High summer at the farmer's market

[mme_hardy]

It's a glorious summer day, not hazy nor nastily hot -- at least not by American standards; according to THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE-OFF, 25C is sweltering.

Our very favorite lily vendor, who moved to Texas because he couldn't afford land here, then moved back after the credit crunch killed his greenhouse business, was set up.  He recognized me and we must have talked for five minutes.   He's now mostly selling vegetables with some buckets of lilies for old times' sake.  We got his dry-farmed tomatoes, including a deeply-ridged variety he said was Mayan, a head of buttercrunch lettuce, and an armful of fragrant lilies.

Other than that?  3 pints of Lucero dry-farmed strawberries, small, intense, and with a shelf life of about 15 minutes;  3 pints of blackberries and raspberries; big-as-my-fist yellow nectarines that were the best  at the market but will have to be cut up for dessert tomorrow, tonight being reserved for strawberries; gorgeous fat leeks; fresh red onions on the stem; Chinese greens of various sorts;  one perfect sunset-colored dahlia the size of a newborn's head; a bunch of yellow dahlias; two messes of haricots; a 3-pound grass-fed London broil, the last of the season from that farm, on sale for $10 off because it was thawing; 1/2 pound of roasted salted almonds; piopparello mushrooms;  and (!!!!) fresh ginger leaves for steaming fish in.   

I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Comments

[madrobins]

Your farmer's market runs to much more elaborate and interesting strawberries (ours are organic but large market-sort). For the rest, I didn't buy too much yesterday because I'll be out of the house for three days, and I cannot rely on the sole remaining fruit eater in the house to remember the huge Flavor King pluots or the big yellow peaches. I will have to eat them all myself. It's a hard, hard life.