kingfield farmers market

(Buddy the Pony and his friends - photo by Mike Braucher)

I am a creature of habit and one of the most comforting and delicious of my habits for the last couple summers has been a trip to the Kingfield Farmers Market almost every single Sunday. Sometimes I bring the whole family along and we meander and nosh on mini-donuts, falafel or Thai omelets, running into friends and neighbors at every turn. Sometimes, I go in for a surgical strike – alone with my basket, in and out in fifteen minutes, loaded down with eggs, veggies, salmon, meats and cheeses for the week. By the looks of the mellow shuffling crowds, I am not the only one with a Kingfield Farmers Market habit, and so I am probably not the only one who’s going to be feeling a bit forlorn now that the season has ended.

If you are a woman anywhere near my age and I started singing Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens . . . chances are good you would pipe in immediately with bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens! All together now! Brown paper packages, tied up with striiiiing. These are a few of my favorite thiiiings! OK, I’ll stop. But I know you’re feeling it. Try as I might, I can’t get my kids interested in The Sound of Music. I guess children in lederhosen made out of curtains singing with a nun can’t compete with the likes of Harry Potter and The Black Eyed Peas. 

For someone with a bacon mustache in her bio picture, I realize I have written precious little about meat here in these Simple, Good, and Tasty pages. My swooning and waxing poetic about squash, asparagus, garlic scapes, rhubarb, blueberries, apples and tomatoes (oh, sweet tomatoes) may lead you to believe that I am a feeble carnivore indeed. It just goes to show how eating with the seasons, along with myriad benefits lauded every day here at Simple, Good, and Tasty, has the added perk of increasing one's consumption of fruits and vegetables. To pay attention to what is most ripe and fresh at the farmers market inevitably gets my wheels turning and inspires me to figure out ways to cook and eat those beautiful foods.

It’s corn time, people! Sweet, sweet corn time. A couple weeks ago when I spotted the Peter’s Pumpkins and Carmen’s Corn stand at the Kingfield Farmers Market, I gasped and shimmied over as quickly as my flip flops would carry me. I snatched up six ears and to my surprise, received a gentle admonition from the owner, Peter Marshall, as he handed it to me: “Now this is good and sweet, but it’s not as good and sweet as it will be in a few weeks.” I’m not sure why I was surprised. I ought to know by now that Mother Nature takes her own sweet time and does things her own sweet way, with little regard for urban corn fiends like me.

You know that feeling, when you’ve been with someone a long time and you feel like you know every thing about them. You know every story, every place they lived, every band they loved, but then out of the blue, maybe at a party, maybe while you’re weeding the garden or drinking coffee, you hear a story you’ve never heard before. And in that split second, your eyes open wide and you feel ever so slight a sensation of frisson at the novelty, the mystery, the possibility.

Well, I’ve been with vegetables a long time – ever since I can remember, really. At this point, I thought I had tried every one, every which way. I thought I knew all of their seasons, all of their stories. But I was wrong. Oh, was I ever wrong. Last week at the Kingfield Farmers Market, I came upon a basket of bright green tangles that stopped me in my tracks.

Here in Minnesota, our farmers markets have been up and running for a few weeks now, and even though we may be behind other parts of the country in terms of what’s available because of our loooooong winters, it is exactly those loooooong winters that cause people like me (and you, I would guess) to get a little breathless and grabby at the sight of a bundle of fresh, green, locally grown anything.

In the absence of more colorful splashy things like berries, tomatoes, and stone fruit, the myriad greens and slightly purple characters we’re seeing now get to take center stage for some well deserved adulation. Baby lettuces, asparagus, rhubarb, ramps, scallions and radishes are all getting to strut their stuff and I, for one, am riveted.

Last Sunday, my family and I (and a few friends) took the opportunity to visit the Kingfield Farmers Market in South Minneapolis. It's been ages since I've been there, but pretty much everyone I know raves about it. It's easy to see why.