peevish mama

I know I’m waxing annoyingly poetic about farmers markets, but I just LOVE them. I love love LOVE them. You certainly get your browsing and shopping fix, ogling all that colorful, shiny produce and snapping up bunches and baskets of beauty for but a song. You give your foodie-self a good little run around, ending up with buckets of beautiful ingredients for lovely salads and suppers. I love having a big monster bunch of scallions in the fridge, for example, and working my little chef’s brain to figure out how to use them up. You get to chat with people you know over the wholesome twangy din of a bluegrass band. You get to wear hats and sundresses and act all twee and romantic with kale and carrot tops exploding out of your woven bag. And it’s different every time. My supermarket, by contrast, is the same every time. I love farmers markets, and yesterday, I found two reasons more:

1. When is the last time you shelled peas? I can think of nothing as deeply soothing, meditative and delicious.2. If these oddly affecting carrots-in-love had come across the conveyor belt of a poorly paid worker at Dole or United Fruit Company, they surely would have been tossed in the rejects pile. Mother Nature is an artist who works loose and quick, with an abundance of joy and improvisation, wit and wonder. There is crushing beauty and soulfulness in her rare imperfections, if you are simply willing to look.