Eating local food when it is in season — elitist though it may be — is a good trend for food in America, one that I hope has more staying power than most foodie fads. To that end, I try my best to try to promote that style of eating, on this blog and in my life. Farmers markets, winter squash recipes, pickling — all are inspired by the desire to enjoy the unique fruits of Minnesota. But sometimes I worry that this parochial focus threatens to cut us off from one of the greatest joys of eating: food’s ability to transport us to a place far away from home — for a fraction of the cost of air-fare.

Yesterday in Minneapolis was one of those days when one might have wanted to be somewhere else. Seventeen inches of snow in the space of a day can make you question your choice of the latitude you inhabit. Actually, the snow was pretty enough to watch if you didn’t have to drive anywhere — a situation Martha and I thought we were in until we realized our car was parked on the wrong side of the street. An hour, many shovel-loads of snow, and several good samaritans later we had the car parked safely out of the way of plows and were back inside for the rest of the day, hanging our clothes up to dry and thinking about the joys and challenges of living in the Great White North.

But as we had breakfast in the morning, leisurely eating arepas individually buttered, salted, and topped with cheese, we might as well have been in Cali, Colombia, enjoying the morning hours before the day’s heat and afternoon rains arrived. Martha’s Aunt Stella would wake us each morning with these freshly-grilled corn cakes as well as orange juice and coffee. After taking our time over breakfast it was just a short walk to Uncle Joaquín’s café — attached to the house — for a tinto and conversation with the regulars. In Minnesota yesterday morning our orange juice didn’t taste quite as fresh, and the coffee could be better (we love our Peace Coffee but you can’t beat coffee right from the source) but the taste of lightly fried arepas made the snow seem remote, something we were reading about in El Tiempo rather than something rapidly burying our car in a small white mountain.

We make arepas with Masarepa blanca that we hand-imported from Colombia but that is also available in all the Hispanic grocery stores in Minneapolis and can be ordered online. I just follow the package instructions: mix a cup of masarepa with one and a quarter cups of water and salt to taste, let the mix rest a few minutes, and then form ping-pong ball-sized balls into flat patties with very wet hands to prevent sticking (I use a side bowl of water to keep my hands hydrated). Tradition calls for these to be cooked on a parilla, a device for cooking them directly over a gas flame, but I have better luck using a non-stick skillet instead — the arepas stay together, brown more evenly, and can be cooked more than one at a time.

After spending our morning in Cali and much of our afternoon in the harsh reality of Minnesota, by evening we were ready to take another trip. Black beans and white rice is a dish enjoyed throughout the world, especially in Latin America, but for me it’s something I associate most with Cuba. Since the snow shut down most of the grocery stores early we had to rely on the supplies already in the house. Delving deep into the freezer produced a ham hock, which when combined with dried black beans, a bay leaf, half an onion, salt and water and left to cook for a few hours before being spooned over white rice makes a satisfying meal whether you’re at 45 or 23 degrees north. It never snows in Havana, so how could it be snowing when you’re enjoying soupy black beans and rice?

With a little bit of a chill in the air this morning (it’s the first time I’ve seen temperatures in the 40s in a while) the ride to the market on the Greenway was a little lonely and the market seemed a bit quiet compared to previous weeks. Still, we were able to find some colorful produce. As we’ll be heading to Michigan on Wednesday Tom was conscious not to overbuy; my only requirement was that we get something purple. And we did:

Just as we were about to leave, I spotted a bouquet of gorgeous dahlias at the market manager’s table and headed back to get one for our place. It was very difficult to choose from the many cheerful clusters Va Vang’s farm had put together! With my own bouquet peeking from my tiny backpack on the ride home, the ride wasn’t so lonely—many a passerby offered a smile or a thumbs up. The sun is out and it’s going to be a great day.

With all the positive attention the “local food movement” is getting these days, some reaction is inevitable. While I think there are fair criticisms to be leveled at locavores, a lot of what is written against eating local leaves me scratching my head. Such was my reaction when, reading a review of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, a critic discussing the practicality of local eating for non-upper-middle-class folks asked the question “After all, when was the last time you heard someone talk about the great bargain they found at a farmer’s market?”

It seems like I always get a good deal at the Midtown Farmers Market. I look forward to the summer farmers’ market season not only as a time to enjoy delicious fresh produce but also because my grocery bills will be significantly lower. You can get a lot of local vegetables for twenty bucks. This was just a gut feeling, though; I had never actually compared what I spend at the farmers’ market to what it would cost to buy the same food at the supermarket. But with my curiosity piqued by the locavore naysayers, I thought I’d try to put together some numbers.

I started by going to the Midtown Farmers’ Market on Saturday (Week 18 if you’re keeping track) and buying produce as I usually do (impulsively). I ended up with 3 Gingergold Apples, green/yellow beans, Celery still attached to its root (celeriac), sweet banana peppers, red peppers, six ears of corn, a pint of cherry tomatoes and a quart of beautiful heirloom tomatoes (I have been buying this exact tomato order from Honey Creek Farm for the past three weeks and will continue to until that sad day when there are no more tomatoes). The total for all this? $26.

For comparison, I went to two grocery stores. I chose the Wedge, our local co-op, because it is the place where I do most of my grocery shopping when the farmers’ market is not available. But since it won’t surprise anybody from the Twin Cities for me to say the Wedge is kind of expensive, I also checked out the prices at Rainbow, which is a generic, low-priced grocery store. For my readers in Michigan, Rainbow is kind of like Kroger or Meijer (not as extensive as Meijer though). The results of my shopping are summarized in the table below with the low price for each item highlighted.

I started by weighing the produce at home, since most produce is sold by weight, and calculating the price per pound at the farmers’ market based on what I paid. Next I set off for the Wedge and Rainbow to record their prices. Back at home, I calculated what the same mass of vegetables would have cost at each store (I did not use mass for corn since it is sold by the ear, and instead used the price per ear). I was able to find the exact same produce at the Wedge as I could at the farmers’ market (not all of it local, though). Rainbow was slimmer pickings, with no celeriac, parsnips, or heirloom tomatoes. For the latter, I used the price of the beefsteak tomatoes they did have.

If I had bought everything at the Wedge, my $26 dollars worth of vegetables would have cost $49.38, almost twice as much. At Rainbow, ignoring the two vegetables that were not available and substituting bland beefsteaks for sweet, delicious heirlooms I still would have spent slightly more, $27.57. And if I subtract the parsnips and celeriac from the farmers’ market total to reflect the goods available at Rainbow, the total for the farmers’ market was only $22. The farmers’ market is unequivocally cheaper than even a pretty cheap grocery store. This makes sense: at a farmers’ market you should be cutting out one or several middle men, dealing directly with the producer.

I don’t want to overstate my case: even if the raw cost of the goods is lower, there are a lot of other costs associated with shopping at the farmers’ market. It takes more time to shop at the farmers’ market; you have to pick out the goods, choosing between stalls that have similar produce. And, the market is only open on one or two days during the week, which can be inconvenient for someone with a busy work schedule. You probably still need to go to the grocery store to get additional items, more food-buying time. Then when you get home you have to clean and store the produce — I have spent more hours than I’d care to admit washing, drying and bagging greens. And then you have to know how to cook what you bought, a skill that takes time to develop.  There’s not much at the farmers’ market that is ready to eat after four minutes in the microwave (then again, there is plenty that is delicious to eat raw). It doesn’t hurt that all this shopping, storage and cooking is very fun, but it does seem to require that one be willing a fair amount of leisure time to food.

But when people talk about “getting a bargain” they’re usually just referring to the final price. By that standard, the last time I got a “great bargain” at the farmers’ market was the last time I went.

I am ready to eat Colombian food again. That was not the case when Martha and I got back from Colombia in mid July. On the flight home, somewhere over the Caribbean, I became violently ill and Martha was in the same state by the evening. Although our flu lasted less than 24 hours, eating anything made me nauseous for about a week, and thanks to the magic of taste aversions even the thought of an arepa made my stomach churn. But by last Friday I was over that and ready to reexperience Colombia through food. Where better to start than chicharrón?

If your mouth isn’t watering already, perhaps a quick translation is in order: deep-fried pork belly. That is the very fattiest part of the pig cooked in even more fat until crispy. In terms of eating pig, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Making chicharrón requires pork belly, which is not easy to find. To make things more difficult, chicharrón is made with bone-in pork belly. That is the belly with part of the ribs still attached (for a quick visual aide, run your fingers down your sides — mmm, delicious). Martha’s Aunt Stella, my mentor in all things Colombian, mentioned that they have never found this cut available in the US.

Obviously, they never went to Clancey’s. It required a special order and a wait of a couple of weeks, but last Thursday Kristin Tombers of Clancey’s was on the phone saying the pork belly was in.

Given all the fun I have breaking down chickens, I was looking forward to throwing this substantial hunk of pig on my counter and hacking away. Luckily, Kristin of Clancey’s is wiser than I and advised against taking the pork belly home in one piece. She didn’t think I was going to get very far without a cleaver and a bone-saw, but was kind enough to fire up her electric saw and cut the belly into more manageable pieces: 1″ wide by about 4″ long, and 2″ deep (that last measurement depends entirely on our friend the pig).

When Martha got home from Clancey’s with this big, white paper wrapped package it was better than Christmas and my Birthday combined; I could not wait to open it up.

The mound of white pork fat and pink pork flesh did not disappoint.

As excited as I was I had to exercise a little self-control: 8 pounds of pork belly was a good thing, but probably too much of a good thing. I kept four pounds in the fridge and split the other four pounds into three portions for freezing, frozen treats for another day.

Four pounds of pork belly is still a lot to deal with, but chicharrón requires very little prep. It was already sawed up for me by the butcher; I just added bone-deep cuts at 1″ intervals through the belly meat on every piece that still had a bone attached (some pieces had become boneless from the cutting process). I learned to do this in Colombia: the justification had something to do with — I think — preventing the meat from buckling or bending. I don’t really understand why that would matter, but cutting the pork in this way does create a number of extra edges — edges that will become crispy when deep-fried. Other than that no additional prep is needed; the meat will get salted after it leaves the oil.

Speaking of the oil, I poured an inch of vegetable oil into a couple of cold pots (if you had a really big pot, or not very much pork belly, you could do it in one). Before turning on the heat, I added the pieces of pork with bones bone-side down. The bone-in pieces have to cook the longest since bones don’t conduct heat as efficiently as flesh. After adding in the pork belly the skillet was pretty packed and my inch of oil was mostly covering the pork. I turned the heat on high and let the oil come to temperature.

Within a few minutes, a mouth-watering crackling sound was issuing from the stove and the apartment was filled with the warm smells of gently cooking pork fat. I added the boneless pieces around the time that I heard the first crackles. Someone with a powerful stove might need to reduce the heat at some point to avoid an oil fire, but since my stove is weak and pathetic I left it on high the whole time. It took 20 minutes for the pork to be crispy dark brown, and some pieces were done before others — just remove them as they look ready to a paper-towel lined tray and hit them with a shower of salt. And resist the temptation to eat the whole pile without advising your guests that dinner is ready (I couldn’t resist a few samples; had to make sure it was good!)

What can you possibly serve with chicharrón that won’t seem inadequate next to this pile of fried glory? That’s a tough question to answer, but here are the typical Colombian sides that I made:

Tostones/Tostadas/Tacadas/Fried Plantains. These deserve a post of their own: peeled green plantains (ours were actually a little too ripe — the skin was starting to yellow) are cut horizontally into 1 inch pieces. Fry these pieces in hot oil until they start to brown in spots — if you have a pot of pork-fat infused oil from frying chicharrón to use for frying, all the better. Drain the fried plantain chunks on paper towels. Then, take each chunk and place it on a cutting board. Using another cutting board or, even better, a culinary rock, smash the fried plantain piece until reasonably flat and circular — about ½” thick. With plantain pieces flattened, add them back to the oil and fry till golden. Drain and salt and serve immediately.

Ají. No tostón would be complete without some ají to put on top. Ají is actually just the word in Colombia for hot peppers (chiles) but it also refers to a whole range of sauces that are used on everything from meats to arepas to empanadas to, well, tostones. I made Stella’s version: I took half of a white onion and roughly chopped it,and then put it in a bowl with about a quarter cup of white vinegar. Apparently, the vinegar takes some of the bite out of the onion. To this mix, I added two expertly selected (by Martha) Haas avocados (in Colombia we always used much larger, green-skinned avocados) also roughly chopped, a half cup of chopped cilantro, a few dashes of Tabasco (it’s not ají without something spicy) and enough salt to be able to taste everything. The vinegar in the ají is vital in this meal for cutting through the fat that coats your mouth from the chicharrón. Beer is also very helpful in this regard. Two beers more so.

Frisoles/Frijoles/Beans. The national bean of Colombia is the cargamanto, a large red bean with white flecks; maybe the same as cranberry beans. Since I don’t have a convenient source for either kind of beans, I used red kidney beans. At least the color would be right! For the beans I followed my usual procedure: I soaked a pound of beans overnight (yeah, yeah, you don’t have to soak beans; I still think soaking reduces cooking time and on a 90 degree day any minute without the stove on is golden), then boiled them for two hours with a ham hock and an onion, split in half. To finish the beans, I cooked three minced cloves of garlic in oil until fragrant then added the cooked beans, their liquid, and the shredded ham from the hock and let them cook until they were nice and thick.

Rice. Nothing special here, just regular white rice. It seems like we ate white rice with every large meal in Colombia — it just wasn’t a complete meal without a bowl of rice on the table.

Avocados. A couple more avocados cut into slices are a great garnish for the beans.

And so it was that after a month of food aversion I dove back into the cuisine of Colombia. If you are trying to remember the merits of Colombian food, you could hardly find a better place to start than crispy, fatty chicharrón. It’s like pork candy! This opens up new possibilities to me; there are a lot of Colombian dishes I want to try to replicate, some of them not involving deep fried pork fat. But, then again, three packages of pork belly sitting in my freezer say I’m making chicharrón again.

The weather in Minneapolis has been a bit off-and-on lately. That is, spring is definitely on its way in, but after a couple of amazing 70 and 80 degree days, 50 starts to seem chilly! That just means it’s time for a little chili! We first tried this Vegetarian Chili on a Friday during Lent and really liked it. If you’re looking for some spice on a cold spring day, it’s worth a try.

As you can see my preparation was not vegan, but it could easily be made so. We topped our bowls with plain yogurt, cheese, and scallions. The trick for this meal was to attempt eating an entire bowl without using silverware. I’m not sure the “Fritos Scoops Challenge” is a healthy choice, but they were just the salty-crunch we needed (I lost… I gave in and used a spoon).

The recipe (via Whole Foods’ website)

• 2 tablespoons olive or canola oil 
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped 
• 1 large carrot, chopped 
• 1 stalk celery, chopped 
• 1 medium green bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped 
• 1 medium red bell pepper, cored, seeded and chopped 
• 3 cloves garlic, finely chopped 
• 1 to 3 tablespoons finely chopped chipotles in adobo 1 tablespoon dried oregano 
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin 
• 1 tablespoon chili powder 
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 
• 1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, with their liquid 
• 3 cups cooked red kidney beans, drained 
• 1 1/2 cups cooked black beans, drained

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onions, carrots, celery, peppers and garlic and cook for 10 to 12 minutes, until vegetables are softened but not browned. Add chipotles, oregano, cumin, chili powder and salt. Stir to blend. Add tomatoes and 4 cups water. Gently simmer over low heat, uncovered, for 45 minutes. Add beans and simmer an additional 30 minutes. Garnish individual bowls with green onions or sour cream [we used yogurt], if desired.