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Slick.

There are farm­ers’ mar­kets that are basi­cally foodie self-esteem pol­ish­ers, and mar­kets that aren’t (I’d link to the South Side Mar­ket in Fort Wayne here, but it’s so “aren’t” it doesn’t even have a web­site). Detroit’s East­ern Mar­ket is some­where in between. The long win­ter pre­cludes locally grown pro­duce much of the year, but there’s a major pro­duce hub in the city, and lots of whole­salers use the mar­ket to offload stuff that’s just a lit­tle too close to its sell-by date, so even in the dead of win­ter you can get some bar­gains on grapefruit.

But there’s always a healthy per­cent­age of mom-and-pop out­fits, and a few weeks ago I paused at one in the furthest-flung shed, where a portly Lebanese man stood behind a booth offer­ing “extra extra vir­gin olive oil.”

“Extra extra vir­gin?” I said. “I spend all this time learn­ing olive oil grad­ing, and now there’s a new one?” He wasn’t amused. “Try some,” he said, ges­tur­ing to a bas­ket of oil-soaked crou­tons. I told him no and asked what made it so vir­ginal. “I make it here from my family’s olive trees, in Lebanon,” he said. “It is the best.”

I thought for a moment about how a guy would go about import­ing just his family’s per­sonal olives, what sort of bor­der inspec­tion would be involved, the prob­lems of trans­port­ing del­i­cate pro­duce halfway around the world, etc. Then I looked at the bot­tles. It was a cold morn­ing, and the oil had con­gealed in the bot­tles to a murky green glop. “You take it home, it warms up, it is fine,” he said. No sales­man­ship, just plain state­ments and a cer­tain rock-solid dig­nity. This is why I stay out of ani­mal shel­ters; I would select all the one-eyed, three-legged pup­pies and kit­tens. It was $15 for a liter. What the hell.

I took it home and put it on the shelf. Four hours later, the glop had dis­eap­peared, and the oil was a lovely yellow-green. I tipped a lit­tle into a saucer. Wait­ers and food­ies are always gassing on about olive oil — how you can cook with this grade and not that one, how this one is fruity and this one is acidic, how the Ital­ian prod­uct dif­fers from the Span­ish, etc. — but I con­fess I’ve never been able to taste huge dif­fer­ences in them, unless the bot­tle had been spiked with pep­per­corns and gar­lic. I buy 90 per­cent of my olive oil from Costco, and rely on the vine­gar to carry the day on the salad. It just so hap­pened, this day, I had a loaf of fresh Ital­ian bread. Broke off a piece, dipped it in the oil, and…

Well. My mouth went to Lebanon for a few moments. It wasn’t Hezbollah’s Lebanon, but a sunny place in the coun­try, with a view of the ancient hills. I rested in the shade of a tree with a gnarled trunk as big around as a 200-year-old oak, but it was still warm enough that the breeze was like breath, and…

Blinked. Back in Michi­gan. Friends, that was some butt-kicking olive oil. I actu­ally licked the saucer. I’ve heard that Mediter­ranean fish­er­man some­times begin their day with a shot­glass of the stuff, instead of cof­fee. I’m going to start doing that. Or maybe pour­ing it on my cereal.

I men­tion this because? Not sure why. I have to go make tiramisu in a few min­utes — Bossy’s com­ing to Detroit tonight — and I need to get in a food head. Not that I will be putting olive oil in my tiramisu, mind you. It’s just fun to think about food on a Friday.

It beats think­ing about pol­i­tics, but Bryant Gum­bel offered an in-between stop this week. On his HBO “Real Sports” show, he pro­filed Barack Obama, bas­ket­ball player, fea­tur­ing footage of Obama play­ing then (in Hawaii) and now (with some friends, in long Adi­das exer­cise pants, not shorts). He’s not bad, I have to say, quick and crafty for a 46-year-old, a real (dare I say?) team player. Gum­bel made a men­tion of Obama’s game being a fac­tor in “basketball-mad Indi­ana,” and I won­dered if he was right. Indi­ana loves bas­ket­ball, true. But it doesn’t love all basketball.

It’s safe to say the Hoosier game is the Knight ver­sion — no show­boat­ing, no star antics, very Larry Bird-in-college. The NBA style, the ghetto game, not so much. Obama made an inter­est­ing com­ment about bas­ket­ball being a black art form much like jazz, para­phras­ing from mem­ory, “indi­vid­ual impro­vi­sa­tion within a defined struc­ture.” Impro­vi­sa­tion starts with an I, and you know what they say about where that let­ter appears in “team.” Beware, Obama. Tread carefully.

Only one bit of blog­gage before I tiramisu (yes, it IS a verb), but I rec­om­mend you treat it with extreme caught: type­r­ac­ing! I had no idea I could type 70 words a minute — if only my brain worked that fast.

Have a good week­end, all.

Posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:56 am
in Current events, Same ol' same ol'.

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38 responses to
“Slick.”

  1. Connie said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:06 am

    I buy most of my olive oil at Trader Joe’s. South Bend has a great funky farmer’s mar­ket with a kind of hippy vibe. We were just talk­ing about mak­ing a trip there tomor­row, as we’ve not yet man­aged to find local aspara­gus. Goshen also has a great small farmer’s mar­ket, with a kind of Men­non­ite vibe, if there is such a thing. But SB is the one with all the free pup­pies and kit­ties to resist.

  2. Connie said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:07 am

    Type­r­ac­ing. Link?

  3. Sue said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:24 am

    Our farmer’s mar­ket is very small, and I’m uncom­fort­able going there, because I feel sorry (yes I do, silly of me) for the old guys sell­ing buck­ets of crappy apples etc. from lit­tle card tables. I can’t buy everyone’s crappy apples and pota­toes, so I go to the big­ger mar­ket in West Bend. Also, being a gar­dener, I don’t go that often since every­thing I need is usu­ally in the back yard already. Fall is my favorite time for farmer’s mar­kets. Pump­kins, apples, lots of cheer­ful peo­ple… Not that I’m look­ing for­ward to fall, mind you. Snow’s pre­dicted tomorrow.

  4. Sue said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Oh, and I for­got: have a great time tonight, and don’t for­get to let us know all about it. I am so sorry I had to miss the Bossy Chicago stop. I would have loved to drink one of those cat-bowl gin things they had. And sit out on the deck, and see Bossy’s Chicago hus­band and her new Sat­urn. Damn.

  5. Dorothy said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:43 am

    Dying to get the link to type­r­ac­ing. I’m mighty speedy I must say.

    We buy our olive oil in the Strip Dis­trict when we visit Pitts­burgh. We like both the Ital­ian and the Span­ish vari­ety. Dip­ping good Ital­ian bread into some warm olive oil is the b-o-m-b.

  6. Gena said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:48 am

    Know how you guys felt when all the strangers showed up dur­ing the Goe­glein affair? That’s what it’s like in the Fort right now. Can­di­dates every­where. Every but­ton on the car radio punches one up. Never fig­ured we’d be invaded by…uh.. democrats.

  7. nancy said on April 25th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Type­r­ac­ing link added. D’oh.

  8. Terry WAlter said on April 25th, 2008 at 11:02 am

    Ter­rific olive oil find, Nancy. You’ll prob­a­bly want to chase it with the favorite drink of this blog site; Obama Kool-Aid. As far as his bas­ket­ball skills mak­ing a one vote difference,I doubt it. The Indi­ana Pac­ers had the low­est atten­dance in the NBA this year. Guess peo­ple didn’t want to pay to watch the prison team play. I see that Barack finally relented & decided to appear on Chris Wallace’s show. Hillary has been on twice. If you want to play the game on the big stage, you have to go against some­body that can block your shots. Some­how I don’t think he’ll be throw­ing down slam dunks in this one. Should be interesting.

  9. brian stouder said on April 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Today Michelle Obama will be in town for a 4pm rally at a high school a few miles from where we live.…I’d love to go, but a per­son would really have to get there around 1 (I’m guess­ing) and line up for the open­ing of the doors at 3pm.….and, hav­ing bills to pay and so on, I “have other pri­or­i­ties” as some­one once said (and any­way, I’ve already spent all my mar­i­tal cap­i­tal for today, as tonight is game night)

    Tomor­row morn­ing Sen­a­tor Clin­ton will rally her sup­port­ers down­town at a park…I’m think­ing the young folks and I will head there so they can see the crowds and the newsies — and maybe catch a glimpse of the can­di­date; and we have another full week for more pos­si­ble vis­its from the can­di­dates and their surogates.

    Won­der­ful stuff, really. (Those Iowans and New Hamp­shirites must be spoiled rotten!)

    edit: link to Ft Wayne’s farmer’s market

    http://​www​.local​har​vest​.org/​f​a​r​m​e​r​s​-​m​a​r​k​e​t​s​/​M13910

  10. Jim said on April 25th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Con­nie, there is DEFINITELY a Men­non­ite vibe in Goshen! And I’ll just leave it at that …

  11. Jolene said on April 25th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    Just curi­ous … is it Goshen with the “o” pro­nounced as in “go” or in “gosh”?

  12. Connie said on April 25th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    Go, long o.

  13. Jolene said on April 25th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

    Thanky, ma’am. That’ll be my “learn some­thing new every­day” fact for today. I have low stan­dards and, obvi­ously, am slightly clue­less since it just this minute occurred to me that I could have looked that up w/ a cou­ple of key­strokes. The “ask a per­son” approach to learn­ing small things of that sort is, his­tor­i­cally, so much eas­ier that I some­times for­get about the other pos­si­bil­i­ties at my fingertips.

  14. John said on April 25th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Are there other “Goshens” pro­nounced a dif­fer­ent way? The ones in Con­necti­cut and Vir­ginia are long O also.

  15. Sue said on April 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    Jolene, if you’re a “learn some­thing new every­day” kind of per­son, check out Punt​ab​u​lous​.com on Tues­days, for his “Teach Me Some­thing Tues­day” fea­ture. You can add your own fun facts in the com­ment sec­tion. Dis­claimer: you are warned in advance about whichever header (or mast­head or what­ever it’s called) shows up.

  16. Kirk said on April 25th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Goshen, Ohio and N.Y., also long O. And my grandma used to say “Land-a-goshen!” In my tongue, it was about the same as “Holy shit!”

  17. sue said on April 25th, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    You guys all had me fooled about Indi­ana being so dull. Check out iam​bossy​.com and see how those Indi­ana girls kick up their heels. I want to be from Indiana.

  18. John said on April 25th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    I’ve heard “Land of Goshen” a lot from my mid­west rel­a­tives. My aunt used to say “Crime in Italy” and it wasn’t until I was an adult did I real­ize she was try­ing to say “Criminy”.

  19. Jeff said on April 25th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    There’s uni­for­mity in “Goshen” pro­nun­ci­a­tions thanks to all those 19th cen­tury KJV Bibles on every shelf, with the pro­nun­ci­a­tion sounded out for the odder-looking (to Eng­lish eyes) words, like Goshen.

    With the long O.

  20. John c said on April 25th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Not that any­one really cares, but as an unabashed Larry Bird-o-phile, I can state cat­e­gor­i­cally that it is a myth that he is the embod­i­ment of “white” bas­ket­ball. Yes, he is per­haps the whitest look­ing player ever. Also the ugli­est. And his team play might fall into a lazy cat­e­go­riza­tion of a white style. But fans of the Great One know his game was pure funk, with­out the slam dunk.
    One night against Seat­tle the Celtics were com­ing out of a time-out. There were only a few sec­onds left and they were down by one. Bird walked up to Xavier McDaniel, who was guard him, and said: “Here is the play. I am going to get the ball here, drib­ble over to there, shoot it directly over your face and win the game.” Then he did it. That, my friend, is pure big-city, get that weak-%$# s&#t out of my house play­ground ball. (Hear­ing the X-man describe the moment over video-tape of the actual play is price­less for those of us nos­tal­gic for the shorty-short days of the NBA.)

  21. nancy said on April 25th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    You guys all had me fooled about Indi­ana being so dull.

    Lead head­line in today’s News-Sentinel:

    Library late fees ris­ing by 15 cents

  22. brian stouder said on April 25th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    Hah!!

    The Jour­nal Gazette head­line trumped them (as usual)

    Board OKs more than dou­bling library late fee

  23. Sue said on April 25th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    What are you say­ing? That library news isn’t front-page impor­tant? Where I come from peo­ple can get arrested if they don’t return their books (41.943.61, Theft of Library Materials).

  24. ellen said on April 25th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    John, I think “cri­m­initly” is a Mid­west thing. It is used like “crim­iny.” My Kansas par­ents, grand­par­ents, aunts and uncles all say it that way. As do I, when try­ing not to swear around the kids.

  25. John said on April 25th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Ellen,

    You are right. I had never seen the word spelled before, but now that I know how to spell it, I can find ref­er­ences every­where. My dear Aunt Mil­dred (Aunt Sissy to us kids) was born, lived and died within 10 miles of the Kansas bor­der. She was on the bush­whack­ing, bourbon-drinking, Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ing side but I don’t believe she ever engaged in any of those behaviours.

  26. Kirk said on April 25th, 2008 at 7:40 pm

    I’ve heard it more like “crim­inet­tly.” My mom used that one.

  27. basset said on April 25th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

    Bird is a year younger than me and from the next county east — the bas­ket­ball team from my high school played his, if I’d been on the team or at least gone to the games I would prob­a­bly have a story to tell here.

    best I can do, though, is describe how I used to get in trou­ble for slip­ping out of the gym last period on Fri­days when we were all sup­posed to be in there cheer­ing on The Team before The Game that night. By rural Indi­ana stan­dards, that’s pos­i­tively perverted.

  28. Hattie said on April 26th, 2008 at 12:48 am

    Hilo farm­ers’ mar­ket:
    http://​www​.hilo​farm​ers​mar​ket​.com/
    Come visit.

  29. Dexter said on April 26th, 2008 at 2:37 am

    I am edu­cated by Zingerman’s of Ann Arbor regard­ing olive oil. I won’t bore any­one with the few facts I recall, but I do know that Romans imported Span­ish olive oil, and the best olive oil comes from Espana. That’s all I buy.
    Zingerman’s sends teams to Spain to decide which oils to import that par­tic­u­lar year, and they inspect the olives before and dur­ing har­vest­ing.
    My last big olive oil invest­ment was for a jug of Luis Her­rera, Almazari Aceite de Lagrima, Jan­u­ary Har­vest of that year.
    Stone crushed unpressed freerun juice of Man­zanilla and Cor­ni­cabra olives from Mur­cia Province’s high, remote Valle La Jimena. That’s in Spain, of course. The infor­ma­tion was copied from the bot­tle I have.
    Remem­ber HBO’s “Rome”? Cleopa­tra and Marc sit­ting around dip­ping bread into oil? I do that all the time, too.
    A friend who’s Ital­ian used to talk about “get­ting that hot oil” . I guess that means for bread dip­ping, but maybe it’s for another gas­tro­nomic delight. Any­way, he always said he needed “that hot oil” to keep him­self reg­u­lar. What’s wrong with Metamucil?

  30. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on April 26th, 2008 at 10:21 am

    I waited out of def­er­ence to our blog­mistress, but if she’s not link­ing this Jon Car­roll col­umn, i will:

    http://​www​.sfgate​.com/​c​g​i​-​b​i​n​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​c​g​i​?​f​=​/​c​/​a​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​4​/​1​7​/​D​D​8​6​1​0​5​U​S​2​.​D​T​L​&​a​m​p​;​h​w​=​j​o​n​+​c​a​r​r​o​l​l​&​a​m​p​;​s​n​=​0​0​8​&​a​m​p​;​sc=266

    Two words: color fan.

    Two (or maybe three) words: house­hold projects.

  31. Danny said on April 26th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    What are you say­ing? That library news isn’t front-page impor­tant? Where I come from peo­ple can get arrested if they don’t return their books (41.943.61, Theft of Library Materials).

    Ahem.…

    Fort Wayne may think that library sto­ries are front page news, but, this is how we do it in San Diego.

    The famous quote from Jaws comes to mind, “I think you are going to need a big­ger boat.”

  32. Danny said on April 26th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Had to be away yes­ter­day. I did a round trip from San Diego to Seat­tle and back (redun­dant how I put that, but it still sounds bet­ter) with a meet­ing sand­wiched in between. I am still ragged, but the cof­fee is helping.

    Yes­ter­day, I didn’t have cof­fee until I arrived in Cof­fee Mecca. As soon as I got off the plane, I headed to a ter­mi­nal kiosk with a green and white sign dis­play­ing some watery tart with long hair (strate­gi­cally placed) and huge hips.

    Ah to drink from the fount. Actu­ally, I got caf­feine jit­ters from not enough sleep and too much busi­ness on my mind. Oh, well.

    Good to be back, even if Great White Sharks are eat­ing my neigh­bors a few miles from here.

    Ter­rific olive oil find, Nancy. You’ll prob­a­bly want to chase it with the favorite drink of this blog site; Obama Kool-Aid.

    Terry, resist the urge to be a sniper. Most of the folks here are cool even if you don’t like who they are vot­ing for. Don’t make me embar­rassed to be conservative.

  33. WhiteBeard said on April 26th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    From hot oil to pol­i­tics in Con­necti­cut, Pres­i­dent Bush vis­ited my neigh­bor on Fri­day with 450 other guests and all I got to see of him was the heli­copters con­stantly fly­ing over our house. The Kent hill­side estate of Henry Kissinger butts up against our 36-acre wood lot in War­ren at the town bound­ary so that makes him a neigh­bor, an unseen neigh­bor but still a neigh­bor. But what fas­ci­nated me about the whole she­bang was my free­lance news­pa­per visual cov­er­age of the president’s visit (4 videos, 62 pho­tos) linked at http://​www​.courant​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​l​o​c​a​l​/​h​c​-​b​u​s​h​0​4​2​6​.​a​r​t​a​p​r​2​6​,​0​,​6​7​8​1​2​6​1​.story that shows what a news­pa­per can do in this ever-challenging news arena. The only fault I could find was that one video was some­times iden­ti­fied as being a protest in Kent, the ada­cent town, when it was actu­ally in down­town War­ren. Not a sprawl­ing down­town, mind you, a church, a liquor store, a town hall soon to be replaced by the Taj Mahal of town halls, a deli, an antique store, one traf­fic light, an ele­men­tary school, a sports field, a pot­tery shop (oops, that went out of busi­ness) and a thriv­ing library.
    I have had some indi­rect deal­ings with the Kissingers. When his secu­rity detail decided that his blue­berry patch that earned much money for a church was a dan­ger because they could not let all those berry-picking strangers get so close to the boss, they decided to cut down the hun­dreds of blue­berry bushes. The church peo­ple were shocked and I tried to inter­est my news­pa­per in doing a story but was rejected so I called CBS in New York and got “Hey, we like it.“
    They did a great video, the wire ser­vices picked it up along with other news­pa­pers, includ­ing Paris Match in France and the Kissinger spokes­woman was con­stantly say­ing “Of course, Dr. Kissinger likes blue­ber­ries.” The upshot was that the bushes were dug up care­fully and donated to the prep­pie Kent School and after three years were pro­duc­ing record crops again. Linked at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E5D61138F932A1575AC0A965948260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/K/Kissinger,%20Henry%20A.

  34. Dorothy said on April 26th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    Danny you live in San Diego? I might be out there in Novem­ber! My hubby is wait­ing for approval to attend an engi­neer­ing class there that week. Since I’ve never been fur­ther west than Wichita (in 1979!) I am hop­ing to go along. I’ll keep busy explor­ing the area and look­ing for quilt shops and yarn shops. Maybe we can do lunch one day! And let’s agree not to talk politics!

  35. Danny said on April 26th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

    Maybe we can do lunch one day! And let’s agree not to talk politics!

    Novem­ber? Cool. Let me know and I can give youz guyz some tips on good stuff to do too.

    And not talk pol­i­tics. In Novem­ber? Hmmm… Just kidding.

  36. Dorothy said on April 26th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    Well it would be the week before Thanks­giv­ing if I come, and the elec­tion would be over. So one of us would have brag­ging rights, I suppose.

  37. LA Mary said on April 26th, 2008 at 3:44 pm

    Dorothy, bring Augie and we can meet at the Hunt­ing­ton Beach Dog Beach. No leashes required.

  38. coozledad said on April 26th, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    We’re still try­ing to fig­ure out who the con­ser­v­a­tives are here in old North Car­olina. Are they the ones who want to con­tinue the Plessy vs. Fer­gu­son tra­di­tion, or are they merely hard­ened anti-Semites, who lost the war with Adolf Hitler. I have a hard time fig­ur­ing it out down here, because there’s so much crossover.
    I used to con­sider myself a con­ser­v­a­tive, until I real­ized it was code for a kind of bland appeal to a sunny pre-WWII racism, where we could count on our white allies to pre­serve the white wedge against that insid­i­ous black tide.

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