Farmers’ Market Trip

I went to the farmers’ market for the first time this summer, after going to a water aerobics class at the downtown YMCA this morning. I’m planning on making this a regular activity this summer—not just working out on Saturday mornings, but also going to the farmers’ market to get all of my fresh produce for the upcoming week. The one thing I didn’t do last night that I should have was to plan out my meals for next week so that I’d have a better idea of what to look for, but I did at least look to see what I still have in the fridge from an emergency grocery-store run Tuesday night. So I didn’t end up getting much. But I thought I’d share:

I love watermelon. I don’t usually buy whole ones, simply because it’s hard for me to eat that much of it before it goes bad. This one is 14″ from stem to “stern” and about 28″ in diameter. So it’s not huge. I have tried the little “personal” watermelons, but I don’t like the way they taste as much as the real thing.

LSU cauliflower! No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you, these two small heads of cauliflower are naturally purple and gold. I thought those would be fun to cut up and have on salads at lunch this week, as well as steamed for dinner for a meal or two. The heads are pretty small, so they won’t last long, but if they’re good, I’ll buy bigger heads next week!

What’s a salad without cucumbers and tomatoes? Actually, I like to just slice the cucumbers and dip them in dressing—or possibly make a cucumber/onion/vinegar “salad.” The tomatoes that look yellow here are actually green—the kind that stay green when they’re ripe, which are usually sliced, breaded, and fried down here in the South. The reddish one next to it is actually kind of purple-y. It’s not a variety I recognized. But if I like it, I may plant a couple of seeds and grow my own!

So as I said, I didn’t get much. Most of the “locally-grown” fruit was peaches (local meaning from Georgia, really), which aren’t my favorite fruit, so I didn’t see any point in spending money on something I know will probably just sit here until they go so soft they aren’t edible.

I think next week, I’m going to try to get up early enough to go to the market before I go to the gym—I got there around 10:45 a.m. and it was already over 90-degrees outside. Even though it’s shady and the breeze was blowing through, I still worked up a major sweat—enough that I considered stopping at the gym and getting into the pool again just to cool off! The Y has a parking garage, so I’m not worried about the produce going bad because the car gets too hot. Plus, if I go before, I won’t have to spend so much time after the water aerobics class showering and drying my hair and everything else, and can just shower after I come home.

So what are you up to this weekend?