One of the epicenters of life in Davis, California is the Farmer’s Market downtown, held every Wednesday and Friday. As it was rainy and miserable, and the market is largely covered, we got ourselves there to inspect the local foodstuffs. (Only locally grown or caught items are sold.)
Fust, two photos of the venue, the second a panorama:
Click (twice in succession) to enlarge:
It wasn’t exactly the food season, but here’s what was on offer:
Two old friends (biology professors), both buying the market’s famous cumin-laced Gouda cheese. If you are a biologist from Davis, you’ll recognize them.
Squashes: I hate ’em all except for pumpkin, and then only in pumpkin pie. I do like eggplant if it’s cooked properly, and I guess that counts as a squash.
Local almonds, fresh, crunchy, and tasty:
Meyer lemons, grown widely in Davis back yards (we have a tree):
I guess berries were in season, as they had four varieties. They ain’t cheap!
They offered us a gratis strawberry to taste, and it was fantastic, juicy and sweet. They don’t put the inferior ones at the bottom of the basket, an old and nefarious supermarket ploy:
Fresh bread:
. . . and several varieties of apples. These, called “Arkansas Black,” I’d never seen before, and they were quite dark. (The only apples I really like are Granny Smiths, which are tart, the way a good apple should be. Nowadays most commercial apples have all the flavor bred out of them, so they may be crispy but all you taste is sugar:
Eggplant is not a squash– it’s in the tomato family. (Squashes are in the cucumber family.) So, with the exception of pumpkins, you can maintain a squash-free diet!
GCM
You beat me to that. Solanaceae, not curcurbit.
And the Arkansas Blacks that I’ve had seem more like cooking apples.
Also, none in that pic, but in my book, turban squashes (dark green with orange highlights) are the only ones worth spending money on. They’re quite good quartered and baked with a a bit of salt and a pat of butter.
The photo shows my favorite variety: delicata. (They are the striped cylindrical ones in the center.) One of the few winter squash varieties that you can pleasurably eat the skin. I like to roast them and once finished add butter, salt, pepper and honey. They have a very smooth texture (not stringy) and a sweet, earthy taste: hard to beat! They can also be used to make a lovely curried cream soup: velvety, buttery and superb.
Yes, it’s in the Nightshade family (which includes tomatoes, potatoes, tobacco, peppers).
Eggplant count as a squash?
I’m not a biologist, nor from Davis, so don’t recognize the professors. I do recognize the Gouda, which comes from Oakdale, in Stanislaus County, several counties down the Central Valley, but I guess that can count as local. They have about every variety of Gouda you can imagine, and probably some you can’t. They’re on the main road (CA 120) between the Bay Area and Yosemite and have a nice little park with various farm animals to entertain the kids.
I must demur on the notion that eggplant “counts as a squash”. Eggplant is a member of the Solanaceae (nightshade) family, thus a relative of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and tobacco. I know a few people who refuse to partake in any way of any member of the family. This goes back to the Old World, I think. Squashes and pumpkins are Cucurbitaceae members. Those same folks have no issue with them.
Farmer’s markets are fun, and the produce is always so beautifully displayed. There are several in the Seattle area, the most famous being the Pike Place Market on the waterfront. It’s usually so crowded there that one doesn’t even need to walk; you simply stand there and get pushed along. It a perfect incubator for infectious disease, so whenever I go there I try not to inhale.
Do they have bushmeat at the Davis market? (Just kidding, obviously.)
But Pike Place is an open-air market, so I’m not too weary of infectious disease. The best produce vendor by far (imo) is Sosio’s.
https://www.pikeplacemarket.org/vendor/sosios-produce/
It’s open-ish. About half is outdoors and half is indoors. Beyond the famous fish-throwers, it’s indoors. It can be a mosh pit in (out) there.
Agreed. At times the crowds can be nuts.
I love fresh almonds (and marzipan, via my German mother), but they’re water hogs on the California environment.
They also have extreme amounts of oxalates, which my wife’s doctor said she should avoid after having a terrible extended time with kidney stones a few years ago.
Unlike my wife, I still eat almonds even though long ago I also had a very painful attack of a kidney stone — which I managed to catch upon its exit. It was quite big, about three-eighths of an inch on the long axis, with many protuberances, somewhat like a puffer fish with stubby spines. (Ouch!) It also reminded me of a miniature brown-green asteroid. I still have half of it. (I sent the other half for analysis.)
Imagine this as a kidney stone, except not as cute:
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/facts/pufferfish
Good gawd!
Ha! Yes. But I did get some powerful pain killers in the hospital. And I got a cool copy of an X-ray showing the initial blockage, which looked like the damming of the Nile.
“Squashes: I hate ’em all except for pumpkin, and then only in pumpkin pie.”
Well said! A good atheist rejects all gourds.
Love the Davis Farmer’s Market! Farmers would drive up from Ventura with strawberries. And the satsumas! Live music, so much good food. The Midwest has sleet now, so be happy you only have rain.