Farmer's Market Roundup - Here Comes Fall!
By Anthony Todd in Food on Sep 11, 2008 4:00PM
When we headed off to Daley Plaza this morning, we didn’t expect to find much that we hadn’t seen the week before. But the market always manages to surprise us and this morning was no exception! Some new items had come into season, and we found some new varietals to try out in the coming week.
The first of the fall ornamental veggies have arrived – we saw Indian corn, miniature pumpkins and a other gourds. The most exciting new arrivals were the honey crisp apples. We’ve been a big fan of this variety for a long time, and it seems to be catching on – four different stands were offering big baskets of honey crisps for $5 or $6. We also picked up our first cider of the year! Lehman’s Orchard had honey crisp cider, at $4/ half gallon. It’s amazingly sweet, but still has a tart edge. Nichols Farm’s apples are also coming on strong, with 15-20 different types available right now.
Corn, peaches, melons, all the regular late summer favorites were around in abundance. Celery bunches were selling for only $1 – a pretty amazing bargain for organic celery. Hundreds of sunflowers were on sale - perfect for brightening up the house. We also picked up some purple beans, which we’ve never tried before. Nichols Farm also had the largest shallots we’ve ever seen – 3-4 inches in diameter.
We went into the market with $25 and left with empty pockets, but take a look at the last picture – that was our haul.