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Chef Joe Youkhan's Tasting Spoon and Taco María will be doing a sit-down, table-service brunch "pop-up" at the SoCo farmers market on Saturday, March 10 at 11:30 a.m. Joe Youkhan and Carlos Salgado will be trolling the market for ingredients, then shutting down their trucks to cook the ingredients they pick as part of a four-course meal.
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​Hey, you Mission Viejans reading (all two of you), how you doin' down there? And what are you doing today between 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.? Did you know that your city, Mission Viejo, now hosts its own Farmers Market every Friday?

No longer should you look with envy at the three (count 'em again...THREE!) Farmers Markets that Irvine has. Or your neighbor Laguna Niguel's on Sunday. Or the one at the Laguna Hills Mall parking lot on Fridays, which, by the way, now directly competes with yours in the same time slot.

Now on its second week, the Mission Viejo Farmers Market will host the following vendors that I lifted straight from their website:

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​Allow me to steal the book spotlight from Gustavo (whose book on the history of Mexican food in the United States, Taco USA, comes out in April) for a moment.

For the last few months, I've been copyediting--stop laughing!--Nathan Lyon's first cookbook, Great Food Starts Fresh. Lyon is the host of "Growing a Greener World" and "A Lyon in the Kitchen" and was the runner-up to Guy Fieri on "The Next Food Network Star" in 2006.

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SoCo hosting Lime Truck sometime or other . . . Will our boys be there???

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UPDATE: Just got the list of trucks participating in the contest Dave and I will judge. At end of post!

ORIGINAL POST, NOV. 11, 12 P.M.: This past Saturday, I drove to the über-hip OC Mart Mix at the SoCo Collection, hugging the 405 freeway. It was raining at the time, so I couldn't patronize the farmers' market, let alone gobble up one of Taco María's AWESOME pumpkin tacos.

But I am going to be there next Saturday--and Dave, too! That's because we're going to be judges at the Farmers' Market second "Farm to Food Truck Challenge."
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Gabbi's Mexican Kitchen

Gabbi's Market Tamales

​The Christmas music is already playing at the mall, which means it's tamale-making season here in Southern California. This Saturday at 10:30 a.m., as part of the Chef Demo Series at the Orange Home Grown Farmers Market, Chef Gabbi Patrick of nearby Gabbi's Mexican Kitchen will teach you how to make her Butternut Squash Tamales with Roasted Corn, Mushroom Confit, Creme Fraiche and Candied Serranos.

We asked Gabbi a few questions about her family's tamale traditions, and where this particular recipe comes from.

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Photo by Gary Walkup

​You may not know it, but Bigmista's Barbecue is kind of a big deal. Listed on Jonathan Gold's 99 Things to Eat Before You Die 2010, the barbecue competitor-turned-caterer sells at farmers' markets across far-flung parts of LA. It has been geographically inconvenient for us behind the Orange Curtain, but it announced yesterday the company will start vending this Sunday at Long Beach's Old McDonald's Certified Farmers Market. The relatively new, weekly farmers' market is on Spring and Clark from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

That market is just a short distance from Long Beach Airport, which means you can torture your Jet Blue aisle-mates with the smoky aromas of barbecue brisket while they're snacking on little bags of complimentary blue potato chips and secretly hating you.

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In the world of farmers markets in Southern California, none is more legendary than the system that runs the Santa Monica Farmers Market. KCRW-FM 89.9's Good Food with Evan Kleiman offers their updates from the Wednesday version, head Laura Avery is a Southern California food legend, and more than a few renowned chefs get their produce from there.

To celebrate their 30th anniversary, the market is holding the first-ever Good Food Festival starting today and going through Sunday, a series of panels, workshops, eats, and films celebrating sustainable food. The Orange County connections after the jump!
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Dave Lieberman

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There are precious few vegetables that aren't improved by pickling. Certainly cucumbers, but also onions, cauliflower, carrots, green tomatoes, green beans... and chiles. I love pickled chiles.
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Dave Lieberman

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Shopping at the farmers market is the prerogative of the wealthy, right? It's a place for well-heeled yuppies with environmental guilt to pretend they're in oh-so-enlightened France or Italy. Eating local food is a nice buzzword but out of the reach of the average Californian, right?
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Dave Lieberman

The Ponderosa Park farmers market in Anaheim, a certified farmers market

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The number of farmers markets in the United States has gone up almost sixfold in the last fifteen years. Whether they started out as a consolidation of honor-system fruit stands or as a place for farmers to sell produce that was too ripe to go through the food distribution system, they've established themselves firmly in the American produce landscape (though they represent only a tiny fraction of the produce bought and consumed in the United States).

But what makes a farmers market a farmers market?
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