8/23 Evanston Farmer's Market

not feeling particularly well today thanks to my new classmates and their tequila drinking habits. in any event i decided to walk it off by going to the farmer's market this morning. when i arrived last week, i was pleasantly surprised to find out that the evanston farmer's market is only a couple blocks away from the house. so, at least through october, i wont have to rely on whole foods for my food. the market is actually quite large - they claim to have about 30 vendors - and seems very popular, always a good thing to see. the farmers seem to come from pretty far away, michigan and indiana for example, though some are more local. unfortunately i couldn't buy much of anything since i'm leaving on a big jet plane tomorrow. i did pick up a few tomatoes and some arugula to enjoy for lunch however. overall, i couldn't be happier to have this essentially next door. good news for me!

10/14 Apple Picking

Although I was at Lisa + Nate's wedding in Groton, MA most of the weekend I did manage to convince a few of the people there to go apple picking on Sunday morning. For the most part, produce on this side of the country can't hold a candle to what comes out of California, except, of course, apples. As it turns out mid-October is pretty much the peak of apple season and Groton is pretty much the center of apple picking land in Massachusetts. So going apple picking on Sunday seemed like the only logical thing that we could possibly do.

So off we went to visit Phil and his less famous twin brother to drink some cider and pick enterprise, cortlands, mcintosh, macouns (my favorite) and a couple other varietals. As you can see, many apples were picked and I'll be eating them for some time to come - so keep an eye out for them to show up in my dishes...

A trip to the Ferry Building Farmers' Market

So technically this post isn't about a dish, or even a meal. But let's get real, kids - meals come from food. And food comes from, well, a lot of places. Many of these places are not exactly thrilling shopping experiences. I get some of my food from Eatwell Farms, which is a community supported agriculture (CSA) venture around Davis, CA. This requires no shopping at all on my part - I simply pick up my box on Thursday night outside a local bakery co-operative and try to come up with good reasons why I'm out of change for the local color that lurks outside. However, this week Eatwell failed to renew my subscription so I was forced to "take it to the streets," as kids these days like to say (presumably while skateboarding and drinking high-caffeine sodas).

And thus I undertook a pilgrimage of sorts, to one of the great food meccas in North America. This would be the Ferry Building Farmers' Market, on the Embarcadero at the foot of the Bay Bridge. It's a little intense, since both real food people, various locals, and tourists all clamor in on Saturday morning, but one can enjoy some of the finest things about eating on the West Coast:

1. A plate of chilequiles that would make your mamacita cry
2. Coffee. Really great coffee. Made possible by a local shop that must be making a goddamn killing off of all us desperate for that perfect crema (Blue Bottle Coffee)
3. A cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, flowers, beans, bread, crying babies, dogs, ferries, all at prices that reflect the rarefied, sustainable, organic, local vibe

Visiting the Ferry Building at the end of August is like entering an impossible world: every kind of fruit and vegetable seems to be ripe and in season. These are the things that caught my eye - we'll see what inspiration whips up this week.

(To see a version of the photo above with labels identifying the items, click here).