Festival Season

Every time I write a post I look for signs of the seasons. This week, I have at times been in the dog-house because the signs of the seasons have been smeared up the walls. Ketchup-making, you see is dangerous work. You blend your tomatoes up with sugar, vinegar and spices and then boil the living daylights out of it to rid it of water, intensify the flavours and concentrate the preservatives- that is to say, the sugar and vinegar. Imagine for a moment, if you will, a bubble bursting in a gallon of ketchup which is boiling at around 230ºF. If the mental image does not resemble some of the more dramatic scenes in, say, Platoon, you’re imagining it wrong. Meanwhile Stacey, although maintaining the angelic demeanour and grace for which she is well-known, has nevertheless made it clear to me that next time I make ketchup I had better be more careful otherwise it won’t just be the ketchup which is smeared up the walls.

But it’s that time of year, frankly. This week’s activities have repeatedly filled the air with the eye-watering, nostril-scorching scent of boiling vinegar. As the result of a happy shopping accident, Thea ended up with enough packet mix to pickle enough cucumbers to stuff a yak. She therefore took one packet to use and passed the rest- enough to make a stone (that’s 14lb for US readers) of pickles- on to me. Well, frankly, I was brought up to believe that there’s only one thing to do when you have enough pickle for 14lbs of cucumbers, and that is to refuse to be intimidated by the scale of the project. The people at Avila Valley Barn were kind enough to sort us out with these pleasingly green specimens at bulk rates. They were washed, trimmed, cut into spears, packed, pickled, preserved and photographed looking something like an extraterrestrial barbershop quartet (left).

The beginning of Autumn is upon us; so testify the jars of ketchup and dill pickles, beetroot, nasturtium capers and pickled eggs in the kitchen. There will also be sandwich pickles and even more beetroot to follow if I have my way. Autumn is festival season on the coast. After Labor Day, once the tourists have gone home, the various communities start putting on their own small-scale festivals, which provide an insight into small-town American life which teeters on the cusp of being Too Much Information.

For instance, there was Pinedorado in Cambria. It’s called Pinedorado because they have pine trees there. It’s exactly that subtle. But I tell you what: Main Street, Cambria was packed with viewers on both sides for the 1.3 mile route of the parade, and it wasn’t hard to see why. As street theatre goes, it was second to none. I am reliably informed by Pinedorado veterans that it’s advisable to face hostilities fortified with more than one early-morning Bloody Mary to take the edge off the weirdness. In all fairness, the parade opened this year with the band of the 3rd Marine Air Wing (right) who really can play. They were followed by the Grand Marshall of the parade, Cambria resident Red Holloway- a saxophonist who, in his time, has played with Lionel Hampton, Billie Holliday, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, B B King, George Benson, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Aretha Franklin and Lester Young, among others. He wasn’t playing as much as presiding, in line with this year’s motto “Cambria is music to our ears.”

And there then follow the usual elements of local parades- police and firefighters, local charities and the marching bands of local schools. I found them quite impressive; as a former dedicated Band Geek at school, I dread to think what would have occurred if they’d tried to get us to march as well as play. On the other hand, sitting down allowed us to cultivate a more sophisticated, big-band sort of feel, especially as we played a good few Glen Miller numbers and wore waistcoats and bow ties, rather than the frankly panic-inducing uniforms worn by the marching band kids (left), which made them look like refugees from the cover of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. One can only assume that it’s good, character-building stuff.

 

As I say, this was all to be expected and, in all honesty, applauded; at which point the parade took an abrupt detour through the Twilight Zone. There was the truly unique performance of the  Friends of Cambria Library who gave an example of counter-marching while pushing book trolleys, which will not be easily forgotten.  Followed by local representatives of the Shriners, appearing as clowns on very small motorbikes. At ten in the morning, nursing a hangover, it was all a little difficult to grasp, but it was good clean fun and nobody got hurt. Everyone was watching with the same glazed expression of mild amusement and having a good chuckle at the people who’d been good enough sports to put the thing on.

 

Contrast this with the Morro Bay Avocado and Margarita Festival, which was held this past weekend. Far be it from me to criticise, but I would question the competence of the event’s organisers to arrange festivities within the confines of an establishment dedicated to the production of beer, ale, lager and stout. To get in, you had to join one of three lines to buy event tickets, and then join a fourth which cut across the other three in order to get in. The implication on the outside was that you needed to pay for what you wanted in advance by buying tickets which you would then hand over to traders inside as and when you wanted to buy things. In fact, very few traders inside could accept tickets, and if, like us, you had converted all your dollars to tickets, there was no way of laying hands on cash once inside. It was billed as the Avocado and Margarita festival, but the avocado farmers inside couldn’t accept tickets, much to their apparent annoyance, and the margaritas didn’t deserve billing. There was a single margarita stand. Hardly festive.

 

The purpose of the thing was to promote local avocado growers, and I think there are worse causes to champion. It’s superb to have good avocados which haven’t been shipped halfway round the world at vast economic and environmental cost. There was an awful lot of information about the avocado and the avocado farming industry. For instance, did you know that at www.avocadosource.com there are databases such as Avocado People (“Who’s who in the avocado world”) and selected articles from Subtropical Fruit News? Me neither. Either way, the whole thing smacked of trying too hard to do something which would be worthwhile doing properly. There wasn’t enough avocado. There wasn’t enough margarita. I didn’t need a marble pestle-and-mortar or an NFL t-shirt, and I failed to make the connection between those stalls and the avocado-and-margarita scene. There’s no stopping me eating avocados, I dare say, but I’ll not be queuing up to get into the “festival” next year.

 

At time of writing, I am looking forward to another festival in the epicentre of Central Coast quirkiness, Cambria. Coming up fast is the Cambria Scarecrow and Harvest Festival. This, I’m sure you will appreciate, is going to be charming, funny, and more than a little weird. For you, I will endure motorcycling clowns and scarecrows to boot. I’ll make sure the photos get uploaded.

Market Research

 

I have mentioned in the past just how special San Luis Obispo Farmers’ Market is, but I’ve never gone into depth. Ironically, at the time I wrote that post I was procrastinating during the grand Packing Of The Possessions, prior to moving to the USA, and fantasising about the things I was longing to do once I got here. That was on April 27th. Today, on Monday 29th August, a man in a van is going to bring the very same stuff (minus one German pickling jar which was a casualty of transit) to my door in Cayucos, and I can write to you and tell you all about the Farmers’ Market at some length.

My mother, incidentally, says that these blog posts are too long. She hasn’t, she says, got time to read 2,000 words a fortnight. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy reading them, she tells me, it’s just that I tend to go on a bit, apparently. So, bearing this in mind because a wise boy always listens to what his mother says (even if he chooses, on later reflection, to disregard whatever gibberish it was she came out with on the spot) this is going to be something of a photo-rich, word-poor blog post. In other words, Mother dear, you can just look at the pretty pictures.

The weekly market in SLO began as a response, more or less, to what we today call anti-social behaviour. In the late 70s and early 80s, Thursday night became the late-opening night for shops in downtown San Luis. This in turn attracted large numbers of teens cruising in cars. For some reason, large numbers of young people doing apparently innocuous things like “wearing hoodies”, “talking to each other”, “listening to music” and, here in America where 16-year-olds can hold a license, “driving on the road in cars” are incredibly threatening to those over the age of 21. I can’t explain it; I’ve been there myself- felt intimidated by groups of kids who seem to be doing nothing even vaguely reprehensible at all. My feet speed up all by themselves, and my brain, perhaps troubled by the thought that they appear to be having a better time than I am, just sits there and feels like an idiot. Either way, trade was suffering as the teens put people off coming downtown to spend actual money. After cars were banned on Thursdays, the farmers’ market sprang up in 1983 as a way of attracting people downtown without their cars.

The best part of three decades has passed since then, and the significance of SLO Farmers’ Market, as well as its counterparts elsewhere, has increased beyond the original intentions of the people who started them. I doubt if, in 1983, the San Luis Obispo Downtown Association had the direct aim of attracting the attention of the LA Times and the New York Times. Its Facebook page has over 7,600 fans at time of writing.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the farmers’ market represents a whole range of positive influences on both the local area and the world at large. If you buy at Farmers’ Market, you know that you haven’t paid for more food miles than necessary. You also know that someone is supporting the people who farm the fields you drive past every day. You know that you’re supporting locally owned restaurants. You know that you’re part of a local tradition.

You can buy the ugly-duckling fruit and veg which a buyer for a big supermarket chain would reject. Think of the water, fertiliser, pesticides and hard work which go into producing the tomatoes which will never be bought up by supermarkets because they don’t meet the aesthetic ideal. As if that matters once you’ve blended them up and put them on pasta.

You live in tune with the seasons. This is important to do, not for any flowers-in-your-hair reason, but for reasons like importing Peruvian asparagus to Britain by air in December is stupid when it’s available in Britain in due course in the Spring. If jet emissions contribute to climate change, and polar pack ice melts earlier so the krill, which is eaten by Atlantic cod, can’t breed as successfully, you have to put up with Pollack in your fish fingers because cod’s so expensive. It’s not the only reason- it’s one of many.

You know what’s seasonal by the price. Artichokes are getting their second wind just about now, but the main season has been and gone, avocados are becoming less expensive as the weeks pass, squash and courgettes and tomatoes have been quite cheap for quite some time now. Cayucos oranges are appearing. Peppers are getting there, but aren’t at their peak quite yet. You eat food when it’s at its best, when it’s ripest, when it’s cheapest, and when it does the least harm. What’s not to like?

Rant over; enjoy the photos. I took them this past Thursday (25th August). It was a typically glorious night at Farmers’.

 

Right: Trade is not allowed until the bell goes after 6pm, but barbecue crews from local restaurants turn up around 5pm, while Higuera is still quiet, to get the fires lit and the ribs tender.

 

 

 

 

 

Below: Some items look from a distance, a bit on the British side, until you get a closer look at the label. The jam isn’t quite what you’d expect (left)  and the pies (right) are slightly more exotic than usual too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Above: Salty and Sweet. Olives from Home Maid Italian Markets and fresh strawberries and cream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above, Left and Right:
Oranges and berries in season. Golden Raspberries are, I am told, sweeter than red ones.

 

 

 

Above: Colour abounds….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above and Right: … and the rainbows come in many forms; Clockwise from top left: Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory; G. Brothers Kettle Corn; Central Coast GALA.

 

 

 

 

 

The market is a well-used forum for those raising awareness of various issues, from a Making Strides, a colourful stall raising awareness of issues associated with breast cancer (right) to SLO the Stigma, a stall which uses the not-immediately-obvious combination of selling carnivorous plants with a campaign against the social stigmatisation of those suffering from mental illness (left), to those issues you didn’t know were issues (below). Click photos for links.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above and Left: Bubblegum Alley.

This alley leads off Higuera, the street where the market takes place. Love it or hate it, it’s visually impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right: There are always musical acts at the intersections on Higuera, from up-and-coming local artists, to military bands, to trad. jazz, to emo rock, to those who know that there was never enough accordion in Rock n’ Roll the first time around. Details are published in advance on the market’s Facebook page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The street food is mostly pretty amazing. A typically eclectic blend of various cultures influence the food on sale, but there is an awful lot of what you have to call Californian food on sale.

Top left; freshly-grilled corn; Top right: churros baking.
Bottom left: Tostada salad; Bottom right: The Rib Line BBQ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it. For a couple of hours every week, life is good, evidenced by the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the market. The strongest smell is corn grilling over wood or gas; the air is filled mainly by the chatter of shoppers. It looks like a palette of a hundred thousand colours, in a million different degrees of light and shade. What it tastes like, I suppose, is up to you.