Fat for Winter: Grocery Shopping 101: The Farmer's Market

I love tomatoes. I like them highly acidic, plump, hard, and with a strong smell. A friend of mine once asked her father what a tomato plant smelled like, and got the reply "a tomato plant smells like a tomato plant." I like my tomatoes to taste like a tomato plant. And I like my tomatoes raw. And mostly I like my tomatoes to be dry-farmed Early Girls from Tomatero Farm. Which, being located in Watsonville, CA, doesn't yet sell their produce in Philadelphia, but does attend my favorite, and previously local, Grand Lake farmer's market.

Which was, for a few years, my weekly grocery stop. And for which I set aside every Saturday morning for every time I find myself back in Oakland, and not just for the tomatoes. So, while tomatoes feature heavily in this post, there's lots of other beautiful produce as well. And some beautiful Oakland people. Who are selling, buying, and eating beautiful produce.

Dry-farming, where the plant gets very little water, and thus spends all its energy producing its fruits, is less productive than normal farming methods, and is also super delicious. My favorite application is tomatoes, of course, but the most excellent strawberries are also grown with this technique - my favorite are Albion strawberries, also from Tomatero Farm's stand.

Actually, I get a lot of stuff from Tomatero Farm.

But there's a bunch of other nifty vendors there too, and one of the wonderful things about farmer's markets is the ability to see, smell, and taste what you're thinking about buying. My tomatoes and strawberries always come from the same stand, but I buy peaches from different folks week to week, depending on what varieties are offered and how they taste.

And some things are more seasonal than others, and you have to get them while they're available. (This being California, strawberries are not one of the seasonal things, but okra seems to be.)

And other things are less seasonal.

That photograph on the right is of chalkboards listing different cuts of meat. I've begun buying meat at farmer's markets more often: it's more expensive, but also more delicious, more sustainable, healthier, and lowers my meat consumption to a more reasonable level. The food festival I went to while I was in California, Eat Real, tried to emphasize those points, but I'd already noticed the improvement in my regular grocery shopping and diet when I got my protein from the market along with my produce. An added benefit is that if I take the time to carefully choose such a wonderful cut of meat, I'll take the time to cook it properly, with good accompaniments, meaning I eat higher quality food and more balanced meals.

And of course, the vendors are always happy to help you make educated choices, recommend ways to cook their produce, and give you plenty of information about what they're selling. They're also usually really awesome.

If, for instance, you need ripe melons for your housewarming party that afternoon, the lady selling melons will go pick out the ripest ones she can find from her huge truckload.