Underground Market Gets National Exposure, a Seasonal Produce Chart for the Detail-Obsessed

​Today's notes on national stories, local trends, random tastes, and other bycatch dredged up from the food media.

1. The New York Times Discovers the Underground. Times Bay Area correspondent Patricia Leigh Brown visits the Underground Market, which she calls a "crave." (Mmm ... not buying it. But cute.) Many, many of the names regular SFoodie readers will recognize are quoted ― Roger Feely, Valerie Luu, Kai Kronfeld, and of course, market organizer Iso Rabins of ForageSF ― and Brown identifies links between San Francisco's Underground Market and similar events in D.C. and Nashville. Congratulations to everyone for getting a little national exposure. I'm a generation X'er, so explain to me the rules on this one: Does that bolster your cred or ruin it?

From CUESA's vegetable calendar.

​2. Bay Area produce calendar. A tweet from Samin Nosrat's feed took me to CUESA's redesigned website, which includes charts displaying the months that more than 40 fruits and 60-some vegetables and herbs should appear at Bay Area farmers' markets. You can download both charts as PDF files, print them out, and post them on your refrigerator.

3. Is Kirkland any good? The service-journalism side of food writing isn't as glamorous as rhapsodizing about El Bulli or as emetic as describing badly cooked kidneys, but it can be awfully helpful. Take Chow's piece from earlier this week comparing a few of Costco's house-brand products to similar ones from premium mass-market brands. I might just pick up a 4-liter jug of Kirkland peanut butter someday.

4. Bonus link for the day. On the Village Voice's food blog, Robert Sietsema analyzes one of the most disturbing children's games on the market: Pig Goes Pop.