Shop a farmers market this weekend, where you’ll encounter the following events:

Thursday at 5 p.m. the Maple Grove Farmers Market, Alice Tanghe, co-author of “The Minnesota Homegrown Cookbook” will be demonstrating recipes from seasonal foods sold by market vendors. For the book’s Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler recipe, click here.

Saturday at 10:30 a.m. the Minneapolis Farmers Market, Peter Botcher, sous chef at Vincent, will demonstrate an asparagus-mixed greens salad and pan-seared trout.

Saturday at 10 a.m. at the Mill City Farmers Market, a demo-a-thon will feature chefs Bryan Morcom of Restaurant Alma, Phillip Becht of the Modern Cafe, Taya Kaufenberg of Common Roots Cafe and Sarah Master of Cafe Barbette, all demonstrating recipes that incorporate ingredients from Minnesota family farms (arrive at 9:45 and sample meatballs made with Minnesota-raised grass-fed beef at an event hosted by Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak and his spouse Megan O’Hara). At 10:30, author Catherine Friend will do a meet-and-greet and sign copies of her book “The Compassionate Carnivore.”

(Here’s an interview we did with Friend in June 2008).

Q. Why do you prefer to think of yourself as a carnivore rather than as an omnivore?
A. There’s something a little more meaty about the word carnivore (laughs). I’m not concerned about the vegetable part of my diet, I’m more concerned about the meat part, and carnivore tends to remind me of that.
Q. You wrote, “I continue to farm because I love animals.” What does that mean?
A. It goes back to why I wrote the book in the first place. I wasn’t raised on a farm, and there are plenty of hard days here, but I’m here because I’ve fallen in love with the animals. We’ve stopped paying attention to what meat is, where it comes from, how it’s raised. We’re so disconnected that meat becomes a very easy thing to waste, we forget that it’s an animal. But we can shift the attention now and then, can’t we? If you do that once a week, or even once a month, you’re ahead of the game. People in the Twin Cities are lucky, because they have a lot of resources if they want to buy meat that has been humanely raised.
Q. What’s with that chapter on the “F” word?
A. That’s “F” as in feedlot. It has become a dirty word, which is why I was shocked to learn that most farms, like ours, have feedlots, although they’re smaller, and most often they’re used only in the winter. It’s not a bad word until you start talking about scale; there’s a big difference between 50 animals versus 50,000 animals.
Q. Are there any plusses to factory farms?
A. Well, they produce a lot of meat, and it’s very cheap. The negative side of those cheap prices is that they don’t accurately reflect the cost to the environment or to the animals themselves. Farmers will raise what we want them to raise, and right now what we’re telling them is that we want them to raise a lot of meat, and sell it cheaply. When we tell them that we’re willing to pay more for humanely raised meat, then that’s what they’ll do.
Q. In the book you wrote about hearing the sounds of the worms on the farm for the first time. Noise-making worms, who knew?
A. It’s a weird sound, like tinkling glass, but with a softer edge to it. I’m not a nature girl, so getting excited about earthworms is pretty bizarre for me. We have 53 acres, and it was heavily farmed with corn and soybeans; the soil was pretty dead. We stopped all that and just grazed — no chemicals — and eventually it started coming back. I never thought of soil as a living organism, but it is. It’s a sign of health if the earthworms are there, it’s a sign that we’re doing something good.
Q. Will becoming a compassionate carnivore mean that I’ll have to give up the convenience foods that I have become grudgingly dependent upon?
A. The more convenient food is for us, the less convenient it is for the animal and for the environment. It would be great if the convenience food companies would catch on, but their scale is just too large. I’m hoping that people reach out to farmers and replace some of their factory meat, even if it’s once a week or even once a month. I’m just as busy as the next person, plus I’m a little lazy and I’m not a good cook, so I know that it takes work.
Q. So how can I become a compassionate carnivore in five minutes or less? Pretend you’re writing one of those aggravating how-to articles for Men’s Health or Cosmo.
A. Gee, we’re in trouble now (laughs). It’s the steps I outline in the book: Start paying attention, stop wasting so much meat, order less at restaurants, use your leftovers. The hardest for me to swallow is to say that, if you can’t do any of these things, then you might want to eat less meat. We’re eating too much meat because it’s so cheap. If we were paying the cost that it takes to raise animals humanely, we would be eating a lot less. I’d rather eat less meat if I’m paying a price that more closely reflects all of the costs involved in raising it.