This is just a post to sing the praises of buying produce from a fruit stand or farmer’s market. If you honestly don’t live anywhere near a local fruit stand or farmer’s market, we grieve with you and encourage you to get going on that garden. For the rest of you, check it out if you already haven’t. A visit to the farmer’s market always inspires us to cook beautifully and eat well (even virtuously!)
When I (LB) was living in the Fresno area in California as a newlywed, we lived for a time out at what was at that time the edge of town, half a block from the Takahashi Farms fruitstand. Takahashi was a huge food supplier for grocery stores, but they had this little fruit stand that sold produce picked yesterday or today, for almost nothing. We were living on a terribly small budget, and were always able to walk out of Takahashi with 2 big grocery sacks full of produce for about $13. In the right seasons, we bought flats of strawberries for $6, flats of blackberries and raspberries for $11, and lugs of peaches from the peach orchard down the street for $5. It was beautiful.
When we moved to Minnesota, I went into mourning, because I thought I’d never have nice produce again. But we’ve discovered the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, plus a couple of local farms, which have us in beautiful produce from April to October (with a lot of canned goodness to last us the winter!) This has forced us to think more seasonally, since we can’t buy those huge luscious tomatoes until July at the earliest. And we have to catch strawberry season in the 3-4 weeks it’s going. Right now, it’s time for pickling cucumbers, peaches, fall raspberries, tomatoes, green beans, and all sorts of heirloom melons. (Around here, there’s one called “Sugar Baby” that is out of this world!) Oh, and CORN! Baby, you haven’t eaten corn until you’ve eaten corn that was picked 2 hours ago.
We also see a huge number of vegetable varieties we’d never seen anywhere else, grown by the Hmong farmers in the area (we have the largest population of Hmong people in the whole world, including in their native areas in Cambodia/Laos/Vietnam/Thailand.) We see Hmong eggplant; some little spiny melon-y looking things they call sourballs, which we’ve been told are used in stir-fry; a huge, white radish variety; and FLOWERS. Amazing flowers!
We pick our own berries 15 miles north of here at Natura Farms, where we can get strawberries, blueberries, currant (black and red), summer and fall raspberries, and blackberries. Also, many kinds of herbs, lettuce, melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, potatoes, kale, and several varieties of apples in the fall. Everything there is grown organically, too.
I know that Barb and her family frequent a fruit stand when they are at their cottage, and also hit some fruit stands/trucks at home in NC. I’ll let her brag on them.
Let us encourage you–if you’ve only ever bought your produce in a grocery store, get out there and find the little stands and farms–you’ll get a bigger variety, fresher food, and a virtuous sense of connection to where your food came from.
Peace, love, and eggplant.
LB
