Last Thursday Market of the Season!

After this Thursday, October 15, we bid good-bye to the Thursday BFM until next May (sniff, sniff), but thankfully this year we still have the Saturday Market through November 21--the only Eastside market going through November. Trust me, if you've slogged over to the U District Market post-BFM and circled the thing four times in the rain looking for a parking spot while your kids complain in the backseat, you know this is cause for celebration.

The week's news:

If you eat any part of the ONE BILLION POUNDS of canned or pouch tuna consumed by Americans each year, you'll be interested in Seven Reasons to Stock Up for Winter on Fishing Vessel St. Jude Tuna:

1.  Absolutely delicious. Beats commercial canned tuna by an order of magnitude. Once you have a salade Nicoise made with FVSJ tuna, you'll never go back.
2. The Malley family offers a discount when you buy six cans.
3. Tuna is rich in omega-3 fatty acids. "Cancer-fighting brain food," I tell my kids. Plus, it tastes better than the bottles of fish oil I bought. If I couldn't choke down a teaspoon a day, I felt it unjust to ask it of them.
   
4. Troll-caught means sustainable fishing. All Albacore tuna ends up in American cans, basically, and large commercial fisheries generally longline, catching tons and tons of tuna and any other fish that take the bait (by-catch). 
5. Troll-caught tuna are younger than the commercial average. Younger tuna means LOW mercury because mercury is cumulative. FVSJ frequently tests its tuna and reports non-detectable levels of mercury, far below the FDA requirement and even exceeding the Environmental Working Group requirement. See their site for details: www.www.tunatuna.com
   
6. Family-owned and operated. A huge benefit of a farmers market is being able to talk directly to the people who bring us our food. According to writer Richard Ellis, big companies like Chicken of the Sea can no longer afford to process tuna in the United States and have moved offshore, where minimum-wage laws do not apply. Ouch.
7. Did I mention it's delicious?
   

We May Be Ugly and Frumpy, But Have You Seen Our Vegetables?
Travel & Leisure recently pitted 30 U.S. cities against each other as vacation destinations, comparing criteria ranging from the brains and beauty of their inhabitants to cultural offerings to food and shopping. Seattle ranked abysmally low in looks (24th) and stylishness (25th)--Cleveland, who's your Daddy?--but at least we ranked #1 in Farmers Markets. Oh, yeah. Take that, Portland.

If you're the type of tourist who considers the locals part of the attraction or repulsion, burn a half hour on this website: http://www.travelandleisure.com/afc/2009

And finally, You Better Not Be Eating that Nutella Crepe in the Car
In TRAFFIC: WHY WE DRIVE THE WAY WE DO, Tom Vanderbilt claims that "on-the-go eating occasions in the United States and Europe are predicted to rise from 73.2 billion in 2003 to 84.4 billion in 2008" (Vanderbilt 16). Yikes! Does it count if one of those eating occasions was polishing off an entire half-pint of strawberries before I got home?

No wonder Vanderbilt also reports that male drivers in the U.S. have higher rates of skin cancer on the left arm than the right because of all the time spent in the car (17). Dear readers, I recommend long sleeves and a meal at the Market, where the oblique October sun hits both arms equally.