Vegeconomics: Spring Edition

the revenge of the radish, plus ramps and rhubarb

Dear reader,

A few months ago, I summarized my thoughts and feelings about deep winter produce and many of you took issue with my stance on radishes. Now that it is spring, I am back to analyzing the supply (availability), demand (excitement), and effort to enjoy this season’s vegetables.

Read on for my takes on spring produce: the over-hyped, the effortful, and the truly perfect.

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Fava Beans

I will gladly pay for someone else to peel, blanch, peel, and cook fava beans for me. This season, I will not be doing it myself. If you feel so inclined, they are lovely in a salad and delicately springy in a pesto.

Ramps

Ramp fever has swept New York.

Olivia Weiss

even wrote a guide to where to find them. BTW, they are $5 at the farmer’s market on Wednesdays ($8 on Saturdays). If you can get them before they sell out:

• blend them into butter and then laminate it into your sourdough for garlic bread on demand

• pickle them for a martini (but use gin)

P.S. If you can’t find them, don’t sleep on green garlic or garlic chives!

Rhubarb

I am biased (that is why you read this newsletter) and rhubarb is my second favorite favorite vegetable. Try it:

• quick pickled in a salad

• as a shrub mixed with soda water: a treat for your mid-afternoon sugar fix

• in a custard cake if you only have an hour; a fancy tart if you have a full day; a custard negroni if you have a week

Sorrel

Sorrel is a tangy, citrus-like herb that looks like spinach.

Polina Chesnakova

introduced me to it last year while I was testing recipes for her upcoming cookbook (pre-order here!!), and I have bought it every time I’ve seen it since then. That means I’ve eaten:

• a lot of green borsch

• cold sorrel soup

• rhubarb, celery, and sorrel salad

• scallops with sorrel butter

Radish

I spent the winter trying radishes in many forms — roasted, shaved, and pickled. While my overall impression has gone up slightly, my main take is that they are more appealing to the eyes than the tongue.

Alexandra Stafford

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Other Stuff to Chew On

• DYK that cardinals weren’t allowed to eat ravioli during the conclave? All stuffed foods were banned to make sure they weren’t stuffing messages in the ricotta.

• Trump nominated Casey Means to be Surgeon General. The entrepreneur and influencer has some admirable goals: improve school meals, ban toxins, explore value-based case healthcare models, and support regenerative farming (read more on my view on this). On the other hand, she has no experience in public health administration, promotes reducing regulations around raw milk, has some hot takes on vaccines, and thinks that birth control pills are overprescribed.

• Ivanka Trump co-founded Planet Harvest, a for-profit marketplace connecting surplus produce with communities. The USDA just cut $1 billion annually to help schools and food banks purchase food directly from local farms — leading to, you guessed it, surplus.

• Alternative meat companies continue to fail (e.g., Meati raised $450M, sold for $4M this week), the NYT says that “meat is back,” and vegetarian and vegan readers are telling me that eating out is harder now than it was a year ago. But McKinsey still thinks that novel fermented proteins could be a massive market ($100-150B).

• WeightWatchers filed for bankruptcy to eliminate its $1.15B in debt. I’m still optimistic about them given their brand power and recent partnership with Eli Lilly.

• Wrap all your presents to look like bread — but don’t surprised if the recipients are disappointed.

• Bombas desperately wants to get in on the wearable food trend — but they put the tomato where it can’t be seen (?).

Eat your vegetables,

Sophia