Meals at the Market: UpHut

The setting couldn’t be more bucolic. There is the lacy canopy of ancient oak trees overhead in the courtyard of the Ojai Unified School District building in downtown Ojai. Children are running and laughing and doing those magical things kids do, while they still can express joy and happiness with abandon. Farmers are selling seasonal produce. There is handcrafted sourdough bread from Ojai Rôtie and Stonybrook Kitchen and tamales from Me Gusta.

And there is the UpHut* booth, (formerly known as Market Meals).

According to Heath Perry, one of the founding members of the Ojai Community Farmers’ Market, the food booth (which he created and now runs with partners Ryan McAfee and Michelle Cassel) is an integral part of the overall mission of the market: to provide healthy, locally produced food for the community in a setting with music, playing, dancing and just catching up with friends.

But what makes this booth different than other prepared food booths? All the food is made onsite with the majority of ingredients (all when possible) purchased directly from the farmers and food makers AT the market.

“The goal is that when people come to the farmers’ market, we will always have organic, local food,” says Perry, who is a personal trainer by trade and was a registered dietician until he let his certification lapse.

Trying to find just the right balance and rhythm for the food booth has been much more of a challenge than his profession. He says the most difficult part of achieving that goal has been the sporadic nature of sourcing from small farms and food makers. “They won’t always have onions, for example.”

Tacos with meat from Casitas Valley Pastures are a big hit when they’re available, he says, although they are a bit pricey because the meat is local and raised organically. With prices ranging from $3 for the kid’s taco to $20 for a large taco bowl, it’s all part of the puzzle Perry is still trying to figure out.

“People look at the price and just turn away. So, there’s something to consider. How can we make it [cost-effective] when compared with large fast-food operations, while keeping the better sourcing, taste and health we offer,” Perry says, adding, “We do everything we can to make our prices as reasonable as possible. It’s a slow growing process. We have the inexpensive option at the market too, tamales!”

Steve Sprinkel, one of the original board members of the farmers’ market, explains that it’s hard to get up to full efficiency at a new market. “It takes a while to develop,” he says. “[Heath] is designing his menu around a fresh, whole model. It’s about fresh products and cooking fresh. He’s walking his talk: buy local, fresh and all of those things.”

For now, Perry is making sure that there’s always something at his booth, whether it’s freshly made dahl using local ingredients or chi balls, with dates, nuts, seeds and other seasonal dried fruits, which he says provide energy. And the menu is expanding!

He wants to make the booth a reliable place for parents to send kids for a healthy tasty dinner they would actually eat. Perry says the rice and bean burritos for kids are a big favorite, even with some adults.

Perry has long-term goals for UpHut: “Our big-picture goal is to make the booth at Ojai Community Farmers’ Market sustainable and then eventually do some small events that have synergistic values,” he says. “Eventually we’d like to have a blueprint so that this model for farmers’ markets could be spread across the U.S. Every market should have a healthy food booth and make food sourced from their farmers and food makers. It just makes too much sense, and hopefully we can make it easier for people to replicate.”

• For more information on the Ojai Community Farmers’ Market visit www.OjaiCommunityFarmersMarket.com.

Photo by Viktor Budnik

FARMER AND THE COOK

If it sometimes seems as though The Farmer and the Cook is at the center of all that is good in the ever-growing healthy, sustainable, local, affordable food world in the Ojai area, that’s because it is.

By chance, every “Notable” in this issue of Edible,Ojai &Ventura County features either the restaurant/organic food shop or its owners Steve Sprinkel (the farmer) and Olivia Chase (the cook), the couple who have run the restaurant/shop for 22 years in Meiners Oaks.

“We really struggled for the first nine years,” says Chase. “In 2009, I think with the real estate crash, that’s when people started to notice us. I think the Internet has also started to help us a lot.”

And while the restaurant isn’t entirely vegetarian, it does lean in that direction. “Our mission was not necessarily to just be vegetarian, but also organic,” she says, adding that certified organic meat is fairly new to the area. “It’s all organic and healthy. Organic is our mission statement. That’s why Steve is so well-known.”

Sprinkel is on the board of directors for EcoFarm, which holds annual gatherings of thousands of organic farmers each year, as well as a member of other organic farm organizations.

He farms a 10-acre plot near the HELP of Ojai site on Baldwin Road for the community- supported agriculture (CSA) boxes sold through The Farmer and the Cook. He sees his mission as supplying fresh, organic, local food and showing others how to do so. Sprinkel says getting the notoriously difficult organic certification is like doing taxes.

“A lot of people think it’s too expensive, but the federal government underwrites 80 to 90% of those costs,” he says. “Besides, the certification is for the benefit of the consumers, not the farmers…. An independent third-party verification is good for the marketplace.”

Chase says The Farmer and the Cook has provided them with a long learning curve over the years. “It’s taken me 22 years to figure things out. I’m not a professional in the food business. We do say yes a lot. We haven’t always been tough,” she says. “But we’ve gotten more capable of being managers.”

They’ve also been able to improve the actual store with a remodel, new equipment and improved customer service.

“The only problem we have is parking. We don’t have enough parking,” Sprinkel says.

• Chase and Sprinkel are sharing some of their knowledge with a wider audience in The Farmer and the Cook: Recipes and Farm Stories from Ojai, California, a new book featuring recipes from the restaurant plus some of Sprinkel’s writings. It’s available at their website, www.Farmer-and-the-Cook.com, and at their store, The Farmer and the Cook, 339 W. El Roblar Drive, Ojai; 805-640-9608.