BRUSSELS — EU countries will be able to fund small local media without asking Brussels for permission, according to a draft of the bloc’s revised state aid rulebook obtained by POLITICO.
Government subsidies to businesses are strictly disciplined by Brussels under state aid rules, but there are exceptions. These are spelled out in frameworks, with the master one, the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), up for revision at the end of the year.
The European Commission put out an initial draft for public consultation in February with a view to finalizing it by year’s end. The updated, 200-page draft gives a leg-up to local and independent journalism by allowing governments to fund small- and medium-sized outlets without formal vetting by Brussels.
“SMEs active in the press sector play an essential role in safeguarding media pluralism, cultural and linguistic diversity, democratic participation and citizens’ access to reliable information, particularly at local and regional level,” the Commission writes, highlighting structural challenges arising from the digital transformation of media markets.
To qualify for assistance, beneficiaries would need to fulfil at least one item in a Commission checklist that includes preserving media pluralism and diversity of opinion, transitioning to digital content while also preserving print editions.
“The exemption covers aid pursuing cultural objectives — including linguistic diversity, the digitalization of press publications or the promotion of printed publications,” said Carole Maczkovics, of Counsel at Covington & Burling, of the press measures.
Many European media outlets are struggling to stay viable, with print readership declining and publishers complaining that online platforms, such as search giant Google, are reducing referral traffic to their websites.
Broad scope
The GBER covers most sectors of the economy, from agriculture to transport, and is the target of intense lobbying from EU capitals, traditionally torn between big government spenders led by Germany and smaller member states, including the pro-free-trade Nordics, which complain that national subsidies distort the EU single market.
Countering the stereotype, Denmark was a leading advocate to extend GBER exemptions to the media. In a consultation response last year, the Danes said the state aid framework should be broadened to include private and public media providers “to promote harmonisation and simplify the general management of state aid in the media sector.”
The latest GBER draft focuses strongly on SMEs and innovation, as well as on the social dimension of state aid — as it expands on conditions for money that governments can put in training programs and the inclusion of disadvantaged workers.
But it may not necessarily make things easier.
“Although the revision aims to simplify the State aid framework, it may ultimately make it more detailed and prescriptive,” warned Maczkovics. She added that the Commission’s gradual shift from broad aid categories to narrowly defined exemptions may sway EU countries to design measures that don’t quite fit the real needs of companies — for the sake of avoiding a notification.
Industry, for its part, is keeping a close eye on state aid exemptions, with airport lobby ACI Europe quick to react to the latest leak.
“The revised GBER remains too restrictive for Europe’s smaller regional airports,” said Philippe Sacré, the association’s secretary general. He was referring to aid exemptions that would be restricted to airports handling over 500,000 passengers a year, according to the Commission’s draft.
The Commission’s latest State aid Scoreboard shows that EU countries spent €168.2 billion in state aid in 2024, with Germany, France and Italy the top spenders. Capitals are increasingly taking advantage of block exemptions, with GBER representing close to 70 percent of all active exemption measures.
Last week, I wrote about the pasta that finally taught me how to shop at the farmers market. What I didn’t mention was that I ate the first quarter of my bowl standing up, at the bar top between my kitchen and the little alcove where our two-person table sits. I had simply stopped there. The cornbread crumbs were crisp, the chèvre was creamy, the squash had gone sweet and spicy and jammy after some time over low heat, and together they briefly became more interesting than wherever I had been headed.
I don’t want to overstate the revelation. I know what happens when you apply butter and patience to good vegetables. Still, that particular bit of alchemy never gets old to me. Especially when I realized that what was in the bowl had begun as a five-item farmers market haul, helped along by a few things I already had at home.
One excellent thing, I was reminded, is often enough.
The five recipes below all begin the same way: with one market find good enough to make me want to cook — sweet corn, ripe peaches, September carrots, a jar of hot giardiniera — and a wickedly simple form to build around it. Pasta. Baked rice. Simple syrup. A rolled pastry. Snack cake. Some of what you need may come from the market, especially at one with eggs, cheese, dairy or even pizza dough on offer; the rest can happily come from your pantry or the supermarket.
The market doesn’t have to provide dinner. Sometimes it just has to provide the idea.
Jammy summer squash pasta with chèvre and cornbread crumbs
Yields
4 servings
Prep Time
15 minutes
Cook Time
1 hours 35minutes
This is the pasta that finally taught me how to shop at the farmers market: Start with a form, bring home one or two beautiful things and give them somewhere to land. Here, grated yellow summer squash and onion spend the better part of an hour over low heat, slowly becoming soft, sweet and jammy. Miso, honey and red-pepper flakes deepen the mixture; pasta water turns it glossy enough to tuck itself into the tubes and folds of a sturdy short pasta.
This is not a 30-minute dinner, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. Think of it instead as a very light weekend project, the kind you can tend occasionally while doing something else nearby. The toppings are market-flexible, too: Use whatever chèvre or goat cheese you find, whether it crumbles into little pillows or lands in soft clouds, and turn a leftover hunk of cornbread into crisp, salty crumbs.
Ingredients
2 medium yellow summer squash
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, olive oil or a combination
Kosher salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 tablespoon white miso paste
2 teaspoons honey
½ teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more to taste
1 pound short, sturdy pasta, such as rigatoni, shells or cavatappi
1 cup coarsely crumbled cornbread
Olive oil, for the skillet
Flaky salt, optional
About 4 ounces chèvre, or more to taste
½ cup loosely packed chopped fresh basil
Preparation
Prepare the vegetables: Grate the summer squash on the large holes of a box grater. Roughly chop the onion by hand, or pulse it briefly in a food processor until finely chopped but not puréed.
Start the sauce: In a large, wide skillet or Dutch oven, heat the butter, olive oil or combination of the two over low heat. Add the squash, onion and a pinch of kosher salt. Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, for 45 to 60 minutes. The vegetables should become deeply soft and jammy while retaining a little texture; you are not trying to cook them into a completely smooth paste. Taste occasionally and adjust the salt and pepper as needed.
Deepen the flavor: Once the vegetables are soft and jammy, stir in the garlic powder, miso, honey and red-pepper flakes. Continue cooking over low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the seasonings have melded into the squash.
Make the cornbread crumbs: While the squash cooks, tear the cornbread into roughly pebble-size pieces by hand, or pulse it briefly in a food processor. Lightly coat the bottom of a skillet with olive oil and set it over medium heat. Add the cornbread and cook, stirring and turning occasionally, until crisp and golden. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to drain and season with flaky salt while still warm, if desired.
Cook the pasta: Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil and cook the pasta until just shy of al dente. Before draining, reserve at least 1 cup of the pasta cooking water.
Build the sauce: Take the squash mixture off the heat for a moment. Add the drained pasta and a splash of reserved pasta water and toss to combine. Return the pan to low heat and continue adding pasta water, a splash at a time, stirring gently, until the squash loosens into a glossy sauce that works its way into the pasta’s tubes, ridges and folds.
Finish: Remove from the heat and stir in the chopped basil. Taste and adjust the salt, black pepper and red-pepper flakes as needed.
Serve: Divide among four bowls. Top each generously with chèvre — crumbled if firm, dolloped if soft and spreadable — and about ¼ cup of the crisp cornbread crumbs.
A jar of fruit syrup in the refrigerator is one of those small things that can make summer feel remarkably well-appointed. This version simmers ripe peaches with honey and whole black peppercorns until the fruit collapses and the syrup turns fragrant, floral and just a little prickly. I prefer mine on the less-sweet side, but both the honey and pepper are easy to adjust depending on your fruit and your taste.
Use it anywhere a little concentrated summer would be welcome: shaken into cocktails or mocktails, stirred into iced matcha or sparkling water, drizzled over gelato or spooned onto yogurt. Peaches are particularly lovely here, though I’ve made the same syrup with blackberries to equally good effect.
Ingredients
3 ripe peaches
1 cup water
½ to ¾ cup honey, depending on desired sweetness
1 to 2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns, depending on desired intensity
Preparation
Prepare the peaches: Peel the peaches, if desired, then remove the pits and roughly chop the fruit. Peeling produces a slightly cleaner finished syrup, but because the mixture will eventually be strained, leaving the skins on works perfectly well.
Simmer the syrup: Combine the peaches, water, honey and black peppercorns in a medium saucepan. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, then reduce the heat as needed to maintain it.
Mash the fruit: Simmer for 15 to 20 minutes. As the peaches soften, periodically crush them against the side of the saucepan with the back of a wooden spoon or a potato masher to help release their juices. For a stronger peach and pepper flavor, let the mixture simmer toward the longer end of the range.
Strain: Set a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl or heatproof measuring cup and pour in the syrup. Press firmly on the peaches with the back of a spoon to extract as much liquid, color and flavor as possible. Discard the solids and peppercorns.
Cool and store: Let the syrup cool, then transfer it to a jar with a lid or a deli container. Refrigerate and use within about 1 week for the best flavor.
Hot giardiniera rolls
Yields
8-12 servings
Prep Time
20 minutes
Cook Time
25 minutes
Somewhere between a pizza roll and a savory breakfast pastry, these start with prepared pizza dough. Some of my better local farmers markets sell it in sweet little rounds, but you can also buy it from your local supermarket. Roll it out cinnamon-roll style, spread with cream cheese, Parmesan, herbs and hot giardiniera, then coil, slice and nestle the spirals together in a buttered skillet.
I like this recipe in particular because if the farmers market has otherwise failed you, there is a decent chance the pickle table has not. Even when the tomatoes are gone and the bread stall is picked clean, you can usually find some jar of something sharp, spicy and brined: giardiniera, hot peppers, spicy dills, pickled carrots.
Giardiniera is my first choice here — jars of it seem to appear at every Chicago market — but think of the filling as a template for whatever good, spicy pickled thing you bring home. Change the herbs accordingly: chives and parsley are excellent with giardiniera, while Mexican-style pickled carrots practically beg for cilantro and oregano.
Ingredients
1 pound prepared pizza dough, at room temperature
4 to 6 ounces cream cheese, softened
½ cup finely grated Parmesan
½ cup well-drained, chopped hot giardiniera
¼ cup chopped fresh herbs, preferably chives and parsley
2 tablespoons butter, divided
Preparation
Heat the oven: Heat to 375°F. Use 1 tablespoon butter to grease a baking dish or oven-safe skillet.
Make the filling: Pulse the cream cheese, Parmesan, giardiniera and herbs in a food processor until chunky and spreadable, not smooth.
Roll the dough: On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into roughly a 12-by-16-inch rectangle, about the thickness of dough for cinnamon rolls.
Fill and roll: Spread the filling over the dough, leaving a small border. Starting at a long side, roll into a snug log.
Slice: Cut into 8 to 12 pieces; 8 makes generous breakfast-sized rolls, while 10 to 12 is better for sharing.
Arrange: Nestle cut-side up in the prepared pan. Melt the remaining tablespoon butter and brush over the tops.
Bake: Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until puffed and deeply golden. Serve warm.
Summer corn riso al forno
Yields
6-8 servings
Prep Time
20 minutes
Cook Time
50 minutes
Riso al forno — literally “rice from the oven” — is Italian baked rice, an adaptable format in which partially cooked rice finishes with sauce and cheese. This version leans hard into fresh corn, still in its cool green husks and already smelling sweet before you cut it from the cob.
Half the corn is blended with stock and cream into a velvety sauce; the rest stays whole for juicy texture. Parmesan or Pecorino keeps things more Italian, while cheddar nudges the dish toward American corn casserole. Crisp Mexican-style chorizo is optional, but I genuinely like this best when the corn gets to be extremely, unapologetically corn.
Ingredients
2½ cups Arborio or Carnaroli rice
Kosher salt
4 to 6 ears fresh corn, kernels cut from the cobs, divided
1 to 1½ cups chicken or vegetable stock
½ cup heavy cream
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon butter or olive oil, plus more for the baking dish
½ small onion, finely chopped
6 to 8 ounces Mexican-style chorizo, cooked until crisp and very well drained, optional
¾ cup grated Parmesan, Pecorino Romano or cheddar
Sliced scallions or chopped chives, for serving
Preparation
Heat the oven: Heat to 375°F. Butter or oil a 9-by-13-inch baking dish.
Parboil the rice: Cook the rice in generously salted boiling water for 8 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water and transfer to the baking dish.
Make the corn sauce: Simmer half the corn with 1 cup stock for about 12 minutes, until tender, adding more stock if needed.
Blend: Remove from the heat, add the cream and season with salt and pepper. Blend until mostly smooth and pourable.
Cook the remaining corn: Heat the butter or oil in the same saucepan. Add the onion and remaining corn and cook over medium-low until the onion softens.
Combine: Fold the corn and onion, plus chorizo if using, into the corn sauce. Pour over the rice and stir gently to combine.
Bake: Top with cheese and bake, uncovered, for 30 to 35 minutes, until the rice is tender and the top lightly golden.
Finish: Rest at least 15 minutes, then scatter with scallions or chives.
Brown sugar-carrot snack cake
Yields
8 servings
Prep Time
25 minutes
Cook Time
50-60 minutes, plus cooling
September carrots can look almost too virtuous at the farmers market: sturdy bunches, feathery green tops, dirt in the creases. Here, they get cooked with butter, brown sugar, orange zest and salt until glossy and jammy, then folded into a simple sour cream cake scented generously with cardamom.
If you find candied citrus peel, toss some in; if not, use the zest of a full orange. Serve with lightly sweetened orange-zest whipped cream — homemade or straight from the spray can.
Ingredients
For the carrots
1 cup finely grated carrot
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Zest of ½ orange if using candied citrus peel, or 1 whole orange if not
Pinch of kosher salt
Water, as needed
For the cake
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup sour cream
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup roughly chopped candied citrus peel, optional
For serving
Lightly sweetened whipped cream, preferably with orange zest, or canned whipped cream
Preparation
Prepare the pan: Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment.
Cook the carrots: Cook the carrot, butter, brown sugar, zest and salt over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until soft and jammy. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time if the pan gets dry. Cool until just warm.
Mix the wet ingredients: Whisk the eggs and sugar, then whisk in the melted butter, sour cream and vanilla.
Mix the dry ingredients: Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt.
Finish the batter: Fold the dry ingredients into the wet just until combined, then fold in the carrots and candied peel, if using.
Bake: Pour into the pan and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until golden and a tester comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs.
Cool: Rest in the pan at least 20 minutes before turning out. Serve warm or at room temperature with whipped cream.
This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox,subscribe here.
This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.
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A 2004 paper on the history of presidential election betting markets kicks off with a partial quote from the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau’s 19th-century essay “Civil Disobedience”: “All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.”
Not everyone agrees with that last part. And the rapid rise of online prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket are bringing that tension to the fore.
Prediction markets are websites that sell contracts that allow users to wager on event outcomes. Political examples could include which party will control the U.S. House or Senate after the midterms, for example. Typically, there are fixed payouts and the price of the contract reflects the market’s expectation of the odds of the outcome.
It isn’t yet entirely clear who regulates prediction markets and how, and markets have regularly clashed with state officials trying to rein them in. When it comes to elections, most states have laws prohibiting election betting in some form or fashion, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released in June. But many such laws predate modern prediction markets and haven’t necessarily been tested in court recently.
Kalshi recently pushed back on Wisconsin election officials after they issued an advisory about a state law dating back to the 19th century that says voters can’t cast ballots in races they’ve bet on. A Kalshi staffer said on social media the Wisconsin advisory meant election officials were engaged in “active voter suppression.”
However the legal situation shakes out, betting on elections is happening. An NBC News analysis found nearly $200 million in trading volume on midterm election outcomes on prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket, and election officials say they are concerned about how the odds on such sites could influence public trust in election outcomes — particularly when election results differ from those the markets had favored — and about creating incentives for manipulation.
“I think it is something that we are going to have to wrestle with going into the November election and forward,” said Dean Logan, the registrar-recorder and county clerk for Los Angeles County, California, the country’s single most populous election jurisdiction, during a webinar organized by the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions this month.
Logan said in the Los Angeles mayoral primary in June, “early election returns differed from market expectations, and that resulted in suspicion and questioning of normal ballot processing and canvassing procedures in California.” The bottom line, he said, is that “elections administration right now is very much affected by perception and misinformation, and in our field we have to be prepared to respond to that.”
‘This is all bad’
Prediction markets say their odds reflect the wisdom of the crowds and can be more accurate than polling. And these markets have been pretty good at predicting elections in the past. For example, the 2004 paper that quoted Thoreau, by economics professors Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf, analyzed data on election gambling between 1868 and 1940 and found that the historical markets “did a remarkable job forecasting elections in an era before scientific polling.”
But prediction markets differ from polls in important ways. Polls are representative samples of just the voters who live in the state or district in question; prediction markets are open to anyone, and the more money a person bets, the more influence they have on the odds.
And election officials, already worried about low public trust in elections, are concerned the odds on these markets could be manipulated to influence public perception of a contest or create new financial incentives to shape outcomes. Kalshi and Polymarket did not respond to requests for comment.
Jim Allen, the elections director of Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which had already banned election workers from directly betting on elections, earlier this year added a ban on using prediction markets to do so. He likened it to referees betting on the outcome of a basketball game.
The new language, he said during the PLEJ webinar, “kicked off a conversation at our poll worker training. There was one person out of 383 precincts, one person who stood up and they said, ‘Well, what if we just want to make a minor bet on what turnout will be? That’ll keep things interesting.’ And we said, ‘No, this is all bad.’”
Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
We went late into the evening waiting for absentee ballots in Milwaukee County last night. But Milwaukee County executive David Crowley will become the Democratic nominee for governor in Wisconsin, despite it seeming like a certainty that Francesca Hong would be the winner. As of yesterday, every recent poll had shown Hong at least 20 points ahead. The two most recent public polls had her 22 and 25 points ahead. (The most recent poll from Crowley’s own camp showed Hong 19 points ahead!) We’ll come back to the question of why these polls have been so wildly off. But there was a different casualty from the night’s results that I personally enjoyed witnessing because it’s a hobbyhorse or pet peeve of mine — and it seems to be as well of the numbers crunchers/data nerds whose Twitter feeds I watch on elections night. I’m talking here about the “prediction markets.”
As the western United States is gripped by record-shattering wildfires, some unscrupulous people aren’t just contemplating what it will be like for future generations living in our new normal of erratic weather patterns, or wondering whether climate change is making this situation worse. They’re thinking about how much money they can make.
Prediction market apps like Kalshi and Polymarket allow people to bet on pretty much anything, whether it’s some boring sports thing, election results or perhaps even war crimes. You can even bet on the outcome of clinical drug trials and whether cancer drugs will be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which experts criticize as undermining the integrity of medication research. The father of a seventh-grader living with cancer recently raised the issue of “whether researchers in a trial could be motivated by prediction market profits,” something so heinous it is difficult to contemplate.
While the makers of these apps insist they are “future exchanges,” not digital gambling parlors, regulators in places like Singapore, France, Belgium and elsewhere aren’t convinced and have banned the platforms altogether. There are several mechanisms inherent to prediction market apps that make them a little different than putting it all on red. They involve binary contracts that resolve based on whether certain events happen or not, using some complex math to factor in a probability of an outcome. Critics are increasingly looking into the consequences of making almost everything wagerable.
Mainstream economists may want you to believe all this is driven by Darwinian forces that follow some natural law, simplified as “the cost of doing business,” or even by Adam Smith’s invisible hand. But that’s pretty unscientific.
On Aug. 3, Democratic senators from six states sent a letter to the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the independent government arm that regulates Polymarket and Kalshi, warning that the apps are allowing bets to be placed on wildfires, which could incentivize arson. They highlight previous examples of bets placed on the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires, which razed large areas of Los Angeles County, killing 31 people and destroying more than 16,000 structures.
“Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities’ suffering all so the rich and powerful can profit,” the letter’s authors, who include Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wrote. “There’s also the heightened risk — according to state and local fire officials — that individuals could be tempted to commit arson in order to make sure their bets are successful.”
For example, someone might bet on how big a fire might get or how many buildings it might destroy. I wanted to know what unexpected stuff I could find on the apps, so I downloaded Polymarket and Kalshi, seemingly the two most popular platforms or at least the ones I’m tired of seeing ads of the most. Both were littered with sports events, which I scrolled past, but also had sections for elections, politics, tech and a lot more. Polymarket seemed to have fewer and more bland options for betting, with the most shocking queries I could find being things like who will get kicked out of Trump admin next or if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be arrested by year’s end.
After giving over way too much private data to Kalshi, I was able to browse entire categories dedicated to natural disasters and climate change, such as if 2026 will be the hottest year ever or if the U.S. will ever meet its climate goals. I also found weird things like how many Atlantic hurricanes this year or if California will be hit by a magnitude 8 earthquake, which goes without saying but would be extremely bad. For context, the recent Colombia and Venezuela earthquakes were both magnitude 7.4 and 7.5 respectively. All of these things are likely to kill countless people if they happen, but climate change is already widely treated like an abstract future problem, rather than our disastrous present, so maybe this shouldn’t be surprising.
Both apps allowed wagers on the number of “explosive diarrhea” cyclosporiasis and measles cases this year, with both outbreaks shattering records. I could not find anything related to fires, presumably such content being recently removed, as there have been plenty of cited examples of bets on fires in the past, such as how many acres or locations the Palisades fires would reach.
So many of the scenarios on these apps present classic examples of a perverse incentive, in which the structure of a system encourages undesirable results. The classic example is of dubious historical accuracy, but originates from the British occupation of India. Weary of venomous snake bites, British authorities put a bounty on dead cobras — but this only incentivized locals to breed more of the snakes, in order to collect even more reward money. If you allow people to earn cash from dead snakes, you risk getting a lot more living snakes in the process.
Are we already seeing this with wildfires? It’s hard to say, but it’s true that arson is, strangely, a common catalyst for wildfires. One man was arrested outside of Spokane a few days ago, admitting to starting the Old Trails Fire, which burned entire neighborhoods to a crisp. Police say that Aaron Farinacci admitted to having set two dozen other blazes since 2025.
The conditions that make these blazes so out-of-control are thanks to climate change, which is causing hotter and drier conditions. According to a 2021 study supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the increase in fire weather in the western U.S. is primarily due to climate change. (Still, trying to explain that level of nuance to a climate denier is like teaching rocks to play Risk.)
What these apps do best is lay bare the ways in which our entire economy is structured like a betting app strung together by incentive perverts. It’s why the market rewards the most amoral and destructive behavior, from hedge funds that short the market and destroy company value to vulture capitalists who gut businesses like Toys “R” Us or Radio Shack, and then escape on their golden corporate parachutes. Even when such behavior results in a recession, the government is likely to bail big corporations out, while any form of assistance for the working class is branded as “socialism.” In fact, the entire stock market could be best described as a casino that incentivizes absurd growth like the historic tech bubble provoked by the spread of artificial intelligence.
Mainstream economists may want you to believe all this is driven by Darwinian forces that follow some natural law, simplified as “the cost of doing business,” or even by Adam Smith’s invisible hand. But that’s pretty unscientific.
Money itself is just a construct, one with rules dreamt up by humans. We don’t have to live in a world where people profit from tragedy, be it wildfires or a child with cancer, housing foreclosures or weapons manufacturing. I’m willing to bet we can actually achieve such a utopian outcome, even if it takes another century. The alternative is to continue draining everything of value as it goes up in smoke.
When I moved to Chicago, I assumed I would become a slightly different person.
Not in the wholehearted country-song sense, where crossing the county line might allow me to outrun myself. The reinvention I had in mind was more municipal than spiritual: perhaps a change in infrastructure might produce a corresponding improvement in character.
I was moving without my car, so I would naturally become someone who walked, biked and took the train more. Our apartment was about ten minutes from Lake Michigan; perhaps proximity alone would turn me into one of those women who began the day with a brisk swim. At the very least, I would develop strong opinions about beach sandwiches.
And I would be living within walking distance of a sickening number of farmers markets.
The life I pictured appeared in View-Master slides, each image crisp and complete, with all the inconvenient connective tissue outsourced.
Click. I’m on the train.
Click. I’m wheeling my bike off it with balletic ease, definitely not annoying my fellow commuters as I lug it down the stairs.
Click. I’m wearing a helmet that looks chic rather than orthopedic.
Click. The helmet — and any evidence that it has touched my hair — has disappeared. I am now carrying a gorgeous straw tote and wearing linen that has somehow survived public transit without acquiring a wrinkle.
Click. Farmers market stalls.
Click. Farmers market haul.
Click. A thrown-together dinner party on the rooftop of my building for all my neighbors. Yes, it overlooks a nest of alleyways, and no, management does not like people going up there, and no, I don’t know all my neighbors by name or even sight yet. But I have somehow assembled enough glittering people and enough secondhand objects — a woven rug, cushions, low tables, an impossible number of candles — that it feels like a tiny seventh-floor pop-up restaurant.
In my imagination, even the building superintendent has been cast. He arrives to break up the party with the energy of the businessman who plans to level the summer camp until he witnesses the final talent-show number. Then he takes a bite of the olive oil cake I have made for dessert. He softens. “Maybe we should do this more often,” he says.
Click. Community.
What I had not pictured was shopping.
In the View-Master version, the market haul arrived already edited. There were no prices to compare, no heavy bags to carry home, no stalls selling six unrelated things I suddenly believed might change my life. I would wander in with my perfectly sized tote, allow whatever charmed me to determine dinner and wait for the ingredients to organize themselves.
Later, when someone praised the meal, I would demur in the manner of women for whom this sort of thing came naturally.
“Oh, this?” I would say. “Just something I threw together.”
Little did I know.
I was a farmers market failure.
This remained true for an embarrassingly long time — including several years when I was already being paid to write about food. I knew how to want everything at a farmers market. I simply did not know how to shop at one.
The clearest evidence came one late-summer afternoon, when several weeks of bad weather produced a scheduling anomaly: two neighborhood farmers markets on the same day. The vendors posted flyers and made an occasion of it.
I decided I would, too.
The first occupied a roped-off parking lot beside an elementary school. I left home with $45 in cash—which felt ample, even indulgent—and one of the crinkly blue totes I had picked up on our last trip to the suburban IKEA.
The day was sticky enough that the plastic adhered to my bare shoulder. Every few minutes, I peeled it from my skin and transferred it to the other side, where it promptly attached itself again. The chic tote from the View-Master apparently had another engagement.
Everyone at the market seemed either to have a distinct plan or to be genuinely content wandering. A mother steered a stroller while consulting a list. A white-haired man in a Tommy Bahama shirt amiably haggled two dollars off his peaches. Another man had a shallot tattooed on his forearm, suggesting either a career behind the line or an allium devotion I could not hope to match.
I wanted to resemble the relaxed browsers who paused over a melon because its scent had summoned them. In fact, I am much more comfortable with a list. I hadn’t learned yet that I was a Type A person masquerading as Type B. The disguise began to fray almost immediately.
I completed one slow circuit, attempting to look discerning. Nearby, a woman with timeless preschool-teacher energy played the accordion for a ring of toddlers as shoppers crowded around nearly white ears of sweet corn. Then I noticed things were disappearing behind me. Baskets I had paused over were emptier when I returned. Someone bought the last loaf of a bread I had not yet decided whether I wanted.
This sent me into a faster orbit.
The accordion sounded louder.
To steady myself, I bought a $12 arancini from a stall that accepted only cards. Because I had designated the cash as my farmers market budget, the card purchase belonged to a parallel economy; by this logic, my $45 remained intact. Arancini in hand, I passed a booth lined with turquoise jewelry, Coca-Cola merchandise and approximately 40 embroidered denim vests. It looked as though the vendor had raided a secret convention of 1990s elementary-school teachers and persuaded them to turn in their uniforms.
I chose two: one ridged and heavy, its skin receding from burgundy into a deep, almost plum color; the other a cheerful red beefsteak. They were fat and beautiful and cost about $8. A woman carrying two heirloom tomatoes could still plausibly claim to be shopping for dinner. I was back on course.
The plan splintered almost immediately. I ping-ponged from soft cheeses to eggs and squash, then past a gelato cart and a table crowded with jams, pepper jellies and a milk carton filled with VHS tapes.
Finally, I arrived at the pastry stall.
It was run by a man in his early 40s with a single gold hoop and a tight gray bun. I had never before described a man bun as severe, but no other word will do. He was arguing with another vendor in the unmistakable register of people with history. “You’re always like this,” one of them said. “I’m not sure why we’re even doing this again.”
I studied the pastries while pretending not to listen: tea-infused buns knotted with candied citrus, laminated pastry layered with spiced cream cheese, craggy oat muffins dotted with boysenberry preserves. I waited for a lull. I misjudged it.
There was no visible menu, so I began, “Excuse me, how much—” just as the baker turned toward the other vendor. “Do you remember last August?” he demanded.
There was an awkward two-second collision. Then he looked at me.
“Prices are marked,” he hissed.
They were not.
I could have walked away. Unfortunately, I have always struggled with disappointing authority figures: professors, bosses, priests, parents — and, apparently, severe-bunned bakers. I pointed to two oat muffins.
“For breakfast,” I told myself.
They were $7.50 each. I wanted them, though not $15 worth of them, but by then “Well, actually…” was beyond me. I paid and tucked them beside the tomatoes.
The bag remained almost offensively empty. For $23 in cash, it contained four objects, all of which now had to be protected from one another. Still, I had just over $20 left. The arancini did not count. The muffins were breakfast. Dinner remained possible.
I could turn this around.
I just needed to go to the second market.
It turned out to be both prettier and worse.
The vendors occupied a tree- and bench-lined pedestrian stretch that I once overheard two teenagers in airbrushed wolf T-shirts nominate as the neighborhood’s most romantic place to smoke a joint. They may have been right about the romance. Unfortunately, everyone else had arrived before me.
By then, the baskets had been picked over. The best things had departed in the totes of people who knew what they were doing. I walked one more circuit, attempting to let the remaining produce speak to me.
I bought a jar of blackberry jam because it sounded good.
Then, on the way home, I stopped at the corner store and spent the rest of my cash on a frozen pizza.
Back at the apartment, I unpacked. Everything from the markets was beautiful, delicious or both. It simply did not add up to the thing I had gone there to find.
The only dinner in that day’s haul had come from the freezer aisle.
This shouldn’t have been a surprise, really. It was not as though the open air of a farmers market was going to cure my base shopping instincts. Put me in a grocery store without a plan and I move through the aisles like a dog with the zoomies: produce, meat, back to produce, an abrupt dairy detour, then three aisles in reverse because I have remembered lemons.
For a long time, I assumed the solution was to become more instinctive. Food culture is inordinately fond of nonchalance: meals that are “almost too easy,” cakes that come together “in a snap.” It reminds me of how, recently, my younger sister — deep in the trials and tribulations of planning her wedding look — called me sounding breathless and almost conspiratorial. “Did you know pop stars wear hair extensions?”
Effortlessness, we agreed, generally has at least a little scaffolding underneath.
Perhaps the market shoppers I envied had simply made a few decisions before everything started charming them.
My reeducation began, as many good things do, with pasta.
I had rigatoni, olive oil and butter at home, which meant one good vegetable would be enough. Zucchini could be grated and cooked down until jammy, then loosened with pasta water; tomatoes could be sliced, salted and left to steep in olive oil. Cheese would be a bonus.
I wrote a two-item list: Good vegetables. Good cheese.
Then I took a beat and added: Pastries for morning.
I gave myself a five-purchase limit, leaving two slots open for surprise.
At the market, I moved differently. With dinner already half-imagined, I could pass the tomatoes and melons without treating each one as an alternate future I might regret abandoning. Instead, I gravitated toward a pile of thin-necked yellow summer squash. The day was in the low 70s, and a breeze was coming through our kitchen window; I decided I would not mind standing at the stove long enough to coax the squash toward sweet collapse. Because one caramelized vegetable is good and two are better, I added a white onion.
Then I followed my list to the cheese stall, where I found a soft chèvre, and to the baker (a different one, blessedly) for croissants and a hunk of cornbread, which I naturally counted as a single purchase. My wildcards were honey, for the vegetables and leftover cornbread, and basil, mostly for color and romance.
At home, I cooked the onion and grated squash in butter with a spoonful of honey, miso and red-pepper flakes until they became jammy. I crumbled some of the cornbread into olive oil and toasted it in a skillet. Then I added the rigatoni and enough pasta water to turn the vegetables velvety, finishing each bowl with the crisp crumbs, little pillows of chèvre and torn basil.
In a way, it really was something I had thrown together.
But the ingredients had not organized themselves.
I had given them somewhere to land.
How I shop the farmers market now
(Ashlie Stevens ) IKEA tote, and contents
The point was never to become less susceptible to the market’s charms. It was to stop asking every beautiful thing to become dinner. Here are five simple tips I keep in mind to let the market surprise me without leaving dinner to chance.
Even a well-stocked farmers market rarely behaves like a supermarket organized around a recipe’s demands. It offers what is there, in the quantity there is. A useful form already provides enough structure — a base, a binder, a vessel — that whatever looks best can find a place within it.
One tomato may not look like a grocery haul, but with bread, mayonnaise and an egg, it is dinner. A handful of mushrooms that seems meager in a paper bag can become the center of a frittata. A single bunch of greens can be folded into beans, piled onto toast or wilted through cheesy rice.
The form supplies the logic. The market supplies the surprise.
Start with the kitchen you already have
A farmers market is not a complete food system. It is exceptionally good at providing the vivid part of dinner — the ripe tomato, the thin-skinned squash, the bunch of herbs still cool from the morning — but it may not provide the starch, protein, fat, acid or seasoning required to turn those things into a meal.
That is what the kitchen at home is for.
Before I leave, I “reverse-shop” my fridge and pantry, taking stock of the support system already in place: pasta or rice, bread or tortillas, eggs, tinned fish, tender white beans; butter, olive oil, yogurt, vinegar and whatever cheese is threatening to fossilize in the refrigerator.
I jot those ingredients at the bottom of my market list. Seeing eggs, rice, yogurt in writing makes it easier to recognize what a bunch of greens or a basket of cucumbers could become—and easier to pivot when the ingredient I imagined isn’t there.
The market ingredient does not need to do everything. It only needs to be good.
Set a limit, but leave room for surprise
A rigid list can make a farmers market feel like a slightly understocked supermarket. I have better luck shopping for roles rather than exact ingredients: Good vegetables, good cheese, pastries for morning.
Perhaps the squash looks better than the zucchini. Perhaps the cheese is a bloomy little wheel rather than chèvre. The role remains useful even when the ingredient changes.
Then I decide roughly how many purchases I want to make. Three items may be plenty for tartines; a big, maximalist salad could happily accommodate eight or ten. The number is not sacred. It simply gives me a stopping point before I begin believing every peach, pickle and pastry belongs to the plan. When necessary, I set a spending limit, too. Other weeks, a predetermined number of decisions is enough.
I also leave room for wildcards. They might improve dinner—herbs, honey, good bread, something pickled—or have nothing to do with it: flowers, jam, a spice blend, a VHS tape, an embroidered denim vest.
Impulse is part of the pleasure. It simply does better with a little containment.
This also preserves the culinary reason for the limit without overpronouncing it: farmers market ingredients are usually best when they remain recognizable. You don’t need to cram every beautiful thing into the same dinner merely because it came home in the same tote.
Let one excellent thing be enough
On that note, a successful trip does not require a photogenic avalanche of produce.
One excellent vegetable can be cooked down with butter and tangled through pasta. One tomato can be grated onto toast. A small bundle of herbs can sharpen a bowl of rice and beans. A few peaches can become dinner with cheese, bread and something salty.
The smaller the minimum, the less likely you are to buy six unrelated ingredients in the hope that abundance will eventually explain itself.
Let the market be incomplete
Sometimes the stalls are picked over. Sometimes the beautiful thing costs more than you want to spend. Sometimes the market is rich in soap, flowers and decorative squash but not in dinner. Pivot to another generous form. Stop at the supermarket for eggs or bread. Buy one jar of good jam for the pantry and go home.
And when the entire enterprise has ceased to sound fun, there is always frozen pizza.
Dinner should not be held hostage by the farmers market.
This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. It is the first half of this two-part farmers market special. Next week, I’ll be back with five flexible recipes to keep in your pocket for market day—including the jammy squash pasta with chèvre and cornbread crumbs that started this whole reeducation. There will be options for tomatoes, greens, fruit and the miscellaneous beautiful thing you bought before deciding what it was for. Subscribe here to have it sent straight to your inbox.
I’ve been on a marmalade bender lately. Well, it’s actually been for the last few weeks. Winter, of course, is marmalade season and the markets in Paris are heaped with citrus: Corsican clementines, pretty yellow bergamots, hefty pink grapefruits from Florida (although some infer appellations from elsewhere – namely, the Louvre), leafy lemons from Nice, and lots and lots of oranges.
The stands are so piled up that it’s not uncommon to be walking down the aisle and have an orange roll off of the piles and land on your foot. (Which is why it is a good idea to wash any fruit before you use it.) This means I’ve got so many jars of marmalade, that when my friend Luisa stopped by and saw the jars piled on top of a shelf in my bedroom, she said “I’ve doing the same thing ” at her apartment in Berlin. Sometimes I think jam-making could be classified as an epidemic and if so, there’s ample evidence that I’m ready for an intervention.
While kumquats were once classified with their look-alike citrus brethren and sistern (admittedly, it can be hard to tell as it’s difficult to get a look under their navels), they are now placed in another genus category (Fortunella), even though they share many characteristics of citrus fruits.
One of those characteristics is that they are winter fruits. And another is that they are très bon pour la santé (good for your health), containing lots of vitamin C. And they also make you feel happier, since not only does their tangy-bitter flavor brighten up even the darkest of winter day, nothing makes me happier than to wake up in the morning and gaze at my shelf of marmalade first thing in the morning.
I was especially happy when I was doing my shopping at the outdoor market and came across a big bin of kumquats. I scooped up a nice-sized bag of them and brought them home, where they patiently waited in the refrigerator until I decided what to do with them.
Originally I’d considered giving them a quick-candying and strewing them over poached prunes with a scoop of ice cream. But I ended up sticking my fingers into the bowl of prunes a few too many times during the week and ended up with a small puddle of cinnamon-spiced dark syrup pooled in the bottom of a container in my refrigerator, which I didn’t think would go with anything.
So I decided to get out my little serrated knife, slice up my Fortunella fruits, and make marmalade. I added a couple of lemons not just to bulk it up, but because I thought with the added sugar, the marmalade would benefit from some extra acidity.
I normally spoon my marmalades on morning toast, but after I made this batch, I had cleaned up the kitchen and was going to reward myself to a nice bowl of split pea soup for lunch with some Comté cheese and – like most good ideas (and a few of the bad ones) – it suddenly occurred to me that the tart marmalade might be nice with the nutty cheese I was cutting into batons.
And sure enough, it was. Fortunately I have three nice jars of marmalade to add to my collection. So far this year I’ve made Seville orange marmalade (eight jars) and four jars of mixed marmalade, using the bergamots and citron that were plucked off a tree in Sicily. After all that slicing, seeding, and simmering, the last pot of marmalade has been jarred and stored; they’ll last me through the winter. And if I am prudent, a number of spring and summer mornings as well.
Many of the little rings of kumquats will, unfortunately, come apart as you cook the marmalade. The reward, however, is gorgeous jars of tangy marmalade that you’ll be happy to spread on your morning toast or serve with a bit of cheese after dinner. I served mine with Comté, but a nice goat cheese or another nutty mountain cheese, like Gruyère, would pair nicely with it.
It takes a bit of patience to slice and pluck out all the seeds from the kumquats, but you can get 2 to 3 jars of marmalade for your efforts. I use a small serrated knife to slice off the stem end, then start slicing the kumquats crosswise, until I get close to the center. Finally, I stick the tip of the knife into the area where the seeds are and slip them into a small bowl. Because the seeds are rather large, any that you miss you can usually find just by doing a little scanning of your pile of sliced kumquats.
I use oval Nagami kumquats, which are more puckery than the round Meiwi kumquats, which you sometimes come across. Do try to get organic or unsprayed fruit from your local market or natural food store. The kirsch is optional, but it does nicely round out the flavor of the marmalade. You can substitute another liquor, such as gin, Grand Marnier or Cointreau, light rum, or a dash of brandy. Or it can be omitted, if you wish.
Ingredients
2lemonsstemmed, halved lengthwise, seeded, and very thinly sliced
1pound (450g)kumquatsstemmed, seeded, and sliced
Reserve the seeds from the lemon and kumquats
5 1/2cups (1.3L)water
2cups (400g)sugar
pinchof salt
Optional: 1/2teaspoonkirsch or other liquor
Instructions
Put the lemon slices in a large non-reactive pot. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the lemons are translucent, about 5 minutes. Drain. (Discard the water.)
Put the blanched lemons back in the pot. Tie the seeds from the lemons and kumquats securely in a piece of cheesecloth and add the seed sack to the pot along with the sliced kumquats and water. Bring to a boil; remove from heat, cover, and let stand 24 hours.
The next day, put a small plate in the freezer.
Add the sugar and salt to the pot, and cook the marmalade for 30 to 45 minutes over medium heat. Remove the bag of seeds and when it’s cool enough to handle, squeeze the seeds in the cheesecloth using your hands or place it in a ladle and press it with the back of a soup spoon (being careful not to break the fabric and release the seeds) over the jam pot to so the pectin goes directly into the marmalade mixture.
Continue cooking until it has reached the jelling point, about 220ºF (104ºC) degrees, if using a candy thermometer. To test the marmalade, turn off the heat and put a small amount on the plate that has been chilled in the freezer and briefly return it to the freezer. Check it in a few minutes; it should be slightly jelled and will wrinkle a bit when you slide your finger through it. If not, continue to cook until it wrinkles slightly on the chilled plate when you nudge it.
Remove from heat, then stir in the kirsch (if using), and ladle the mixture into clean jars.
Notes
Note: I store my jams and marmalades in a cool place, often the refrigerator if not planning to use them within a few weeks. if you wish to can or preserve them, you can check out these canning tips.
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