Saturday, August 31, 2013

August 31, 2013 or "Eating Slightly Better"

Today I went to the farmer's market. I never used to go, but I have a friend who lives near the big one that's on Saturdays, and I live near the little one that's on Wednesdays, so we tend to go at least once a week to one of them (since she's on mat leave and I'm... employed temporarily, part time, and school hasn't started yet).
It's nice to walk around, even when I don't intend to buy anything (in fact, I believe that today is really one of three times I've ever purchased stuff-the other two were radish sprouts) because it's SO expensive. I'd love to say that I care about the pesticides blabber blabber blabber but really, that stuff is worth washing off when I can get everything so much cheaper from a regular (cough, discount) store and still have money to wash my clothes at the end of the day. Seriously, it's priced up that much.
Today, though, we bought as a group and split stuff, and it actually turned out cheaper than it would have otherwise. Not terribly cheaper, mind you. But, I got 12 fresh (tasty) corn cobs for 4$, since we split two dozen (and I've already frozen it for later eating and kept four cobs for dinners. I also got a bunch of peaches (that I've eaten three of today) for what, 6$ I think? So worth it, because the peaches at grocery stores are awfully hard, bitter AND expensive. These ones are melt in your mouth amazing.
I also got six apples for $2.50, because the old man selling them looked so lonely that I felt bad that no one was at his stall and therefore had to buy his apples. His pies looked amazing (he had a peach and custard pie that sounded like I'd eat the whole thing right then and there and an apple pie that was perfectly coloured), but I couldn't afford $7.50 for a pie that I could make for next to nothing with his $2.50 apples. Plus, I'm trying to eat more healthily, and a pie between two people is like a pizza between to people: really hard to avoid eating half of.
I also bought this funky squash because it was shaped funny (funnily?) oddly, like an alien saucer. That's how I pick my food apparently. "Oh, man, look how weird that thing looks. I wonder if it tastes as weird as it looks?"
Tell me you can't see this being mistaken for a UFO.
Apparently, it's slightly like zucchini but less strongly flavoured, the guy selling it said. Which is bad, because I hate zucchini. Passionately. It's always bitter and almost always slimy. But, whatever. It looks cool. Maybe I can chop it into a smoothie or something.


So, anyway, my whole point of this post was that if you take a friend, split the foods-and the costs. It's slightly cheaper, and it makes shopping more fun.


No comments: