Monday Market Haul - 5/18/2015

Carrots, shallots, lilacs, lacinato kale, rhubarb, asparagus

It’s been about a year since I started looking into eating locally and seasonally. I don’t quite remember what started it all. Was it an article on supporting local organic farming? A TED talk on sustainability? What’s this C-S-A thing I keep hearing about? It may have been an impassioned archived blog post or two from the likes of smitten kitchen about the taste of an August tomato.

Although I hadn’t thought about it that way before, I knew exactly what she meant. Suddenly it all clicked. It all made sense. I had grown up picking summer tomatoes from my mother’s garden. I remember hauling zucchinis the size of my leg up the back lawn to the kitchen for dinner. I like to tell people I was eating kale before it was cool, because some of my fondest memories of summer dinner was eating wilted kale with garlic over pasta on the deck overlooking mama’s bountiful garden. Every year (still!) my mom and I get up early one morning in June, drive 45 minutes to a local farm and pick strawberries right off the vine. They're still warm from the sun and they taste like the absolute essence of summer. I already had all the puzzle pieces rolling around inside me, they just needed to click into place.

I haven’t looked back --- eating and cooking seasonally and locally has led me to gain new perspectives, forage a whole new life path, and help to solidify my passion in food. I couldn’t do it without having such lucky, easy access to one of the best farmers’ market in the city. So what I’m really saying is:

Happy 45th birthday GrowNYC! My life wouldn’t be the same without you!

Monday Market Haul - 5/4/2015

Green has become an impossibly comforting color to see these past few weeks. After the months of dusty, dreary, dank greyness of everything, the refreshing bursts of green appearing everywhere, it’s like coming out of a black and white film reel into a technicolor wonderland.

Have you ever seen the movie Pleasantville? It’s kinda like that.

eggs, pea shoots, broccoli rabe, asparagus, ramps, baby lettuces, lilacs, sausage

Here I present my ever comforting haul including the outcome of all those April showers. There’s a saying about that right?

P.s. I figured out what to do with last week’s ramps. So there’s that.

Monday Market Haul - 4/27/2015

A girl can only eat so many crunchy kale salads before yearning for the juicy, crispness of romaine to then truly be brought out of the winter blues. As is such, while I patiently wait to spot the asparagus, peas, and rhubarb that spring is so famous for, the baby lettuce stand-ins are doing a bang up job of transitioning the season through.

So not to beat a dead horse, but did you also know that ramps are here? Ramps. RAMPS! I tell you.

Oh, really? Everyone else in this weird food world already told you? Okay that’s good, I can save my breath then. Because, ramps.

Happy to report that this much awaited harbinger of spring was exceptionally lower in price than the 20 dollars (!!!!) they were last weekend. I tried to restrain myself from buying more than one bunch because, truthfully, I haven’t a clue what I want to do with them. Do you know? Can you help me? Anybody? Bueller?

Monday Market Haul - 4/20/2015

Sometimes I forget that spring might be my favorite time of year.

Summer is my jam. I’m probably the only person in this city that appreciates a good humid climate combined with straight outta hell heat. Fall is pretty gorge, but only in New England. Winter, um, again, only in New England. And only if you don’t have to drive anywhere.

But spring. Spring is an amazing time of year, especially in the city. All of a sudden, it starts thawing out, both physically and metaphorically. The winters can be harshhhhh. And so can the summers in their own sense. But when we have yet to remember that summer follows spring, we’re all pretty excited to exit our self-imposed hibernation.

My absolute favorite is when the trees start to bloom. All the trees wake up and are no longer these stoic, scraggly sticks coming out of the ground. They’re like giant bouquets erupting out of the sidewalks! Eventually all the petals fall off, but even that is beautiful, like snow showers.

As excited as I was for the start of the new year, spring has begun to be the true time of rebirth and new beginnings. The city has just begun it’s reawakening, and I along with it. I didn’t realize I’d been hibernating too.

Spring favorites have been popping up all over my instagram. I was super excited to get my hands on some this weekend at the market. I only found some RAMPS! But as buying even one bunch at $20(!!!!) would have stripped down half my market budget I decided against them. Alas, there was no rhubarb or spring peas or asparagus. Those grams must have been situated a bit more south or west of the northeast. Oh well, next week (or the week after, or the week after) it is!

These pictures are from some hauls from a few weeks ago. Long past due.

Monday Market Haul - 2/23/2015

Well I went MIA there for a bit, I’m sorry. I have no excuse other than, well, life.

Work, was the main culprit, it was just “one of those weeks” for two weeks in a row. And then sometimes I take the work life “home with me.” It makes it nearly impossible to scrounge up the least bit of creative energy, and then I let this space wander. The following guilt makes things no better.

Hoping to get back to a regular routine over here.

Going to the market in the beginnings of an actual snow storm was a magical and refreshing start to the weekend. In a stroke of luck, I was able to get all I needed at the market, even though I got there much later than usual, due to work, and then there was snow. More snow.

I figured all the farmers were going to pack up early to avoid a slippery drive back. But I hauled ass down to Union Square as soon as I could just to see if anyone was still there. While some stands were missing and others were wrapping up, I was still able to score sausage, syrup, squash, and the prettiest greens in existence. The Vermont syrup guys had no plans to leave too early -- hardcore New Englanders. #represent

Since I missed about two weeks here, I’ve built up quite the backlog of things to share, so I’m hoping to get my act together and get them out to the world, asap. Those cute, little nasturtiums that came in my greens (via, Two Guys From Woodbridge) and the days staying brighter longer is certainly helping my motivation right now.

Although my initial positive outlook for 2015 is at times waning away, I can still feel change in the air. I’m desperately trying to stay close to that feeling as I move throughout my days. Just keep cooking, just keep cooking, just keep cooking...I tell myself.

Monday Market Haul - 2/9/2015

Again with the snow on Saturdays! It was surprisingly not as frigid as it has been though. It’s pretty sad when 30 degrees doesn't feel so bad. Some vendors that had stayed away due to the cold were back this week and that was pretty sweet. I love the produce at Lani’s farm and I was so happy to see them again. They have wonderful greens. I got the nicest batch of baby kales that worked themselves into the loveliest of light salads this weekend.

Do you see how many butternut squash I lugged all the way home? Guys, I am bursting at the seams to tell you what I made with those babies. I guess I’ll just have to show you one day soon.

I ended up with some extra squash and I roasted some of it in cubes for the first time and geez, what a revelation! They were like roasty and crispy on the outside, then all kinds of mush on the inside and then with the salt and the sweet. And the, and the! Oh man! What took me so long!?! I also had so many squash butts leftover. So I just scooped those out and roasted whole. I then scraped out all that roasty flesh and made squash hummus. Because, common sense.

Happy Monday all!

Monday Market Haul - 2/2/2015

Monday means Monday Market Haul!!

So for the once in in a blue moon situation where I want some jam on toast, I stopped by Beth’s Farm Kitchen jam stand. It was pretty awesome there. After trying nearly every jam they had, I finally settled on one jar of black raspberry. The moment I tasted that one, it brought me straight back to Connecticut summers where my mother has wild black raspberry bushes all over the property.

A whole nother discussion in itself is the fact that food and memory is a pretty profound thing. I swear, even though Saturday was a bitter cold January day in the middle of New York City and I was covered from head to toe in winter weather wear, it was like the second it hit my tongue, I’m seven years old, dripping wet fresh out the pool on a hot July day, sun warming my back, grass between my toes, and I’m feasting, popping one by one tiny black raspberries into my mouth.

picking berries this summer from around the yard

Anyways, back to Beth and her jam, I can get behind anywhere that has a frequent “jammer” card. To top it off she served me a tiny cup of homemade squash soup and a two-bite sample of a grilled cheese sandwich that had some of her jam on it with the cheese. Genius. It really sorta made my day.

It still astounds me what I can get on my weekly market run --- jam, wine, short ribs, sausage, and all the seasonal veggies and fruits I could want, all the while supporting small, local businesses and farmers.

I’m pretty excited about those short ribs. Are you?

Monday Market Haul - 1/26/2015

Sweet italian sausage, eggs, honeycrisp apples, bosc pears, yellow onion, yellow and orange carrots, ricotta (not pictured)

It’s Monday!

And for that you get a Monday Market Haul! Guys, the things I had to do to get this haul this weekend.

While Saturday was not, ahem, a "snowpocalypse" or anything (which I am experiencing currently.) It was still bitter cold and on top of that raining. What I coulda done was slept in, stayed in my pajams, made some coffee, and tucked in to a new book (Cat’s Cradle.) But what I did was --- head to the farmer’s market. Because if I didn’t, there would be nothing to blog about or eat for the week!

I don’t know if it comes across, but I’d say 90% of all the food that I create for this blog as well as what I consume on a daily basis comes directly from the farmer’s market. That's why I show my Market Haul on Mondays. It's important for me to show that I do my best to practice what I preach and that I am committed to my local, seasonal eating mission. Obviously here and there, I purchase things through regular means -- citrus is anything but local and I don’t always buy my meat from the market. But overall I’ve found it’s a very important part of my life now -- it gets me out of the house even in the middle of winter, it forces creativity in the kitchen as I am forced to cook only with what’s available in the season, and I’ve learned how important it is to support local sustainable farming when at all possible. 

So many farmers were so appreciative for the people that came out this past weekend. It’s important to support their hard work and presence at the market especially on a cold rainy day. As a creature of habit, I’d gotten used to going to the same vendors all the time for the same things. This past weekend, not all the farmers could make it into the city because up North it was snowing and icy. I had to broaden my search for what I was looking for and I found some different farmers and producers I hadn’t met yet.

p.s. how cool is that cutting board?! many thanks to mah girl, Jack!