Unpardonable lapses on these. My only excuses are a number of personal events that interfered with Saturday marketing, and a lost charger for a dead camera battery. One of these photos was actually shot with an iPhone (guess which).
The unintended benefit, though, is getting to see a fast-forward progression of the season’s offerings over the course of the summer. First we have the haul from June 26:
Lots of classic indicators of early summer here: snap peas, garlic whips, porcini mushrooms, asparagus and strawberries of the particularly fragile and incredibly delicious ‘Hood’ variety. The latter are identifiable by their diminutive stature and the wet spot on the pint container where one of them’s gone squishy from the bike ride home.
Now contrast that with last weekend, August 21:
Peaches and tomatoes! And huge piles of each at several stalls. It’s almost as if Oregon is apologizing to us for running out of strawberries. That white orb-thing hiding behind the basil is a tiny orange-fleshed honeydew melon, which was nice but a little disappointing. Best leave those to hotter dryer places, and we’ll stick with the berries and stone fruits.
It doesn’t show up that well, but the fluted thing resting on top of the purple artichoke is a variety of zucchini that my friend Tobias at one of the market stalls (he’s also an industrial designer — cool, right?) recommended so emphatically I had little choice. It was fantastic. Whatever this variety’s called, it’s uglier than a normal zucchini, gets way bigger without getting woody, and tastes twice as good. On the other hand, he also recommended that strange dark green jutting out above it, which is apparently an ancient predecessor to broccolini or something. It tasted like twigs.
It honestly does my heart good to see the progress of time in my shopping basket, especially when one joy gets displaced by another in this way.
On the other hand, ask me again in February after I’ve filled my tote bag with parsnips and rain for the ninth consecutive weekend and maybe I’ll have something different to say.






