winter farmers' market

cattitude and I walked over to the Somerville Winter Farmers' Market this morning. It's a good market, with many vendors and a fair variety of things. Yes, it's a winter market, so they have radishes and onions but no lettuce or tomatoes, and apples were the only fruit. We got a radish that actually tastes like something, from a vendor who was happily giving out sample slices of different kinds of radish, carrots, and probably other things. (The first radish he offered me, after I said I was looking for something with noticeable flavor, was spicier than I really liked.) I had a brief conversation with a fellow shopper about the fact that his sign described one variety as "psychedelic," presumably just for how colorful it is; I might or might not want an actually psychedelic salad vegetable, but I would definitely want to be informed before eating it.

The other novelty was a cucumber-spice shrub; I liked it when I tasted a sample, and will now see whether I use it as much, or in the same ways, as the ginger shrub I get from someone at the Boston Public Market.

We were pleased to see some reasonable-sized rutabagas, so we bought a few, and Cattitude is planning a beef stew.

We also bought Macoun apples (after tasting and not liking a variety whose name I have already forgotten, which I was told was a Honeycrisp×Fuji cross), two varieties of beets, cheese, a package of the frozen Moroccan chickpea and carrot ravioli, and a mini chocolate Bundt cake, part of which I ate for second breakfast.

There are far fewer winter markets than summer/fall ones, so I'm pleased to have this one so close to where we're living, and that it started up so soon. The very last regular market in the Boston area was in Davis Square, the day before Thanksgiving—i.e., ten days ago—and I think this may be the first winter market to start up. (Last winter I went to the much smaller winter market in Charles Square a few times, and the large Cambridge one only at the very end of the season.)