Your humble narrator still wears a mask at farmers markets. Just to be on the safe side. Plenty of vendors people wear masks. Some don't.
Farmers market veterans, those who have gone to farmers markets for years, maybe decades. They know prices can go up each year but only at the beginning of the season. Your local farmer is using more gas to bring you produce. Given the increase in the price at grocery stores, farmers markets are more of a bargain.
The asparagus may look similar to what you see in the grocery store. The food channels cry out about how good food should look. That doesn't apply to produce. You don't want the prettiest produce; you want the best tasting produce. Your local farmer has this.
One relic from the before time made its debut: the cooking demonstration. A scramble with duck eggs, mushrooms, and asparagus. The whole dish on toast points with a mini salad on top. Not normally a fan of food piled upon food, yet the combo worked and was delicious.
I learned some things, such as a scramble over high heat, cutting asparagus stems on the bias, and the pros and cons to adding liquid to your eggs before you start the scramble.
Buying produce is more fun when you have some idea what you will do with that food.
Make the move to bring containers to farmers markets
We wrote about this discovery in 2019. Bring your own container to the farmers market and save their container, reducing the clutter in your home. Weren't able to do this in 2020 and 2021. Back to doing this in 2022, especially helpful for strawberry season.
If you have pandemic brain, you might forget about your newly acquired fruit. One fewer task can make your day.
How sampling might look in a post-pandemic world
Haven't seen too much sampling at farmers markets in 2022. The local spiced nuts vendor has samples. Produce sampling is a trickier proposition.
As we've seen, some elements of life before the pandemic won't come back. Produce sampling may be one of those elements.
Tomato trust at a farmers market is a cherished responsibility
Touching tomatoes in 2021 was more accepted than in 2020. I've seen a sign or two about grabbing what you want to buy. We'll get a better idea once tomatoes are a regular part of the farmers market landscape.
The cruel irony of being able to touch inferior tomatoes in the grocery store was infuriating.
Respect vendors that restrict touching. For tomatoes, you might try a vendor who is more accommodating.
Add summer local fruit to your lemonade
The argument for freezing blueberries is that you can have summer fruit in the winter. The drawback is, once thawed, the fruit can be mushy.
A local store carried frozen fruit from my top fruit vendor well before the farmers market schedule kicked into gear. I was experimenting with a reduced sugar lemonade and used the frozen strawberries. To clarify, reduced sugar in our world means using less sugar with no substitutes.
The fruit freshness, even in frozen form, brings a vitality to the mixture. The idea is just enough sugar combined with the natural fruit sugars as a nice alternative to soft drinks.
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Inside a farmers market in the new normal in the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic
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Buying honey in the grocery store is a crapshoot since you aren't always sure of getting 100% honey. Farmers markets have plenty of local honey that is actual honey. The cost may throw you off but the stuff is real and lasts forever. I started experimenting with tahini and honey as a sandwich filling, both of them from farmers markets. You can taste the difference.
I've seen bone marrow from one vendor; CBD oil from other vendors in 2022. If you have ancient visions of what a farmers market is all about, get thee to a farmers market in 2022.
BalanceofFood.com farmers market coverage
Depending on where you live, your farmers market options can be rather different. Maybe you can get strawberries in late January or your farmers market has dates and figs. Maybe asparagus is the first sign of spring where you live.
Summer is the best time to check out a farmers market. Think of farmers market as value, not cost. Cutting out the middle person is what we think we are all about; farmers market do that and so much more.
photos credit: me
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