Market day ~ what did you buy?

[kerouac2]

price check (the top left item was fresh ginger root)

[bixaorellana]

Well, that added up!

[cheerypeabrain]

I was at the market before 0800 (very early for me) to buy vegetables,fruit and salad for our festive meals. I was going to buy a stick of brussels sprouts but realised that we just wouldn't have eaten them all (even though they stay quite fresh on the stem). I got carrots, parsnips, a bag of lovely brussels sprouts, a small cauliflower, red skinned potatoes, pink lady apples, conference pears, satsumas, cherry tomatoes, salad leaves, cucumber, radishes, celery, salad onions...

Then I went to M&S for goose fat, cheeses and big fat grapes.

[lugg]

Cheery ...Your feast sounds like it will be yummy.

[bixaorellana]

It has been a good while since I shopped at the big wholesale market de abastos in Oaxaca, since it was so easy to rely on the local market a block & a half from my house in Oaxaca. The main market here in little Coatepec is not nearly as huge, nor varied, nor exotic as the abastos in Oaxaca, but damn is it cheap! I can't swear that every single item is cheaper, but something about location or maybe the tropical climate means that seasonal items seem to get down to give-away prices.

In the past few weeks it has been apples, the smaller yellow ones. They are reliably sweet and tasty and at 20 -- 25 pesos a kilo, a smart buy.

For a week or so Haas avocados have been the bargain. I got a kilo today at a stall for 20 pesos. The stall next to that one had them for 15 pesos, but they looked way overripe. Apparently papayas are coming in now & I should have checked the price, as they looked nice. Probably it was the fact that I don't really like papaya that made me neglect to do so. Never mind, the two kilos of oranges for 25 pesos was a very nice score.

One Mexican peso equals: .058 usd; .078 cad; .046 £; .054 €

There is a stall I like that sells its produce in bags for 10 pesos a bag. The bags contain different weights of stuff depending on what it is. I got a bag containing what will be a nice serving or two for me of beautiful green beans, which are well out of season here, so that will be a treat. My haul at that stall: the green beans, two bags of cut-up nopales, two big heads of garlic, a bag of chiles, a bag of baby potatoes, & two nice zucchini, for a total price of 80 pesos.

[bjd]

That all sounds really cheap, Bixa. The weekly market here is not as good as the one where we lived before -- fewer producers and more resellers, and generally smaller except in summer when there are loads of prepared foods and tourist tat. Mind you, the other morning it was 4° out there and there was a guy selling hammocks.

This is not a good agricultural area in general. The soil means that only a few crops grow well here. Anyway, I end up always going to the same sellers to buy vegetables, fruit, eggs and bread.

[bixaorellana]

Is it because of your proximity to the ocean that the soil isn't so great, Bjd? Do you get good seafood?

I could do my neighborhood market in Oaxaca on auto-pilot and also stuck to the same vendors for the staples you mention. It was disorienting to leave that after so long.

[bjd]

For centuries the soil in this area was sandy and/or swampy. Traditional pictures show shepherds on stilts. Then pine trees were planted to provide masts for navies and that drained the soil to a certain extent.

When I walk around town, some gardens I see just have sand rather than black soil. Our own garden has areas of rich black soil and others where it's sandy and full of pebbles. I have been amending it, particularly in the past couple of years (thanks, Youtube videos! especially Jim Putnam) and the improvement is dramatic.

But for professional agriculture, what grows here are strawberries, asparagus, peanuts and corn for animal feed. The latter mostly because of EU agricultural subsidies and it's a disaster because it requires huge amounts of water.

As for seafood, you can get fresh fish at the fish market in Capbreton, 15 kilometres south along the coast. The local supermarkets have reasonable fish too. But local fishing is being suspended for a while because too many dolphins are being trapped in nets.

[bixaorellana]

Extremely interesting, Bjd. Wilmington, NC, where I used to live, is right on the ocean and has very sandy soil. A main crop there is peanuts.

Corn is sort of the devil in some ways. Early European invaders who encountered it in the Americas thought it would be the answer to famine in Europe. But the corn they saw was native to the region and grew without irrigation or heavy fertilizing -- nothing like the Frankenstein gmo corn that is endangering the native species in Mexico now. That "improved" corn is pretty much what is grown all over the US now and probably in Europe as well, the environment be damned.

I guess it's worth having to give up local fish for a while in order to protect the dolphins. The pause will probably allow the fish population time to increase as well.

[kerouac2]

French farmers are just starting to move a away from corn, with a little help from our recent drought years, and are growing more African crops like millet or sorghum that don't require irrigation. I hope that the cattle like it.

[bjd]

For now, GMO products are not allowed in the EU.

[kerouac2]

I have a new Afghan bakery. Here's what you can get for one euro. I devoured a pot of hummus with half of one.

[cheerypeabrain]

Yum. That bread looks delicious Kerouac.

Leicester Market is having a new roof so the stalls have been moved to either the covered market or market square. Our old covered market was brilliant with 3 floors. On the lower ground floor there were several stalls selling fresh fish, meat and poultry, cheese, a bakery and delicatessens..ground floor stalls sold everything from bongs to 2nd hand vinyl...the upper floor had stalls selling wool, fabric, and there were several haberdashers. There was a café and public toilets too. Fruit and vegetables were sold in the covered market nearby, with a few stalls set aside for a farmers' market (first Thursday of the month) and second hand tat.

In the 2010s the council pulled down the old covered market and built a much smaller one storey glass and brick horror. There are now 2 or 3 fresh meat and poultry stalls, 2 fresh fish stalls, 2 cheese stalls, 1 deli and a bakery stall. That's it! All the other stall holders had to fight for space in the covered market...and now THAT'S being rejigged too. Things don't change for the better!

[bixaorellana]

Feb 1, 2024 19:36:04 GMT bjd said:

For now, GMO products are not allowed in the EU.

Good news. You all keep fighing the good fight!

If I lived in your neighborhood, Kerouac, I'd have to move to keep from gobbling that bread all day long.

Cheery, that is an infuriating account of what has happened to your market! What possible logic was there in pulling down the three-story market and did no one object. I have the dark thought that one or more 2010 council members may have profited from the "improvement".

[kerouac2]

On top of that, it was hot, straight out of the oven.

[cheerypeabrain]

Not a market buy, but a bargain from John Lewis on Monday. A very nice silver coloured leather purse reduced from £49 to £13.50. It's roomy with lots of pockets and (most importantly) I can find it in my bag without rummaging about for half an hour.

[htmb]

I bought a bunch of carrots at the market this morning that have beautiful, fresh green tops. Normally I would add the tops to my supply of other vegetable pieces I use for making stocks, but that’s not something I can do at the moment. I’m looking for other suggestions. Can I just chop them up, like I would parsley or cilantro, and use in dishes like eggs, salads and pastas? The tops are too fresh and pretty to just wastefully discard.

I also bought salmon, two red peppers and a bunch of spring onions. All beautiful and fresh!

[bixaorellana]

I haven't seen a carrot with its leaves for a long time, but always feel that way about vegetables which come with their "non-product" leaves. Celery is the one that's often disappointing, with beautiful but unpleasantly bitter leaves.

Anyway, your post made me curious about carrots, so I looked them up & found that the short answer to your question is "yes". And there is other good news:
carrot tops ... are rich in vitamin A, C, K, and potassium source

[kerouac2]

When you cook the celery leaves in a soup or something, they lose their bitterness.

As for carrot tops, all of the tops of edible vegetables are excellent to eat -- turnips, parsnips, radishes, fennel, beets, celeriac.

[htmb]

I’ll try adding a little to a salad I plan to fix for dinner. I’m a little concerned about the carrot tops being somewhat bitter, but will give them a try.