PrintFarmFreshNYC: A New iPhone App for Finding Local Food
Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, and just about anyone who’s ever taken a road trip would agree: one reason this country is fat and diabetic is the sheer convenience of buying processed food, compared with, say, scoring a reservation at Blue Hill. Jason Ide of Thinkenhaus created his FarmFresh NYC iPhone app to make buying fresh, local produce a little easier—for iphone owning New Yorkers.
Okay, so FarmFresh is one of those things that makes the “locavore” movement seem a little elitist. That doesn’t bother me—I’m happy with anyone, rich or poor, supporting local farmers. Perhaps the app would be more useful in a town where Whole Foods isn’t open until midnight, and the Union Square Greenmarket is as crowded as a Jonas Brothers concert. But these factors do make New York City a good testing ground.
The problem is, even as a Pollan-reading, iPhone-owning New Yorker myself, I didn’t find the application particularly helpful. FarmFresh provides a list of “in season” products, which you can click on for factoids that vary from useful (“store beans by removing them from their shelves and refrigerating them in plastic bags”) to utterly random (“sea robbins are bottom-dwelling fish that can actually emit audible sounds”). You can add the items to your grocery list or “watch” them, so you’re sent an alert when they’re in season. Then there's a list of farmers markets in each borough, with location and address.
As a shopper, I don’t really care what’s “in season,” theoretically speaking. Strawberries are “in season,” but they didn’t have any at my local farmer’s market last week, and the ones at the supermarket were from California. I care what items I’ll find at each farmers market, and what I’m supposed to do with them.
At the farm where I work, our vegetable grower emails me weekly with a list of quantities she’s bringing to the Greenmarket, and a projection of what she’ll have over the next few weeks. All experienced farmers plan their crops out carefully and have good ideas of their current and future inventory. If thinkenhaus could enlist some Greenmarket farmers to forward along lists like these, shoppers could have a much better idea of what they’d actually find at each market. Plus, it would help consumers connect with farmers, while reinforcing the mentality that broccoli doesn’t come from the store, but from a specific piece of land worked by particular individuals.
The other real problem I face as a Greenmarket shopper is cooking from my finds. It’s pretty difficult to find recipes that include multiple, seasonal items. Maybe FarmFresh could team up with a recipe source like Serious Eats to create a comprehensive recipe database. In the meantime, I’ll fall to my knees in gratitude if someone can come up with a dinner that uses up my fridge full of bok choy, radishes, and lettuce.
Note: This edition is only for the five boroughs of New York City, but FarmFresh apps will be launching soon in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New Orleans.
Related
Locavore 1.0: Find Local, in Season Food on Your iPhone
The iPhone Gives Bad Pizza Advice [Slice]
Chocolate-Covered iPhone
Add a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
4 Comments:
Thanks for reporting on this new app.
I've had a very different experience with it. As a new yorker, I find it very useful. I don't know what is in season whatsoever, and I'm not about to research everyday to find out. This app shows me what local foods are available and allows me to plan my meals. I'm excited about the alert factor too. Often I want to make something with a food that isn't in season yet. With this app, it will alert me when that food is ready. It's like a netflix queue of delicious produce. Blackberries! Yum! I certainly wouldn't remember otherwise.
I think those descriptions are hysterical. Bottom-dwelling fish that emit audible sounds. That's awesome.
I like your recipe idea, that would be cool.
cyakacki at 9:54PM on 06/22/09
"I’ll fall to my knees in gratitude if someone can come up with a dinner that uses up my fridge full of bok choy, radishes, and lettuce."
That's pretty easy. Slice up the radishes into rounds and toss them into your salad, which you should dress with a little dijon mustard diluted with cider vinegar, into which you whisk olive oil to make an emulsion.
Slice the bok choy in half lengthwise and place sliced side down in an oiled pan over medium low heat, with some roughly chopped garlic and sliced skiitake mushroom caps. Sprinkle salt over the whole thing and cover. After a little while, splash with some chicken or vegetable stock, cover again. When the liquid has cooked down and the greens are wilted, remove the lid and turn up the heat to medium to lightly brown the bok choi.
In another pan, fry a piece of seasoned salmon fillet, skin side down in hot oil. When the skin is crispy and you can see about a half inch of the fish is cooked, place in a 350* pre heated oven to finish cooking.
Boil some baby potatoes, skins on, then toss with butter and a little of the cooking water.
To assemble, put two halves of bok choy on a plate, mound some mushrooms in the middle, drizzle with a little sesame oil, place fish skin side up on top, put a few potatoes around the fish and garnish with some chopped cilantro or curly leaf French parsley and a little drizzle of lemon juice.
Follow this with the salad, served with some toasted baguette and brie cheese.
Dinner, using all your veggies.
simon at 12:07PM on 06/23/09
Your idea of having the farmers submit what they expect to bring to market and when is a *great* idea. Like any "in season" guide (like here: http://bit.ly/QBYcz) this app bound to be only a very general guideline at best.
Farmers are very innovative and will find ways to grow a much wider variety of crops over a much more flexible growing season than any map can pin down. Last year i found plenty of strawberries in August -- the farmers told me they were growing varieties that produced berries all summer long. And you'll find much wider variety at the market than on the map too -- gooseberries anyone? Black currents?
As for recipes, Epicurious has a terrific free iPhone app, that taps into their 30,000-strong recipe database. Likely you'll find some guidance there for your bok choy.
daveklop at 12:07PM on 06/26/09
I think the aplication should include restaurants that use only local food in their dishes, such as the affordable Hundred Acres downtown. I have been amazed at the low cost for dinner and all the food is in season, organic etc.
Rebgilad at 2:43PM on 06/30/09