Monday Market Haul - 6/1/2015

strawberries, buttermilk, spinach, asparagus, rhubarb, and dill

it starts with a crick in the wrist. the left one. the one nearly forgotten, was broken midair on a trampoline at age eleven. don’t think much of it.

the cat, hot and miserable, lays in the middle of the coffee table. somehow this is a respite, or probably, she just wants to hangout.

but then suddenly, too early for the sun to be setting, it gets so dark. it’s gloomy and a welcomed breeze sets in. the air becomes damp and heavy.

the cat disappears. under the bed --- just in time for the first lightning strike and rumble of thunder.

with a whoosh, the skies let loose and the sound is rhythmic and lulling and uncharacteristically pleasing in the moment. the allowance for a lazy sunday afternoon. wafting through the window, it would be nice if the air smelled a little less of wet garbage, and a little more like wet grass, and mulch, and wood. the way it did in the "old" days.

with a lovely, guiltless, dreary afternoon of really good television under the belt, dinner needs to get made. the chicken bought that morning is somehow rancid. partners in most things, hands are held in the evening’s drizzle on the stroll back to the market. in the moment, the lightning strikes far off in the distance don’t seem foreboding...

leaving the market with a fresh pack, the skies have erupted again. adult-like considerations are assessed. wait it out? are these shoes good for running? can these clothes get wet?

fuck it.

a frenzied four block dash ensues. and then maybe, just maybe, before dipping inside, a quick kiss is stolen in the rain.

---

what happened to summer? i promise it’s still here, just look at that market haul!

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.