Yes, I rushed home from the farmers market, artfully arranged my purchases on the table, and photographed them before shoving them into my tiny fridge. Yes, I know I’m weird. But aren’t they beautiful?
I’m still sticking with my shopping challenge: only purchasing fresh fruits and veggies, tofu, and soy milk. I’ve been at it since July 1st, so it’s been almost a month now (although to be fair, I was away for a week of it). It gets more and more fun as the weeks go on. I love the feeling of cleaning out the pantry (but without wasting anything …read more

Is this stuff not gorgeous? I love the vibrant-colored stalks of Swiss chard on display at my local farmers market these days. Beautiful!
They taste just like their plain old white and green counterparts, which is to say, not bad. Plus leafy greens are super healthy for you, no matter the color of the stalk.

I found these beans at the farmers market last week. They look like green beans, smell like green beans, and taste like green beans, but they’re purple. So I guess that makes them… purple beans?
Inside they were green, and the outside color faded from brilliant purple to kind of a greenish-purple while they were steaming. Otherwise they really did taste just like their green counterparts. I served them with a squeeze of lemon juice and some salt and pepper.

Big at the farmers’ market this week are these yellow zucchini. They look ordinary enough, but I’m not sure I’d ever had them before now. The insides are yellow, too, and the taste was quite similar to that of green zucchini.
The same day I also picked up some zucchini flowers, a favorite from my childhood that I rarely get to enjoy much anymore. Since I don’t keep eggs in the house regularly anymore, I tried using soy milk to dip the flowers in before lightly coating them with flour (plus salt and pepper) and pan frying them in olive oil …read more

We found these at the farmers market the other day. At first glance we thought they were beets, which seemed to be a common mistake. They weren’t selling well – apparently people just aren’t into giant radishes – and we actually ended up taking home a couple for free.
The radishes had a very strong flavor that was, well, radishy. Which is a good flavor for radishes to have. We enjoyed them sliced thinly, as a side dish on sushi night.