If you didn’t know where to look, you could drive past it every day and never know it was there. Yet sandwiched between the interstate and some industrial storage lots in Phoenix, hidden from the view of the endless stream of commuters, farmer Frank Martin and his crew have created an oasis in the desert.

Last Sunday, Crooked Sky Farms hosted a farm day for its CSA members, inviting us to come out to the farm, learn how it was run, pull our own carrots from the ground, clip the last of the salad greens and the first tender artichokes, and meet the people who made it all happen.

Which is why, today, I’d like to introduce you all to the man responsible for my beautiful sunset-colored carrots.  Everyone, meet Farmer Frank.

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Vegetables are amazing. I mean, there’s kohlrabi, which looks like nothing quite so much as a purple and green UFO camouflaged with a few leaves in order to lurk in your home gardens and probe the tomatoes and eggplant undetected. There are lumpy and bumpy and spiny cucumbers, amazing zebra-striped tomatoes, tenacious snap peas, and, of course, the artichoke. The artichoke is a testament to human ingenuity, as I am still baffled as to how anyone ever figured out that the artichoke bud was edible. In addition to all the oddball shirttail relations of Veggieland, however, there are the gorgeous cousins, like these sunset-hued, violet-red carrots.

We took home a bunch each of the last two weeks from our CSA, which meant that it was definitely time for carrots for dinner at our house. My first inclination was to roast them with some of my wonderful WildTree lemon-infused grapeseed oil, salt, and maybe a bit of dill, but it turns out that the little dill babies the neighbor gave us last week are still a ways away from being bulked up enough to provide dinner. I decided to roast the carrots anyway, though with an alternate ultimate goal: a delicious, creamy carrot soup. I had been wanting to experiment more with vegan versions of creamy soups, and the carrots seemed to be just the ticket. I had made some cashew milk (just like my almond milk, but with cashews) the day before, and I still had all the thick, creamy cashew pulp in the fridge. Perfect, I thought. (Actually, it was more like, “Eh, what the hey,” but that’s sort of how I roll in ye olde kitchen.)  Carrots and cashews seemed like a wonderful combination.

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Setton Pistachio of Terra Bella, Inc. (California), has just issued a voluntary recall of some one million pounds of pistachio products after a routine test came up positive for salmonella.  Once again, the Unicyclist and I are in the thick of it, having a package of pistachios from Trader Joe’s in the cupboard.  No word yet on whether TJ’s pistachios are squeaky clean or questionable, but we’ll be waiting before eating any more.  We’ll have plenty of time to stay updated on the breaking news, since we’ll just be standing around, beating our heads against the wall in utter disbelief that this is happening again, already.  Find the updated recall list here.

I’m starting to feel like this blog could keep trucking just covering food-borne illnesses.

Does that make anyone else want to cry?

I’ve spoken about this handy guide before, but the Environmental Working Group just updated their Dirty Dozen list for 2009.  They’ve reissued their convenient pocket guide, which you can stick in your wallet and take to the grocery store to easily identify the twelve most contaminated and fifteen least contaminated fruits and vegetables.  For those who want to limit their exposure to pesticides without breaking the bank, it’s a good place to start!

Okay, so Dark Days been my Sunday post since Thanksgiving…but what the heck was it?

Well,  I first heard about the challenge accidentally—a friend of a friend mentioned it on her blog, and I decided to check it out over at Urban Hennery.

The task: cook at least one 90+% locally-grown meal a week from November through March.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard someone snark that local is the new organic.  First, let me say this: your food consumption should not be determined by fads.  For the love of all that’s holy, eat healthy food you like that doesn’t have huge collateral costs (environmental, human/labor, whatever) and hang the fads!  (Related: the next foodie that tells me that chipotle is “soooo over” is liable to get a chipotle stuffed up said foodie’s nose.)   Secondly, I believe in promoting local agriculture, like many of my readers probably do.  If you want to know what exactly that means to me, read on.

I was drawn to the challenge because it seemed like a good way to connect with some like-minded people.  Besides that, the bar was set achievably low.  Just one local meal a week?  Ha!  A cinch, I thought.  I was all over this one, not least because November through March aren’t terrible growing months for us in a lot of Arizona.  You want harsh?  Talk to me in July and August when it’s 115 and higher for weeks on end here in Phoenix. That’s when the pickins get slim.  I was in, even though I knew I had an unfair advantage thanks to my geographic location.

Yes, I was cocky going into the challenge.  However, sitting here on the other side of it, I sure can tell you a few things.

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Whether or not he made the call for action first, Michael Pollan certainly made it the most publicly.  In his open letter to the incoming president, written a month before the elections, he proposed the seemingly radical idea that the First Family consider “tear[ing] out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant[ing] in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden.”

Well, this week they done did it.

Not five acres worth, but the South Lawn has indeed become home to a garden.

Image from the White House blog at whitehouse.gov

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For several weeks, I have been ignoring the elephant in the room—at least as far as this blog is concerned. And by “elephant,” of course, I mean “dog.”  And by “dog,” of course, I mean Hippo.

But readers have been asking.  It turns out (not surprisingly) that no one wants to read about kumquats when everyone knows perfectly well that I could be posting dozens of cute puppy pictures.  Faithful readers, I will deprive you no longer.

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My Photoshop class is drawing to a close, which means I am designing some final projects.  Here’s one that was applicable to Simple Spoonful: my very own edition (or cover, anyway) of the magazine Vegetarian Times.  The photo is yours truly, taken by the Unicyclist on Farm Day 2008 at our CSA in Phoenix, Crooked Sky Farms.  Yes, I am crouched in a field of immature beets right in front of the interstate.  Urban farming, folks.  Urban farming.

Now all I have to do is make actual posts over here for each of those hypothetical features, right?

When the Unicyclist and I have special events to celebrate, our restaurant of choice is Tarbell’s here in Phoenix.  The food is superb–the ingredients are painstakingly sourced (mostly organic and local), the dishes prepared with care, and the presentation is beautiful.  Last year, probably around this time, we had an amazing parsnip soup there, which inspired this attempt for the Dark Days Challenge.  Although it wasn’t quite as good as Tarbell’s (I haven’t found any place yet that is, not even my kitchen), it was quite good.  Best of all, it’s simple, with only a few ingredients.  Give this a try before parsnips are out of season!

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It’s been around ninety the last several days, which means some of the plantlings in the garden are struggling since I haven’t put up sun shades yet.  Perhaps I should, but it’s only just barely March and I have such a hard time doing so. In any case, we had a feast of sugar snap peas this weekend.  Even Hippo liked them!

There are two enormous strawberries that are just about perfect as well.  Maybe they’ll be ready for breakfast tomorrow.  It’s so hard to wait for them after they’ve already turned red, but I know the wait is worth it.  Red is not enough. When the smell of strawberries reach me from six inches away, that’s enough.

Tomorrow?