Grand Lake Farmers Market- Berkeley, CA by Diane

August 4, 2007

I have to start out by telling you that I got so excited with baking pies at Pie Ranch last night that I left my camera behind so I don’t have any pictures from today. And Noelle will be doing a detailed entry on our day, but I wanted to quickly (well, for me) tell you about our day in the Bay Area.

We started out at the Grand Lake Farmer's Market in Oakland where Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry were hosting a cooking demonstration and promoting their book Grub. (If you haven’t checked it out yet, visit www.eatgrub.org.) Though there was a technical glitch or two, Bryant showed us how to cook Citrus Collards with Raisins. Coolest thing is later that day when we went to Tilden Park, my brother and sister-in-law joined us for our Slow Food event. Attendees were all asked to bring a dish and Debbie brought a great quinoa salad. When I asked her where she got the recipe, she said from some site called Eat Grub, or something like that, as she said. How weird was that? They had no idea I knew Anna and Bryant and was doing the farmers market with them earlier that day – and here she was with one of their recipes (which tasted fantastic!)

Sustainable Table and Food and Water Watch also spoke briefly about what we’re doing and our tour across the country. Wenonah and Noelle did their list sign up and raffle, which is always a crowd pleaser, and everyone was very interested in the bottled water issue.

After our event, we spent time wandering around the farmers market, which had a lot of local, sustainable and organic food – and the food vendors there were amazing. Thai, Himalayan, soul food, Mexican, and more – and all organic or with organic ingredients! And the peaches were out of this world.

Probably the best part of the event was walking around the market with our tour badges on (our laminated-like backstage passes….). Our bus was parked right at the edge of the market, and a lot of people stopped us to ask about the tour and what we were doing. We also were able to make some good contacts simply wandering around – and eating food, lots of fresh, local, wholesome food.

After the market, we headed out to City Slickers Farm – more on that in the next entry.

Want to read more about our events today?
Bay Area Bliss
Tilden Park
City Slicker Farm
Mission Pie
Mission Pie 2

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