I've been trying to get to the local farmer's markets so I can get fresh yummy produce and support local agriculture, but working a non-standard schedule like I do makes it hard to manage. Most of them run a few hours a day and are mostly after normal people get off from work, so from 3pm-7pm or so. Only one market is both open on the weekend and close enough to be reasonably accessible, and they only have a handful of vendors and not a lot of choice. Last time I was there, only two stands had veggies! One was coffee, one was cheese, and one was baked goods, all of which are great but not what I was looking for.
My mother-in-law recently introduced me to a farm stand near where she lives. I'm unclear on how the setup works but I think they get deliveries every morning from several local-ish farms and this place sells everything under one outdoor roof. I was happy to see that they are open almost all day, every day, so I can get to them before work if I want to make the round-trip in the morning, or I can visit any weekend. The selection was great, and the prices were reasonable. We got a monster cantaloupe, which we split, for $4.25, and I got a remarkable amount of green beans for $2.50. The "jumbo" cantaloupes at the grocery store are about $4 on sale and are half the size of the one we bought, and nowhere near as tasty. When we split up the melon and I brought home my half in a plastic container, it was amazing just how much melon was in that melon. I needed one of my MIL's biggest Tupperwares to fit it all in!
The real score of the day was the "seconds" table, where they had baskets of fruit and veggies lined up for quick, cheap, sale, because they had spots or were funny shapes. A couple things looked pretty sad, but I picked up a basket of potatoes for $2.50 and later compared it to the 5lb bag of red potatoes I had just bought the day before at Giant for almost twice that price (on sale!).
There was garlic hiding in there too! Bonus! I only had to throw out two of the big potatoes because they were too far gone, and I did have to chop black sections out of a couple of others, but in all, this was a fantastic deal. I used the big ones first and left the small ones on the counter for about a week, during which Mojo enjoyed sitting on them and trying to hatch them. I wanted a picture of him doing that, but every time I brought the camera in he jumped off and scattered his potato eggs all over the kitchen. Maybe I need to get a basket. But he'd just sit in that too.
My mother-in-law recently introduced me to a farm stand near where she lives. I'm unclear on how the setup works but I think they get deliveries every morning from several local-ish farms and this place sells everything under one outdoor roof. I was happy to see that they are open almost all day, every day, so I can get to them before work if I want to make the round-trip in the morning, or I can visit any weekend. The selection was great, and the prices were reasonable. We got a monster cantaloupe, which we split, for $4.25, and I got a remarkable amount of green beans for $2.50. The "jumbo" cantaloupes at the grocery store are about $4 on sale and are half the size of the one we bought, and nowhere near as tasty. When we split up the melon and I brought home my half in a plastic container, it was amazing just how much melon was in that melon. I needed one of my MIL's biggest Tupperwares to fit it all in!
The real score of the day was the "seconds" table, where they had baskets of fruit and veggies lined up for quick, cheap, sale, because they had spots or were funny shapes. A couple things looked pretty sad, but I picked up a basket of potatoes for $2.50 and later compared it to the 5lb bag of red potatoes I had just bought the day before at Giant for almost twice that price (on sale!).
There was garlic hiding in there too! Bonus! I only had to throw out two of the big potatoes because they were too far gone, and I did have to chop black sections out of a couple of others, but in all, this was a fantastic deal. I used the big ones first and left the small ones on the counter for about a week, during which Mojo enjoyed sitting on them and trying to hatch them. I wanted a picture of him doing that, but every time I brought the camera in he jumped off and scattered his potato eggs all over the kitchen. Maybe I need to get a basket. But he'd just sit in that too.Don't worry, I washed off all the cat-butt germs before I ate them.
Nothing like Marche Jean Talon.. but looks good! Support the locals always pays in the end..
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