One of the vendors, Bruce, used to work with me a long time ago at AlphaGraphics. He's now running a small family farm in Catalina and brings some of his produce to market each week. It is all grown without pesticides and all of that crap. It's good quality, healthful food. Right now he's bringing squashes and peppers, sweet onions, tomatoes, apples, nectarines, all that sort of thing. In the spring and fall, when the weather is a little cooler, he brings lots of fresh greens that he sells "mix and match" for $4 for a very generous bag full.
It's easy to spend a lot of money at the market. If I had more disposable cash I could get in trouble there. There's a local tea supplier, honey, coffee, you name it. Sometimes there's a guy there who sells excellent goat cheese products made not too far from here. It's decadent stuff, but none of it's cheap! Still, I highly recommend going to your local farmers market and checking out what they have available. It's generally local stuff and that's a good thing. It keeps the carbon footprint of your food a bit lower.
Which would you rather eat? A bag of lettuce with an arbitrary freshness date on it that was grown thousands of miles away and shipped by truck, train, whatever, in refridgerated cars, sprayed with who knows what along the way, or freshly picked greens raised ten miles from your house by someone you know, or can get to know? It's a no-brainer, really.
This is Bruce. I used to work with him. Now he's a farmer in Catalina! He has great produce, but to be honest, I have a hard time getting up early enough to get to the farmers market to get the best selection. It's not unusual for me to show up and he'll have a bunch of empty or nearly empty bins on the table! I did good today though--purple bell peppers, white button squash, tomatoes, Armenian cucumber, and some zucchini! Yummy stuff.
Here's the herb guy. I have purchased several mint plants and the like from him. Today I bought a purple shiso herb plant. Shiso is used in sushi, though they usually use the green variety. It's sort of like a basil but the taste is very different. I'll toss a few leaves in salads for color and flavor boosting.
The lady in the middle is very nice. She sells some medicinal herbs but her main product is a homemade "pot pie." She sells a free-range chicken variety and a vegan variety. We have to buy both so Joan can have chicken and I can have the delicious vegan. It's hard to tell them apart so we always end up cutting them open to figure out whose is whose! They have vegetables and seasonings and are very good. One of the best things is the raisens she puts in them. It adds a unique level of sweetness. Couple that with an excellent spelt crust and these things are addictive! That's Bruce on the left and the herb guy on the right.
Ah, the pasta guy. He always has a lot of produce with him, as well. I've purchased eggplant, tomatoes, squash, some excellent green beans, and other things from him. However, I consider him the pasta guy because he sells this fantastic pasta that is made up in Phoenix. It comes in a large number of flavors. The habanero is excellent! Eggplant, wild mushroom, basil tomatoe, spinach, you name it. And it's really good quality, delicious pasta. I love it. But it's pricey. It's $6 for a package. It's a generous package, and it's gourmet, but $6, I admit, is a bit much for pasta. And he's never lacking for suggestions on preparing what he sells either. However, most of his suggestions involve things like five pounds of butter and heavy cream, so I don't usually follow his recipes!
No comments:
Post a Comment