sequenced in August, 2007. C'est vrai! Je l'ai lu sur l'Internet! It's true. I read it on the Internet!

Earth shattering news. I cleaned out the home fridge this week. I cant stop looking at it. I'm marvelling at how the inside of a fridge can go from looking like it got rolled downhill to a model home in one afternoon. It made me think. E-mail me photos of the inside of your fridge goodforu@comcast.net For any that, a) Make me laugh or b) Impress me AND in either case get chosen for publication in Good For You Market's E-News, "The Grapevine," I will reward you with a $5 Green Buck coin good for redemption in store at Good For You Market.


Oh, to cue, the store calls, busy is a good thing. Good For You!

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It's Sunday. My day off. My 'breakfast day.' Faithful spouse just insisted I wasn't eating oatmeal because, "Oatmeal has milk in it." Oatmeal confuses everyone, customers and staff alike get everything mixed up: Oatmeal, Scottish Oatmeal, Irish Oatmeal, Oat Bran, Rolled Oats, Steel Cut Oats, Groats... Jimmy Olson hits the streets to find out the deal on oats and oatmeal. Ready Brek, Go!

Rolled, Steel Cut, Oatmeal, Oat Bran, and Oat Flour. Did you notice how many bath and body products have oats in them? Also many brands of pet food contain oats. Ever wonder why?

Oats (Avena sativa) are classed as a cereal grain. They are grown for their edible seed with the foliage, and roots may be used by farmers, and home gardeners to provide a useful weed control barrier and also as, “Green Manure” for soil conditioning. Oat straw is reknowned as a horse bedding due to its softness.

Oats originated as a weed growing among the earlier domesticated cereal grain crops – wheat and barley in the fertile crescent of the Near East – the so called, “Cradle Of Civilization” of Mesopotamia and the Levant. Oat weed was well suited to the cooler, wetter climates westwards into Europe, so much so that by the Bronze age, as wheat and barley spread into Europe, Oat was also well established as a domesticated cereal. Today Oats grow best in temperate climates such as the Baltic area of Russia, Northwest Europe, Eastern Canada, Northeast USA, and Southeast Australia. and the North-eastern USA. Great Britian and Ireland have a particularly long love affair with the Oat. English writer, Samuel Johnson satirized the English propensity to feed oats to their animals over the Scottish propensity for human consumption when he wrote in his 1755 Dictionary Of The English Language, oat is, “A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.” Perhaps in response to this, England was the first country to establish an oat bread factory in 1899. Oat bread, oat cakes, and porridge oats were a common breakfast food in my own household growing up. Oats are commonly used in Europe as a soup or sauce thickener. As an adult I particularly enjoy a glass of Oatmeal Stout beer, whichever country I may be in! Although if in Latin America, please sample the local Chicha de Avena – a popular chilled sweetened beverage originating in Ecuador, and made of oats and milk. My favorite commercial non-dairy ‘milk’ is the Pacific brand of Vanilla Oat milk.

After harvest, oats are processed, separating the outer insoluble hull from the grain – the ‘groat.’ The discarded hull can be processed into animal feed, or used as a biofuel.

The unsized groats are treated with heat and mositure to stablize the oil in the oat, preventing it turning rancid. The groats are then broken by milling and separated based on size into whole oat groats, and three sizes of steel cut groats - coarse, medium, and fine steel cut groats.

The three final milled products are oat flakes (rolled oats), oat bran, and oat flour. Oat flakes are made from the whole oat groats. You’ll notice the flattened rolled oats in packaged cereals and on top of oat breads. Steel cut groats are used to make oat bran, and oat flour. What we think of as oatmeal is another product of steel cut groats. The three size grades of oat groats (coarse, medium, and fine) produce instant, baby, and quick rolled oats respectively. Quick Rolled Oats (“Oatmeal”) are so called because the rolled oat produced from fine steelcut groats absorb liquid quicker and thus produces oatmeal quicker. Is all this as clear as porridge?

Oat bran is the outer part of the oat groat separated from the inner part (the endosperm) as discussed above. The endosperm is filtered from the bran and further milled to create a fine debranned oat flour.

There are two types of oat flour: debranned and whole oat. Debranned oat flour is produced as discussed above. Whole oat flour is produced directly from the whole oat groats before being steel cut and before having the outer bran removed. The groats are sent to a separate milling unit where they are repeatedly ground and sifted into a fine flour containing the ground bran also. Such flour should always be kept chilled. The oil in the bran will go rancid quickly even when slightly heat treated during processing.

Oats are considered, “Health Food,” but don’t let that put you off! Oats are high in iron, thiamine, and soluble fiber and thought to reduce LDL – the ‘bad’ cholesterol. Oats have the highest protein content of any grain. Oats are the only grain to contain Avenalin, or Avenin - a soluble prolamine protein. It is this prolamine group of proteins that people with Ceoliac disease are ‘allergic’ to, causing extreme digestive distress and associated health issues. Together, the prolamine proteins are classified as, “Gluten.” We see many foods labeled as, “Gluten Free.” This really means there are no ingredients containing this group of proteins, or that any part of their production has come into contact with prolamines. Oats lack many of the prolamine proteins that occur in other cereal grains such as wheat and barley. The jury is out on whether or not those with Ceoliac disease can consume oats. Specifically, which prolamine proteins are Ceoliacs allergic to? There is a school of thought that oats are safe and that the reactions some people experience are due to cross-contamination from wheat and barley. Please consult a qualified medical practitioner when making dietary decisions.

So, back to the personal care products hinted to above. Oats have been shown to help heal dry, itchy skin. Oat grains and straw appear in shampoos, dusting powders, moisturizers, cleansing bars, deodorants, and more. If you have a persistent flaky, itchy skin, or insect bites, grind rolled oats in a blender to make fine oatmeal. Suspend the oatmeal in a cheesecloth bag on the faucet while drawing a bath. Lie back and sip a cup of warm oat milk!

Time for a cup of tea and some oaties!

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