Farmers' Market

This year I've set a goal to take advantage of the area Farmers' Markets. Dan and I love the atmosphere of the downtown market, not to mention all the great food available. But when I can't make it downtown there's a market within walking distance of our house that has plenty of produce and other fun treats like breads and cheese. It can actually be fun to eat fruits and vegetables when they taste good and the best tasting produce seems to be the kind that's locally grown.

That said, I'm not so hot at picking out great produce. For the most part, I've been pretty lucky. I did make the mistake of buying a bunch of squishy peaches, but that was from a guy who wouldn't let anyone touch his peaches. I learned my lesson and now I try to get produce that I can pick out.

In addition to the food, I also enjoy people watching at these markets. Of course the downtown market is full of artisans, musicians, and plenty of ecclectic shoppers. At my neighborhood market, I've also been surprised to hear foreign languages. My guess is that the most common foreign language I hear is some Eastern European language because it doesn't sound like a romance language and I know we've got some Bosnian and Albanian communities here.

For some reason (and it's probably based on stereotypes and racism), I've got it in my head that these women are better at picking out produce than I am. It could also be that they are fairly emphatic about expressing their opinions about the food. Even if I don't speak their language, I can usually tell by their facial expressions and the way they handle the food whether they think the produce is fresh or whether the prices are too high. Occassionally I'll make my own purchasing decisions based on what the woman next to me is doing, especially if she is really into handling the produce and seems to have a strong opinion about it.

But yesterday, when I wandered into the booth selling melons, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of produce handling going on. Everyone around me was slapping watermelons, while I was just trying to find a pretty one. I've heard about the slapping the watermelon trick, but since I don't know what I'm listening for, I tend to look for the prettiest small watermelon. One woman was holding some sort of charm over each melon. It was silver chain connected to an elongated pyramid. She'd dangle the pyramid over each melon. The intensity of it all was such that I wanted to just walk out and go home since I obviously didn't have the skills to choose a good melon. But lucky for me, the gal running the booth was pretty emphatic about checking the melons herself and she would occassionally slap a watermelon, pronounce it "not good" and throw it aside. I admit that I have yet to try the watermelon, but with all that slapping going on, I'm optimistic that our watermelon will be good enough for two produce-challenged people.