Introducing The Flavor Revolution: Where Eating is Environmental Justice
Written by Amani Ali It was a rare sunny Saturday morning on the Bay when I boarded the ferry in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Traversing the calm waters, I was excited to make it to San Francisco where I planned to meet up with Chef Sarah Germany to sample the products she sells each week at the Foodwise Farmer’s Market.
The market is just a few hundred meters away from the ferry terminal and, after disembarking with the crowd of other passengers, I made my way over to a sea of covered booths. Among them, I soon found Chef Sarah’s booth on a corner of the market looking out over the water and the western span of the Bay Bridge.
When I arrived at 10:30, Sarah was already serving samples to customers so I took the opportunity to introduce myself to her business partner, D, who assists with taste testing and sales. After hanging out at the stall for a few minutes, I decided to take a stroll around and get a feel for the market. I walked past stalls proudly displaying their offerings and specialties: greens, onions, stone fruits, blueberries, corn, seafood, and rotisserie chicken. My favorite find of the day was pink oyster mushrooms. I was told they are quickly perishable so I cooked them that night. Loaded up with $30 worth of beautiful fresh foods from different farmers, I returned to Chef Sarah’s stand.
I learned how their market days go as I spoke with D and Sarah. D wakes up at 3am to prepare and arrives at Sarah’s house around 6:30. After driving over the bridge from Oakland, they set up their stall. They sell a wonderful array of items, including an assortment of pickles, hot sauces, and jams, all packed with local, seasonal fruit and vegetables.
Zero Waste, Full Flavor
Chef Sarah is an environmentally-conscious chef and educator. Her line of products came about when she began receiving excess produce from Castlemont High School in Oakland. They sought her help in preventing food waste. Gradually, she expanded to processing extra fruit and vegetables from 3 other schools in the Bay Area (Betty Soskin Middle School, ASCEND, and Bella Vista) and a few vendors at the farmer’s market.
Because she’s a zero-waste chef, Sarah doesn’t keep recipes, she keeps flavor profiles. The growers’ excess becomes ever-evolving pantry staples like the pickle du jour, jam, chow chow, sofrito, or a fruit and veggie base for hot sauce. The spiciest of the hot sauces do require extra peppers, which she often has to buy, so the prices are accordingly higher. How impressive is it to have 15 distinct hot sauce flavors without keeping any recipes?
From 8am until 3pm (the market officially ends at 2pm but there are usually stragglers for another hour), Sarah dips wooden sticks into the sauces, serves them to visitors, and tells them about the ingredients.
This is the lineup of 15 hot sauces available for taste testing at Chef Sarah Germany's booth. She has appeared at the Foodwise Saturday Farmer's Market at the San Francisco Ferry Building since July 2023.
The Flavor Revolution
The sign about Chef Sarah’s signature product, “Try our watermelon hot sauce!” draws the curious in, then they usually stay to sample all the flavors their palates will allow before cooling off with a couple of pickles or jam.
The entire watermelon, rind and all, is found in the signature hot sauce. She halves the watermelon, lays it on the smoker, and lets the wood do its thing. She favors hickory and apple but will sometimes add other types. The watermelon hot sauce comes in three spice levels, the spicier it is, the more the peppers take the forefront.
The Tropical Storm hot sauce is spicy but thanks to a whole pineapple, including the green top, the heat is balanced out with sweetness. The Town is a mild hot sauce named for Oakland. It is your everyday Louisiana-style hot sauce made with cayenne peppers. Holy Moly contains chocolate, chipotle, and pumpkin seeds and has a flavor reminiscent of mole, as such, it’s great marinade for grilled chicken.
These products are medicinal as well. The lemon and ginger from Lemon Ginger Blaze will clear your nasal passages and open up your chest before you feel the zap of heat on your tongue.
I was surprised to see the volume of people visiting the booth to taste the hot sauces. The stall was always bustling with people. Some spent 10 minutes tasting and re-tasting the hot sauce line-up. I estimated nine out of ten people who visited the booth bought something and nearly everyone who tasted a hot sauce bought at least one. Quite a few folks were repeat customers.
Sarah and D also sell wildflower bouquets, grown from the same farms. All the flowers were gorgeous, but the drooping bright magenta amaranth caught everyone’s eye that day. Any unsold flowers are dried and used as ingredients for Sarah’s delicious herb salt. In keeping with the mission of Chef Sarah’s brand, nothing goes to waste!
Chef Sarah’s entire week is dedicated to planning, cooking, jarring, sourcing ingredients, and selling. There’s a market in front of her home on weekends, too. That market is unstaffed. Instead, there is a cash box and QR code to accept different forms of payment. Sarah says she is stretched thin but she’s never been happier.
When you buy Chef Sarah's products, you are supporting environmental justice. The majority of the ingredients she cooks with are grown on school farms through urban agriculture programs. Because these fruits and vegetables are in excess, they would have otherwise ended up as compost, where the resources used to grow them (water and labor) would be wasted.
Cooking with Chef Sarah’s Products
Sarah and D are often asked “How do I use this?” and they have their go-to answers. All of these products are ready to top or accompany your favorite foods – try the hot sauce on pizza or pickles with your sandwich – but if you like to cook, you can use them to flavor your foods during the cooking process. I’m Sarah’s Flavor Inspector and I’m creating recipes with these products.
Here you’ll find weekly flavor connections to show you how to cook with these products daily, with what you already have available. I am your average home cook sharing my dishes inspired by Chef Sarah Productions and what’s in my kitchen. Treat these more as inspiration than actual recipes to follow. Choose the foods that you like and use what you have on hand to prevent food waste.
I recently used her jerk-spiced pumpkin butter mixed with a mustard aioli (from Trader Joe’s) to marinate bone-in chicken thighs. I added a sliced tomatillo and ½ a cup of water, to reduce the marinade into a rich, flavorful sauce. I served it with rice. The warming spices in the creamy sauce were deliciously comforting.
When you try a flavor connection, we’d love to hear about it! If you create your own flavor connection using Chef Sarah Germany products, tag us on Instagram or email us at info @ chefsarahgermany.com. Come back for weekly cooking inspiration! Let’s create tasty, nutritious food while being good to the planet.
Are you part of the flavor revolution? Leave us a comment, show us your creation by tagging us on Instagram, or send us an email: info @ chefsarahgermany.com.
We can’t wait to see what you’re cooking up with Chef Sarah's products.