The trusted organic onion
When you start going to the farmers market twice a week, you get to know the vendors and start to pick some favorites. After some research, I started to source most of my produce from the farm of Efren Avalos. His farm is east of Gilroy, some 80 miles away from where I live. That’s about as close to my house as I can get without growing myself. And it’s great that the farm is in the market on the regular.
I built trust by sampling Avalos’ wares and doing a side-by-side comparison with like items bought at the grocery store. Because, financially, why pay more if you are not getting something different or greater value? We miss flavor in our diets when we rely on cheaper, convenient mono-agrifarmed vegetables.
Take the lowly onion. It’s a main staple in a lot of savory cooking, and backbone to many cuisines. It’s taken for granted because it’s found everywhere you look. We don’t think of how it got there, how it is grown, stored, or shipped, or where it spent its life. We just know we need it for the recipe, we learn to cut it and cook it so we don’t taste any raw oniony flavor, hoping we don’t cry during the process.
Now match a locally grown onion to a grocery store onion of the same variety. Cook them the same way, and boom, flavor difference – just like how adding more seasoning to a dish might brighten the existing flavor. A little stored umami bombshell comes out in the cooking. Avalos farms onions caramelize the same way as a grocery store onion, but instead of the watery, bland sweetness of an onion from a large farm out in Idaho, this onion packed twice the taste – llike eating two bites of onion in one. That’s the kind of onion I want to serve in my dish, and an onion I trust is better for my health.
Avalos Farms harvests the day before market, so this kind of flavor is the norm for them. I want to add all their produce to my cooking. I hope you’ll join us along the way. With the seasons changing, there are many new things to try, and we await each new crop with sweet anticipation.