Today I went to a farmer’s market. I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but never made it. (That thing with getting up and moving on a weekend morning may or may not have something to do with it.) Today, though, my friend picked up roomie, me, and the kid, and we went.
But what about my decision to spend less money? Well, I still have to buy food…but there’s more to it than that.
I decided last night (while pining for the fjords and with the help of a dear friend) that I don’t want to live the next 5-10 years waiting for the day I can drop everything and run off to see Nan Madol. I’ve always believed life should be lived, not waited for, so what on earth was I thinking with all these goals entailing years of ruthless self-denial?
Never gonna work. Not for me–I need fun, for both my soul and my writing. And fun, luckily, is easy to have. It’s not necessarily even expensive.
So. Adventures. Awesome things abound; they do not exist solely beyond the horizon. Some are local, like the best produce. (Nice segue, eh? 😉 )
I was lucky in my childhood; I was raised on a small family farm in Pennsylvania. I ate organic produce long before it became a trend, grew up on farm-fresh eggs as well as nearly free-range chicken, pork, and beef. We even ate rabbits (my mom told us it was chicken, okay? Fluffy the Fifteenth escaped, and that’s chicken, now eat your dinner.)Â I tell you this so you understand that when I picked up a tomato and sniffed, I knew that I was home. The tomatoes smelled like they should. The cucumbers smelled like sun-warmed cucumber, not wax. The free samples…oh goodness, the free samples.
Goat cheese. Goat cheese marinated in things. Goat cheese cake. Chocolate croissants. Sun-dried tomato bread. Pico de gallo (ZOMG, the pico de gallo!) Cantaloupe. Apple cider (holy cats, the cider!) Cranberry-orange scones. Free range organic beef (omg. I was afraid to buy any as I can’t afford to live on it, and how could I ever go back to grocery-store meat after that?) A man gave my kid an apple and she was so excited by the taste she jumped a few times before she made me try it. That apple was so amazing that one bite transported me fifteen hundred miles and thirty years. I told her that is what apples are supposed to taste like.
It was a struggle not to buy All the Things. I spent more than I hoped, but I mostly contained myself to Actual Necessary Food. I bought little things called lemon cucumbers that are yummy. Here you see a whole one next to the one I cut in wedges to nom upon.
Sure, Â the produce is a little more expensive than at the grocery store. It also tastes TONS better. (She said, having just nommed upon a tomato and onion quesadilla that was to die for.) And I happen to believe that one reason I tend to be much healthier than people around me (shut up, it was a cold and even I get colds) is that I was raised on such healthy food (and exercise. It was a thirty-five acre farm. We had animals. I’m talking exercise.)
I also like that I’m supporting my local economy. I’d much rather pay my neighbor to keep farming than some huge farm in the Midwest or worse on another continent. (Worse because of what they have to do to a tomato to transport it halfway around the world and have it still look good when it gets there, and also because you can’t tell me people are paid properly for that tomato when I can get it so cheaply.)
Finally, the promise of the premise:
Yes, bacon jam really does exist. At a table that also held Tequila jam and pumpkin butter (I bought some) and raspberry jalapeno jam (I did not buy any) and a lot of other interesting flavors, there existed…bacon jam.
No, I did not buy any.
