Julia Slaughter

Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’

I had hoped to have a nice blog post today with pictures of beautiful and fresh produce, but alas the best laid plans of Mice and Men…

After almost two weeks of eating complete and utter garbage, first splurging on vacation and then going through refrigerator drama, I was looking forward to getting back into the kitchen. In fact I wanted to reclaim the kitchen in style and I had dreams of cooking beautiful fresh vegetables. In fact, I didn’t just want vegetables – I wanted fresh, locally grown Farmer’s Market vegetables.

I’m not sure if my desire for fresh locally grown veggies came from hanging out with my friends in California or if it came from thinking about driving down back roads and seeing guys outside with a pick up truck, loaded down with home grown tomatoes and cucumbers, but the desire to hit the Farmer’s Market was strong with me. The knowledge that there was one just down the road from my house made it that much more appealing.

Sunday, I embarked on my unsuccessful quest. The lesson I learned is that just because something is setup on the side of the road and calls itself a “Farmer’s Market” doesn’t mean that what’s inside is home grown goodness. Perhaps I should’ve realized something was amiss when I stepped out of the parking lot into utter darkness, I can’t say that the market was a store, but it was more than just a road side stand.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust so I stepped to some shelves, out of the way. I was expecting to find some homemade goodies but instead there are faded and peeling labels that indicate I am standing in front of a wall of mass produced and seriously out of date sorghum. Not a promising start…it got worse for me, as I walked through the straw that broke the camels back was the same bagged carrots you can get at the super market. No, this was not good at all. At the end of my inspection I determined that there were in fact homegrown tomatoes and perhaps melons there, everything else was the same stuff that you can get at the grocery store except it had been sitting in a less climate controlled and let’s face it – a less clean environment.

Before I ended up in the grocery store, where I inevitably ended up, I actually took a ten mile drive up rustic highway 98 but to no avail – there wasn’t even a guy with a pick up truck hanging out for me to buy any locally grown vegetables from.

For lunch today I’m having some lovely brussel sprouts, I couldn’t tell you where they were grown but I know this – I didn’t feel like I was participating in a back alley drug deal when I bought them.