Farewell, Caesar

That old trickster El Nino has been at it again. As you might remember, we predicted shortages several weeks ago of some vegetables because farmers were protectively over-planting iceberg lettuce.

Well, the shortages have hit. Over the last two weeks, though iceberg lettuce prices have stayed low, romaine has gone through the roof. It has gotten so expensive that at least one fast-food chain took Caesar salad off its menu.

The irony is that iceberg lettuce--so vital to fast-food hamburgers and tacos--usually skyrockets when weather is bad. This year, though, farmers were warned of the impending weather problems and planted iceberg every place they could find in order to cash in on what seemed to be sure high prices.

For a while, it looked as if they might have been right. In early April, iceberg and romaine were fairly expensive--$15 to $16 a case wholesale, about twice the normal price--but although iceberg never got much above $20 per case, romaine hit $50 a case and has stayed roughly double the price of iceberg for the last two weeks.

Broccoli and cauliflower have been similarly affected by the increase in iceberg plantings, though certainly not to the same extent. Broccoli and cauliflower wholesale prices are running 20% to 30% higher than normal.

On the other hand, the artichoke harvest, which was predicted to be a disaster, has turned out better than expected. At least for a while. “We’re still predicting we’ll be down about 40% for the year,” says Mary Comfort of the California Artichoke Advisory Committee. “It’s just that they all came in at once.”

In fact, artichokes are so plentiful at the moment that wholesale prices for the smaller ones--from the golf ball-sized “babies” to those fist-sized ‘chokes that are so great for cooking--have fallen to less than $10 a 20-pound case. Even the big ones are around $15 a case.

Get ‘em while they’re hot, though. “That scarcity is still coming,” Comfort says. “We’ll have artichokes through May, and we may have a few this summer, but we won’t have many.”

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Farmers’ Market Watch

Wednesday’s market in Santa Monica may be the grandest of Southern California’s farmers’ markets, but just across town is another that, though much smaller, serves its community just as well. It’s just west of the intersection of Adams Street and Vermont Boulevard, across the street from the First AME Zion Church. Santa Clara Farms from Fremont and J&C; Ranch from Oxnard had Valencia oranges, lemons, avocados and grapefruits; Cervantes Farms of Santa Ana had yellow squash with their flowers as well as pale green zucchini, white spring onions, cabbage and radishes. Roberto Orozco from Dinuba was selling nopales (cactus paddles), unpeeled, peeled and chopped, red spring onions, red-skinned garlic and walnuts. Little Joe’s Farm of Chino had bags of squash blossoms, strawberries, turnips, radishes and nopales. Gama Farms from Bakersfield had new potatoes, eggs, nopales, English peas and red-skinned garlic. Laury Spensley from Clovis had four kinds of pecans--Cherokee, Shoshone, Cheyenne and Wichita--both in the shell and already cracked; Jones Farm of Tulare County had Melo Gold citrus (a cross between pomelo and grapefruit) as big as your head. And Chance’s Seafoods had live rock crabs harvested off the Channel Islands. In season, they also have spot prawns, Santa Barbara ridgeback shrimps and Pacific lobster.