I LOVE the farmer’s market. I love everything about it. Our particular market is outside which is my favorite type. I’ve been to indoor markets before but there’s just something so much more fulfilling about picking out your food in the sunshine (even when it’s overcast like it was today). It’s so fun to walk up and look across the tables at all the bright, beautiful colors of the food. I actually get noticeably excited when I see what’s there every week. We buy all our produce at the local market, which is a lot since we’ve been on this “we eat too much meat” kick and have been searching for more and a bigger variety of fresh produce for vegetarian dishes. So far we’ve been doing awesome with that. I’ve decided the best way to go about that is to continue to make the same meals you made before, but modified to be meat-less. I found that if I can change the flavor a little or add something else I don’t even miss the meat. So I’m always looking out for the next thing I can try to convince my husband to eat…
But I’ve segued from what I originally wanted to talk about. This is why I love the farmers market and why I will find one to shop at everywhere we live forever:
It’s fresh. In most cases when I shop at my farmers market I know that everything in front of me was still on its vine the night before. Healthy food is living food people! We get the most nutrition from out fruits and vegetables when they’re picked ripe and kept fresh. Even better if you can serve them raw, which is something I won’t generally do with store bought food.
It’s organic. 99% of the food I will buy at the farmer’s market was organically grown in someone’s backyard, and you can taste the difference. Fruits and vegetables grown on mass scales and selected to grown bigger and faster than they would naturally have to pay a price, and it comes from taste. My vegetables may be a little small, or misshapen, and may have some bumps and spots on their skin, but they taste great and have never seen hormones or pesticides. As I said above, this is something I’m happy to eat raw.
It’s local. Is my green showing? Good. Because we’re trying pretty hard to minimize our impact to the biggest extent we can in our circumstances. That starts with choosing our purchases carefully up to and including how far our food has to travel to get to us. Now, we do have to drive to our farmers market. When we lived in Virginia it was only a few blocks away and I almost exclusively walked. This market is in the next town, a 15 minute trip both ways. But, that means I’m purchasing tomatoes that were grown in a green house a few miles away instead of the ones grown in fields in Chile and shipped here by truck. Is it perfect? No. In a perfect world I’d be growing them in my own green house and picking them in my pajamas. I’m working on it.
I don’t have to sacrifice variety. They have EVERYTHING here. I don’t know about your farmers market, but there’s a table for everything at mine. From raw food, to candies and pies, to handicrafts, even whole meals prepared right there on the street. There’s a local bee keeper selling honey from his bees he bottled himself. There’s a lady who sells the organic eggs she collects from her backyard flock of chickens. We can even buy canned goods there. It’s really quite amazing.
The people are awesome. All those people I mentioned in the above paragraph? They know me. They like to chat with my husband. They remember what we bought last week and ask me what we made with it and how we liked it. I am continually humbled by how nice everyone has been to us. It is inspiring.
Today I bought zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, cabbage, green peppers, fudge, and black bean and corn salsa. All for around $20. Yeah, it’s that good. You should check it out.
I almost forgot to mention my absolute favorite purchase of the day:
That's totally a habanero pepper plant in my kitchen already producing peppers.
What's the best thing you ever bought at a farmer's market?
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