On Wednesdays and Saturdays from May through October a small farmer's market sets up across the street from my apartment. Taking up just one side of one block, [nothing like the scale and grandeur of the Union Square market] it nonetheless has beautiful things and gets a decent amount of traffic, and has become a very enjoyable feature of my community. With my days now free, I like to take Biscuit and my coffee over to sit and people/produce watch; I love how that simple activity feels so lovely and rich: enough, as if it were a day's event. Biscuit putters around nibbling on the grass and I sit, with the sun on my back on a good day, thinking that life is wonderful and I'm the luckiest girl on earth. I don't usually buy much—though last summer i got into a bit of a Boston lettuce habit—I usually just like to soak in the sights and smells. I've become friendly with a woman who works there named Liz; she's usually at the cooking booth, making something with fresh ingredients and sharing the recipes with the passersby. Last Saturday she had peach salsa, today she had a cool pasta primavera, both were delicious. The corn was especially fragrant today, I tried some yellow watermelon, and the Amish dairy farmer had pumpkin whoopie pies—which, as high on life and simple foodie pleasure as I was, I could not pass up.
Though I was originally struck by the pumpkin I felt it would be negligent to not also try the chocolate, so this sampler was perfect. Both were outstanding [made by Amish farmers, how could they not be? Really!] but the pumpkin was superior, as special and celebratory as I wanted it to be.
