More vibrant color, more appetizing produce from a recent visit to the Union Square Market in New York. Above, a cheerful abundance of cosmos…
Garlic tinged with purple, rocambole is touted as “arguably the best garlic in the known universe”…
Most of the flowers echo the colors of Fall, purples, orange, red, magenta, fuschia, lavender, etc.
Thinner skinned, yellow green beans…
…Concord and Niagara grapes…
Large heads of yellow orange cauliflower.
The most amazing selection of tomatoes I have ever seen. So amazing, I am doing a separate post on the heirlooms and other varieties of tomatoes I saw at the market.
The last of the sunflower crop.
Only one of some six varieties of eggplants on offer!
Voluptuous mushrooms, hen of the woods, I think.
An unusual variety of cilantro or cariander… “Delfino cilantro”
Three types of basil – sweet Italian Basil, purple basil and Thai basil.
Fantastic radicchio. Fantastic market visit. :)
16 Responses
Yes, that looks like hen of the woods (=maitake). A friend of mine is an avid mushroom hunter and he once served an enormous maitake head simply baked in foil with butter. Delicious!
The radicchio are gorgeous–one of my favourite things is braised radicchio.
Your pictures are amazing! I was at a Farmers Market Saturday at Alemany, in San Francisco and I went crazy over the fresh organic veggies, plums, peaches and nectarines. Fresh cut flowers, so wonderful and colorful. These summer fruits will be gone in a couple of weeks, fall is in the air. Ill have to switch over to my fall recipes soon – I got so spoiled with the summer fruits & veggies that Im going to miss them!!! BTW, I came home with a load full of goodies, I just go gaga when I go to open air markets.
Wish we could have a similar market back here in the Phil!Great pix!
Yellow orange cauliflowers! Dang, i’ve seen and tasted green ones which I think are called brocoflowers but never a yellow orange one. Looks like cheddar infused, might even taste like one huh? But I bet you those mischievous carrots has something to do with this.
I want to get hold of those ingredients. They’re absolutely beautiful and untouched by unnecessary chemicals to make them beautiful.
Hi, MM! The best garlic in the universe. Is that true? Taob ba yung bawang from Ilocos? :)
The pictures look yummy…. hmmm…parang gusto ko kumain ng veggie salad… SALAD!SALAD! SALAD!… (lol)
wooooow!
Divina, they look great, but I wouldn’t assume they are pesticide or fertilizer free, in fact, I suspect many are not purely organic, given their size and lack of bug bites… :) But the selection and quality were totally amazing.
the tomatoes look like siniguelas…i like these photos, especially the flowers.
The organic produce at Union Square are certified as such. In addition there are farmers who farm organically but do not go to the trouble of getting certified. Then there are the larger farms who make no apologies for using pesticides or fertilizers to pproduce spectacular fruit and vegetables. Apples, peaches, pears, strawberries, spinach are very difficult to farm organically. One only has to ask, the vendors are patient with the endless questions they answer all day. I mostly try to buy organically grown produce, milk, and poultry and unfortunately pay a higher price for it and at this pont in life it may all be all irrelevant but it was more of concern when I was feeding young children. I am just very happy to have had access to fresh produce from the tri-state area in the middle of NYC four times a week. That’s about “locavore” as I can get without moving to a farm area.
For a while there I thought, “what strange color and petal shape of hydrangeas..”, only to scroll down and read they were mushrooms!
the cauliflowers look wonderful….as well as everything else….
As I understand it from the owner of the California CSA of which I was a long-time member, the key to organic strawberries is frequent crop rotation to minimize the chance of fungal infections. If there is one crop you should choose as organic, it’s strawberries…apples and such can be peeled, many other fruits and vegetables can be well washed to remove pesticide traces, but strawberries are like little sponges that hold onto pesticides, which are usually fungicides and can be quite toxic to mammals.
What does the orange cauliflower taste like? And the hen of the woods mushroom? I’ve never seen these before!
Gorgeous colors and textures! Imagine what a bouquet those vegetables would make, and then how healthy it would be to eat that melange. I love the color of the cauliflower.
kurzhaar, You are right, strawberries should be organic but that is difficult to find, and considering the miniscule amounts one eats compared to other fruit it isn’t worth worrying about. Strawberries are perennial to a certain degree and generally not rotated annually. Better to eat fewer berries. Remember the Alar scare with apples?