this morning after staying up until 3 rather obsessively working on our sweden shutterfly book (only 3 more days until the 25% off freeship coupon expires!) i reallllly almost stayed on the couch instead of heading out to the irvine farmer's market as planned. it helped that i had recruited an eager donna for our saturday adventure and after already postponing our 9:30 pick up time to 10:30 i figured it would just be really lame to cancel again. but mostly it seemed important just to go, even if only we caught the vendors packing up and got a taste of blenheim apricots and valencia orages it would be a strong green light towards our commitment to living more healthy and conscious. . .anyway, it was sooooo worth it! we arrived and were amazed by the bustle of friendly and conscious food growers and the free samples of everything from sweet yellow watermellon (delish actually--like a cross between a canaloupe and a red melon) to soleadad goats cheese. owen went right for the champagne grapes (yup he's already got that palate!) and the dinosaur plums. of course owen wanted to know WHY these plums were called dinosaur after closer inspection and when the vendor explained the skin is mottled just like a dinosaur's a fellow pluot enthusiast smiled and chimed in "hey, i never knew that!". then we bought half of a 2 for $5 persian canaloupe with another mom shopping with her tots and by this time were definitely sold on the market shopping.
owen took his camera so we had fun taking snaps of our favorite finds and posing for each other!
i had been interested in joining a CSA--or community supported agriculture-- co-op and spent a lot of time talking with paul at garden of eden organics who gave me the most beautiful heirloom tomato and an "enthusiastic buyer" discount on some gorgeous swiss chard. ok, i didn't know the technical term for CSA but wan
ted to sign up for that box of fresh, in season, local harvest goody bag of fruits, veggies and greens. paul showed me the week's box and it was really a beautiful assortment of everything from white nectarines to dragon greens. (i was a little unsure of making the north county trek to irvine every weekend and a couple of hours later out walking the dogs we chatted with a neighbor who belongs to the san juan CSA and so now we have a new challenge to check out south coast farms. ah, the work of it all!! hehe).just when we were leaving we stopped to pick up a bag of valencia oranges for "orange master owen" to juice for his
special pink smoothies and when we noticed the oranges were from riverside started chatting with vincent who has been growing his oranges in the grove less than a mile behind my parent's house! so of course we bought a bag and got a handful of fiji apples to take home for being from the 'hood!all of this cheerful haggling made us hungry so of course we had to hit the UCI in & out (eric schlosser of course would approve!) before heading home to unload our stash. . .
2 comments:
wow... I love the idea of the CSA, but I wonder how many times we would be able to pick up the food at the scheduled time.
i think irvine would ultimately be impractical despite our enthusiasm but i think san juan is doable if we just schedule it in as a shopping day. if there was a day that we couldn't pick up it does go to charity which is ok with me--anyone out there interested in sharing a box and pick up duties??
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