From our Test Kitchen: 'Buy It Fresh'

Autumn is here and the 6th Floor is celebrating with a Test Kitchen tribute to our neighbor to the east: the Heart of the City Farmers Market.

The Farmers Market opened on June 14, 1981 in the United Nations Plaza where it remains today. The opening celebration featured music, a ribbon cutting ceremony, and a handful of speakers - including Joe Pence, a farmer from Sebastopol, who recited this poem:

Let the wealthy and the great
Live in splendor and estate.
I envy them not, I declare it.
I have my own lamb,
my chicken and ham;
I shear my own fleece and I wear it.
I have my gardens, I have my bowers,
I have my fruits, I have my flowers.
The lark is my morning alarmer.
So jolly well, now,
God speed the plow,
Long life and success to the farmer!

Buy It Fresh is a collection of recipes from the farmers and shoppers of the Heart of the City Farmer's Market compiled in 1982. It is divided by season and each section begins with a list of seasonal produce. Apples topped the list for fall, so the Test Kitchen decided to take on the recipe for "Apple Nut Muffins" contributed by W.H. Schumann:

1¾ cups whole wheat flour 2 tsp. baking powder ½ tsp. salt 1 tsp. cinnamon ½ tsp. nutmeg 1 egg

1 cup buttermilk ⅓ cup oil ¼ cup honey (or brown sugar) ½ cup nuts, chopped ¾ cup apples, chopped

In a large bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. In a separate bowl beat together egg, buttermilk, oil, and honey (if you're using brown sugar, reduce amount of flour to 1⅔ cups). Add nuts and apples to flour mixture, then pour in egg batter all at once and mix. 

Bake in greased muffin pans in 400° oven for about 25 minutes.
Makes 12 muffins.

Apple Nut Muffins

For more about the Heart of the City Farmers Market, come up to the San Francisco History Center on the 6th Floor of the Main Library and ask for these San Francisco Ephemera Collection files:

Apples at the Heart of the City Farmers Market

• SF. FARMERS MARKET (HEART OF THE CITY/U.N. PLAZA).
• SF. ASSOC. SAN FRANCISCO FARMERS' CLUB.

And these books:

• Buy It Fresh : Recipes From the Farmers and Shoppers of the Heart of the City Farmer's Market, San Francisco - coordinated, written and edited by Jeri Edelston, Michele Schaal
• It Happens Every Morning : A Chronicle of the Bay Area Produce Industry - by Michael Milani