What I Found At The Farmers’ Market…

…and what I did with it!

It was a beautiful day to visit the farmers’ market, and I ended up finding (and buying) all sorts of interesting things! Starting with…

STRAWBERRIES WITH STEMS! I’ve seen strawberries with stems at fancy restaurants and events – they’re often dipped in chocolate – but I’d never seen them someplace where I could actually purchase them. So I purchased them. When it comes down to it, I don’t think I’ll do anything different with these than I’d do with any other strawberries, but I’m a sucker for a gimmick, and in this case, stem = gimmick.

Wanna see what else I found?

Roasted Vegetable Bonanza

When I looked in the fridge this morning, I noticed a ton of veggies that I needed to eat. They hadn’t gone bad quite yet, but the time was approaching quickly. I decided to turn on the oven and roast as many of them as I could!

First up, I still had some of the kale that I had purchased at the farmers market nearly two weeks ago. I had made kale chips with half of the kale last week (although I never blogged about it), and I thought it’d be easy and delicious to turn the rest of the kale into chips as well. Click here for my kale chips recipe. So, I piled the kale onto a baking sheet. You’re supposed to make sure they’re in a single layer, but I really wanted to keep the kale all on one pan.

Next up, two other veggies purchased at that same farmer’s market: asparagus and brussel sprouts. I halved the sprouts, so they were bite-sized.

Finally, some odds and ends: three zucchini, one red pepper, and one watermelon radish. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a radish of any kind cooked. My friend Debbie once sent me a cooked radish recipe, but I never made it, and I think I lost the recipe. Anyway – I had no idea if a watermelon radish would taste any good after a stint in the oven, but I was willing to give it try.

All three trays went into the oven, preheated to 425 degrees, at the same time. I lined all the trays with foil, for easy clean-up, and sprayed the foil with a little nonstick spray. I didn’t add any other ingredients or oil, except for a little Spike (salt-free seasoning).

After 25 minutes, the kale chips were crispy and done, and the rest of the veggies had great color and were cooked through. I took a little bit of everything and made up a plate as part of my lunch:

The kale chips were light as air – and I mean that literally, because I took the plate to my balcony for the photo shoot, and the wind carried a bunch of them off. Oh well – I hope the neighborhood birds and squirrels and feral cats like kale!

Everything was delicious, except the watermelon radish, which was good but not my favorite. And I have two Tupperwares full of leftovers in my fridge!

Keep it up, David!

PS – Just realized that five of my last six posts were food-related – that might be a Keep It Up, David record! Did you read the other four?

• Shark’s Tooth Salad AND 2-Headed Soup
• Chum
• What’s in the RediSetGo? Part Twenty-Two
• Two New Fruits

Two New Fruits

Last weekend, I tried a delicious fruit that I never tried before: the sumo tangerine. This weekend, I ended up trying two new fruits… how my heart races just typing that sentence!

FRUIT #1: Cara Cara Oranges. I picked these up last weekend at the farmers market. Cara Caras are a variety of navel with a bit of a mysterious past: they’re likely a cross between two other navel varieties, but only one, the Washington navel, is known for certain. Cara Caras were “discovered” in Venezuela in the mid 1970s, and have only been available in the United States since the late 1980s, so they’re a relatively new fruit to the fruit scene. The new fruit on the block:

The distinguishing characteristic of a Cara Cara is that the flesh is pink, as opposed to orange. My Cara Caras weren’t overly pink – I’d say they had a pinkish hue, as opposed to being fully pink, like some pictures I’ve seen online. Even so, the flesh is a very pretty color.

They’re tasty, too. I’m not enough of a citrus connoisseur to describe the taste in too much detail, but they were very sweet and less acidic than other oranges I’ve tried. Oh, and very juicy, too. I bought three Cara Caras, and I ended up eating one, and juicing the other two. And because I busted out my little juicer, I ended up juicing two other pieces of citrus I had lying around…

BONUS FRUIT! Blood Oranges. I’ve bought and enjoyed blood oranges before, and they are a gorgeous piece of fruit. The name is fitting – the insides are the color of blood!

My two blood oranges were tiny – the size of large limes – but I juiced both of them, as well as the two remaining Cara Caras, and ended up with a delightful little blend of fresh-squeezed OJ.

One of the best glasses of OJ I ever had!

FRUIT #2: Mini Kiwi. There’s a Trader Joe’s right next to my new gym, and after my Saturday workout (5 minutes warm-up on treadmill, 45 minutes lifting weights, 16 minutes adaptive motion trainer), I wandered in to purchase some pre-hard-boiled eggs as my post-workout protein fix. I wandered TJ’s a little, and stumbled upon this package, which immediately caught my eye:

I didn’t think twice before buying these guys! They’re cute little buggers:

When I held them in my hand like that, I couldn’t quite imagine what the insides looked like, so imagine my surprise when I started slicing them open, and…voila! They looked like kiwis!

How cool is that?!? I love these things! They taste like kiwis, too, and you don’t have the hassle of peeling them, like you do kiwis. I did a little research, and found a great article about their history. They’re native to China, and they were first found in the 1800s, but they were never cultivated very widely as a crop, because they were difficult to harvest, didn’t ripen consistently, and spoiled quickly, which made transportation a bitch. But scientists in New Zealand worked on it, and they’ve cross-bred mini kiwis to be hardier and easier to pick.

I definitely recommend both the Cara Cara orange and the mini kiwi… I wonder what new fruit I’m going to find next?

Keep it up, David!

Birthday Lunch AND Farmers Market

Over the weekend, I shared a few photos of food I’ve been eating lately – check it out if you missed it. Consider this post an addendum to that one, because I have more food photos to share!

Even though my birthday was on March 5th (read about the fitness challenges I gave myself as a birthday present), I didn’t get together for a family birthday celebration until two days ago, when I headed out to my aunt and uncle’s place for lunch with them and my cousins. Annie made a delicious meal that was light and healthy, and built around a protein that I had suggested: salmon.

Annie baked the salmon with salt, pepper, and lemon, and also sauteed brussel sprouts (lower left), and mushrooms (lower right), which went over quinoa (also lower right, under the mushrooms). A big ol’ salad (top), that I ate without dressing, completed the meal. Everything was fantastic, and I went back for seconds, without a second of hesitation or guilt.

For dessert, Annie made carrot cupcakes from scratch. Annie is an excellent baker, and it’s one of her favorite pastimes – so when she asked what kind of birthday cake I wanted, I opted for cupcakes, mainly for built-in portion control reasons.

I hope, by the way, that Annie is enjoying this post, because she only asked on about four separate occasions if I was going to blog about her meal. “Am I going to be in the blog, David? Because I really want to be in the blog.” “Are you taking pictures for the blog, David? It’d be so cool to be in the blog.” “If my face is going to be in that shot, than I should put on a little lipstick. I want to look my best for the blog.” You get the idea.

I ate one of the cupcakes, and it was delicious – moist and fluffy like cake should be, with big chucks of carrots, walnuts, pineapple, and golden raisins. Here’s what they look like on the inside:

“Are you getting my finger in that shot, David? I just did my nails – they’ll look really good in the blog.”

My birthday lunch was fantastic (thanks again, Annie!), but it’s not the only delicious food from that day – that morning, I went with a friend to the farmers market! It’s actually been over a year since I’ve been to a farmers market, and it was good to be back. So much gorgeous produce! I didn’t need much, but I still picked up a few things:

There are brussel sprouts at the top, asparagus to the right, a bag of sprouted mung beans, fenugreek, and wheatberries in the center, and a type of orange on the left that I’d never heard of before, called cara cara oranges. Like satsuma tangerines, cara cara oranges are sold with some of the leaves still attached, which makes them a beautiful addition to my fruit bowl. I’ll let you know what I think after I bust one open.

If there’s one thing that always catches my eye, it’s oddly colored vegetables, like the purple cauliflower I picked up recently. And the was definitely something that caught my eye at the farmer’s market… purple kale! And there were two varieties! There was this kale, that has purple veins:

And there was this kale, where almost the entire leaf was purple (I learned this variety is called nagoya kale):

I couldn’t choose which kale to buy, so I bought both. I think I’ll make kale chips with some (or all) of my purple kale bounty!

KEEP IT UP, DAVID!

Yamashiro and New Skyscraper

I’m writing this post after completing a session with Craig, my trainer, and everything aches.  He pushed me today: he had me haul 60 pounds up and down flights of stairs, doing shrugs and pull-outs on the landings; he had me do squats with a 95 pound barbell, he had me do intervals on a recumbent bike…  I’m getting exhausted all over again just remembering it.  That workout ended with 9.5 minutes of intervals on the StairMaster, which means I have a new skyscraper to add to my collection, and I’ll get to that… but first…

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

On Thursday night, I did something I haven’t done in a loooong time: I went to a farmers market.  I used to be a regular at a couple different farmers’ markets – the one in Burbank on Saturday mornings, and the one in Beverly Hills on Sunday mornings.  I stopped going in January, when I received a very generous gift card to Whole Foods that makes it silly for me to shop anywhere else.

My friend Maggie has been talking up the Yamashiro Farmers Market for months now.  She loves it.  It’s right near her house.  It’s amazing.  We should go some time.  She thinks I’d love it.  It’s fantastic.  Sheesh, Maggie, I get it!  So, on Thursday, we went.  Our friend Joe came too.

The Yamashiro Farmers Market is held on Thursday nights in the parking lot of Yamashiro, a Japanese restaurant perched on a ridge in the Hollywood Hills that has great sweeping views of the city below.  Here’s the farmer’s market:

And here’s another shot of the view, with their Pagoda Bar and garden in the foreground, and way off on the horizon is downtown LA:

A little collage of photos of Joe, Maggie, and me:

As farmers markets go, this one is pretty light on produce, and pretty heavy on prepared and specialty foods.  There are about 3 produce vendors, but lots of specialty booths selling nuts, candy, kettle corn, hummus, and more, and also a bunch of fancy-pants food trucks, including Yamashiro’s own taco stand, which had the longest lines of any of them and featured duck confit and braised short rub tacos on the menu.  I had a big late lunch, so I wasn’t very hungry, but Maggie braved the long line and got her favorite item, their black cod taco, and some chips and guacamole:

The cod is kinda buried under the cabbage, but it’s there.  Joe got a beef and pork jalapeno bratwurst with sauerkraut from the Best of the Wurst booth, and he loved it:

I picked up some items from the produce stalls:

From one vendor I picked up 3 plouts (lower right) and 2 nectarines (lower left)  – $4.50 for all of them.  From another vendor, I picked up all the rest: some multi-colored bell peppers, a bag of mixed greens, and some brussel sprouts – all of it for $5.  I love brussel sprouts, and it’s the first time I’ve bought them in months and months.  I’m rarely impressed with the brussel sprouts I see at grocery stores.  They’re either in a bulk bin and look like they’ve been trampled on by a herd of buffalo, or they’re giant, tennis-ball-sized brussel sprouts.  I once read a good brussel sprout rule that I stick to: the smaller the brussel sprout, the better the brussel sprout (they’re less bitter, or so I remember).  The last time I bought fantastic brussel sprouts from a store is when I picked up an entire brussel sprouts stalk at Trader Joe’s and it ended up becoming my roommate for a few days.

The other item I purchased was a big jar of pickled Hungarian peppers from the Gunnar and Jake’s Gourmet Food stand:

They have all sorts of fun pickled products, like turnips, green beans, and stuffed jalapenos, but I went with the Hungarian peppers because – surprise, surprise – I’ve never heard of them before, and I’m a sucker for trying new things.  The guy gave me a sample, and it was delicious, and had a good spicy kick.  I’m not sure when I’ll crack this jar open, but you can bet I’ll blog about it.

One of my favorite parts about the Yamashiro Farmers Market was that there was no mistaking we were in Hollywood.  First, it’s the only farmers market I’ve been to that has valet parking.  There’s no parking on-site (as the restaurant’s parking lot is the site of the farmers market), so they have a parking lot down the hill, with valet, and a shuttle that takes you up and down to the market.  Second, there were celebrities there!  We spotted one of the supporting actors on Mad Men and one of the detectives from Law & Order.  It was a fun evening, and the three of us will probably go back soon.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – -

Ok.  Back to the skyscraper.  I spent 9.5 grueling minutes on the StairMaster just a little while ago.  Craig had me do intervals, so I would go for 30 seconds at Level 5, then 30 seconds at Level 10.  I’d repeat that, but every time I had to up the Level, so by the end, I was going between Level 5 and Level 16.  And this was at the end of an intense hour-long workout.

I was ready to fall over when I finished, but not before I saw the display for how many floors I climbed: 45!  In 9.5 minutes!  Fantastic.

For today’s skyscraper, we’re heading across the Atlantic to Spain, the country where my father was born.  This is the Hotel Arts, in Barcelona:

It’s the tallest building in Barcelona.  Well, it’s one of the tallest buildings in Barcelona – the neighboring tower, Torre Mapfre, is the exact same height (505 feet), so they get to share the title of tallest building in town.  I like the design of the Hotel Arts much more than the Torre Mapfre, which is why it’s the one I’m featuring on the blog.  The Hotel Arts is 44 floors – one less than I climbed today, but close enough!

Let’s add it to the chart:

• Aon Center, Chicago, IL (83 floors, climbed 8/5/11)
  
• CITIC Plaza, Guangzhou, China (80 floors, climbed 12/1/10)
• JPMorgan Chase Tower, Houston, TX (75 floors, climbed 3/9/11)
• Renaissance Center, Detroit, MI (73 floors, climbed 6/19/11)
• The Sail @ Marina Bay, Singapore (70 floors, cilmbed 11/9/10)
• Yokohama Landmark Tower, Yokohama, Japan (70 floors, climbed 4/11/11)
• 900 North Michigan, Chicago, IL (66 floors, climbed 4/1/11)
• Vista Tower, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (62 floors, climbed 7/2/11)
• 1000 de la Gauchetiere, Montreal, Canada (51 floors, climbed 11/3/10)
• >> Hotel Arts, Barcelona, Spain (44 floors, climbed 8/12/11)
• Ernst & Young Bldg, Los Angeles, CA (41 floors, climbed 10/3/10)
• City Place I, Hartford, CT (38 floors, climbed 5/11/11)
• Ocean Towers, South Padre Island, TX (31 floors, climbed 1/20/11)

Another skyscraper conquered!

Keep it up, David!

Chart Update and Veggie Grill

The good news keep comin’ this week.  After yesterday’s exciting and positive health update, I have more excellent news… and I’m gonna let my weight chart do the talking.  Take it away, weight chart!

I lost another pound over the past week!  That puts me at an all-time low!  A weight of 235 pounds represents a loss of 167 pounds.  I really feel like I’m on a roll right now, and not just because I’ve lost 4 pounds in 3 weeks.  It’s because I’ve been having great workouts lately (today is actually my first rest day since last Tuesday), and I’ve avoided binges and eaten really well, too.

A couple more chart shots:

 

Moving on…

Yesterday I hung out with my friend Steve, a friend I’ve known since sixth grade.  We went to the Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA (I’ll hopefully share a couple pics soon), and afterwards, we went to lunch at Veggie Grill.

Veggie Grill is a small chain of vegetarian restaurants in southern California.  They have seven locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including one that I drive by every time I head into West Hollywood.  I’ve eaten their food a bunch of times, because my old office used to order catering from them regularly, but I’ve never been to one of their actual restaurants, and Steve hadn’t either.  We ended up at their Farmers Market location, which is just up the street from LACMA.  The Farmers Market is a permanent collection of vendors and restaurants located on the site of one of the earliest actual farmers markets in the city.  You can buy tons of stuff there, from produce and meat to candles to jewelry, and there are specialty retailers that sell things like hot sauce or stickers.  There’s also a strip mall element, where there’s national retailers like Cost Plus World Market and Chipotle, and that’s where the Veggie Grill is located.

I ended up ordering something that I’d never tried before: their Thai Chickin’ Salad, dressing on the side.  It has romaine, cabbage, roasted corn salsa, green onion, mandarin oranges, cilantro, and sesame seeds, and is covered with carrots and a generous handful of fried wonton strips:

The salad was delicious.  It had too many wontons for my liking.  Next time I’ll have them leave the wontons off.  For this time, though, I already had them, so I started by picking a lot of them off and putting them on the side.  Then I ate everything else, and quickly – the dressing had a great spicy kick, and their fake chicken is some of the best I’ve ever had.  When I was finished, I ended up picking at the pile of wontons, and, by the time we left, I had eaten most of them.  And they were good.  And I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

Because did you hear?  I lost a pound this week.

Keep it up, David!

Oddly-Colored Veggies, Part Three

First I found rainbow carrots.  Then, I found orange cauliflower.  And now, my streak of finding oddly-colored vegetables continues, because I found these at Whole Foods:

EASTER EGG RADISHES!

This bunch had radishes in four different colors:  the standard deep red, then very hot fuchsia pink, purple, and white.  Here they are removed from their greens and sorted by color:

I love radishes.  I love how unique they taste: peppery and crunchy, and I’m just realizing right now as I type this sentence how difficult the taste of radishes is to describe.  There was a short spell last year when I was seeking out radishes every week at the Beverly Hills farmers’ market, because one of the vendors was selling radishes that had grown to outrageous sizes.  Check out this radish, that’s bigger than an apple (sorry for shoddy camera phone photography):

And here’s a slice of that radish, with a paper clip for size comparison:

That radish was delicious, but I digress.  Back to the easter egg radishes.  I trimmed off the tops and bottoms of all the radishes and gave them a good wash.  Since I’ve eaten the regular, deep-red radishes countless amounts of times, I singled out one each of the pink, purple, and white radishes:

These photographs aren’t doing the pink radish (on the right) justice.  They are incredibly vibrant and bright, but the photos make them seem more red than they actually are.  Foiled again by my poor photography skills!

I sliced up all three radishes (and placed the white slices on my knife blade, so you could see them, instead of blending into the white cutting board):

I sampled one slice of each color, and 1) they all tasted the same, and 2) they all tasted like radish.  I wasn’t expecting them to taste differently, to be clear, but there was a small part of me secretly hoping one color would taste radically different somehow.  Alas, it was not to be.

These radish slices went into the salad I made for lunch the other day:

Also in there:  mixed greens, red bell pepper, mushrooms, scallion, roma tomato (which is actually at the bottom of the bowl, under the lettuce - I clearly wasn’t thinking about this picture during salad assembly) and sprouts.  The sprouts were daikon radish sprouts, so with those, and the easter egg Radishes, this was one spicy salad!  After snapping this photo, I added 2-3 tablespoons light Asiago Parmesan vinaigrette.

It was a great salad.   And I still have a lot more easter egg radishes in my fridge.

Like I’ve been doing all this past week, I’ll end this post with a Food Log, like I said I would.  So here is my…

Food Log for Saturday, March 19, 2011:

–Breakfast: 1/4 cantaloupe; 1 apple; 1 packet instant oatmeal; 2 hard-boiled egg whites

–Lunch:  2 frozen waffles, with 1 tsp jam each; 2 soy sausage patties (still in a breakfast mood, obviously!); carrot and celery sticks; tomato slices

–Snack:  1/4 cantaloupe

–Dinner:  Salad (spinach, other mixed greens, bell pepper, scallion, mushrooms, garbanzo beans, tomato, 3 tbsp salsa); 1 whole wheat tortilla; 1 banana

–Beverages:  2 liters water; 8 oz skim milk; 1 liter sparkling water; 2-3 glasses water

Keep it up, David!

A Little Monday Catch-Up

One thing about being out of town for three weeks is that there’s always lots to do when you come home.  I’ve been moving nearly non-stop since getting in late Saturday night – laundry to do, a giant stack of mail to go through with lots of bills to pay… I made a to-do list yesterday and have been checking things off left and right.  It hasn’t all been hustle and bustle – yesterday I went out to the suburbs to have a lovely belated-Christmas dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and I’ve made time to exercise both yesterday and today.  What I really want to do, though, is to sit back and catch up with the three weeks of stuff on my TiVo.  Oh, don’t you worry – it will happen.  I will make it happen.

Anyway – there’s been a few things I wanted to blog about that I haven’t gotten around to yet, so here we go!

1) Farmer’s Market: Yesterday I went to the Beverly Hills Farmers’ Market for the first time in a few months.  It was cold and drizzly, but the market happens rain or shine, year-round.  Maybe it’s because it’s winter, or maybe because it was just after the holidays, but a lot of vendors weren’t there, including a couple of my favorites.  I still managed to clean up nicely:

Here’s what I bought:

• 1 bag arugula  – $3
• 1 bag mixed greens – $3
• 1 bag shittake mushrooms – $2
• 1 bunch Maui scallions – $1.50
• 1 bag sprouted mung beans and wheatberries; 1 bag pea greens  – together, they cost $4
• 3 Japanese pink tomatoes and 5 Persian cucumbers – together, they cost $4.50
• 2 heirloom tomatoes – $2
• 3 valencia oranges – $1
• 6 satsuma tangerines  – $1.75
• Grand Total: $22.75

 

Everything but the last three items got tossed in a big salad that I took to my aunt and uncle’s place, but in the aforementioned hustle and bustle, I didn’t take any pictures.  You’ll have to take my word for it: it was good, and got rave reviews from all around the table.

2) Satsuma Tangerines: I wanted to continue my tradition of trying new types of produce (recent examples: buddha’s hand and seckel pear), and while I was at the farmers’ market, I realized I had never tried a satsuma before, so I went ahead and bought 6 (they’re little).  I ate two later that day.  If you’ve never seen them before, take a look:

They’re easy to peel with your fingers, break apart easily into segments, and if I didn’t know differently, I’d just assume it was a clementine, because it looks and tastes just like one.  Delicious!  Clementines have long been a favorite citrus fruit of mine, and now I’ll add satsumas to the list.

3) Uh-Oh: Look what’s moving in right next door to my gym:

Literally right next door – they share the same parking lot.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On the plus side, it makes it really easy to swing by and grab a bottle of water before a workout, but on the con side, 7-11 and I haven’t traditionally had a healthy relationship, because I like junk food, and that’s pretty much all they sell.  In my last apartment, I was a few blocks from a 7-11, and I can remember lots and lots of late-night runs where I would pick up a pint of ice cream and a big bag of chips, and I’d go home and eat it all within minutes.  I’m a different person now, and have been managing temptations much, much better in the past year, but this is temptation setting up shop mere steps away from my gym, where I go multiple times a week.  And it’s not like there’s a shortages of 7-11s in the area: the gym is 3.5 miles from my home, and on the way, I pass two 7-11s.  If I take a slightly different route, I can pass two other 7-11s.  Please, 7-11, take your Cheetos and your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and leave me be!

4) 2010 Exercise Report: On July 8, 2010, I decided I would start keeping track of which days I worked out.  It devised a simple system – every day that I exercised, I would mark a little circle on that day in my planner.  For days I took a class at Slimmons, I marked a slightly different circle, and days that I took a class somewhere besides Slimmons got a third slightly different mark.  Last night, now that the year is over, I went back and tallied up some statistics:

• In July, I worked out 20/24 days (83%), including 11 Slimmons classes.
• In August, I worked out 25/31 days (80%), including 4 Slimmons classes and 3 other classes.
• In September, I worked out 24/30 days (80%), including 4 Slimmons classes and 6 other classes.
• In October, I worked out 17/31 days (55% – low because of a time-consuming job), including 3 Slimmons classes and 2 other classes.
• In November, I worked out 25/30 days (83%), including 3 Slimmons classes and 3 other classes.
• In December, I worked out 24/31 days (77%), including 4 Slimmons classes and 2 other classes.

In total, I worked out 135 out of 177 DAYS – a 76% exercise success rate! This includes 29 classes at Slimmons and 16 other classes (mostly Latin Jam, with some spin, step, and a couple others thrown in there).

Keep it up, David!

One Day, Two Markets

Today was a long day, but a good one.  I got up early, as planned, and went to Sherri’s 9am aerobics class at Slimmons – and my friend Jen came along with me.  It was her first time to Sherri’s class, and about my 20th, and we both had a good time and had a good workout – 90 minutes, split up between dance aerobics, free weights, stuff at the bar (like squats and leg lifts), sit-ups and ab work, and stretching.  Phew.

Even though it was still drizzly, we headed over to the Beverly Hills Farmers’ Market afterwards.  I left my camera in the car because of the rain, but I ended up cleaning up pretty well:

Clockwise from top:

• Baby lettuce mixture – $4.20
• Sprouts (sunflower, mung bean, and red lentil) – $7.00
• 1 enormous cucumber – $1.00
• 1 head cauliflower – $1.00
• 1 basket fresh figs – $4.00
• 1 persimmons – $1.00
• 3 bell peppers – $2.00
• 1 basket cherry tomatoes – $2.00
• 1 eggplant – $0.50
• 1 oz Jamaican Jerk beef jerky – $2.00 (not pictured, because I ate it in the car on the way home)
• Grand Total: $24.70 (more than I’m used to spending at the farmer’s market, but oh well.)

I’m not kidding when I say the cucumber is enormous.  Here it is next to an apple.

Enormous.

The persimmons is this week’s new-for-me item – every week I try to buy something that I’ve never bought before, to expand my horizons (in the past couple weeks I’ve bought cactus pears, pineapple guava, and passion fruit).  My persimmons:

The guys that sold it to me said it’d be ready in a day or two, and then I can cut it up and eat it like an apple.  They also said something about a few seeds, possibly in strange places, but they were both kinda talking at once, and all I was focusing on how rain was dripping on my head from the edge of the tent above me.

And I specifically picked this bell pepper because the strange growth appealed to me.  Have you ever cut open a red pepper and inside the cavity there’s a tiny green bell pepper growing in there?  A pepper in a pepper – always a fun surprise.  Here’s a pepper outside a pepper:

Later in the day, after working from home and taking a little nap-a-roonie on the couch, I realized that I was low in other non-produce types of food.  I needed oatmeal, sparkling water, and some protein sources.  So at 7pm, I headed out to a grocery store I had never been to before, Superior Grocers:

According to their website, they have 34 stores throughout southern California, and yet, this is the only one I’ve ever noticed.  It’s very close to my house, but I don’t have a good reason for never going in.  I drive by it every day on the way to work, and although you can’t really make it out in the photo, there’s a banner under the store name advertising their Anniversary Sale.  Seemed like a good time to check it out.

The store was crowded, a little cramped, and a little dirty, but they had some good prices.  I’ll have to go back when the Anniversary Sale is over and compare, naturally, but, among other things, I picked up 4 plums ($0.17), 2 bananas ($0.28), 1 large cantaloupe ($0.97), and a pineapple ($1.49 – 1 cent cheaper than at Super King!).  They had a small selection, but good prices, on Morningstar frozen fake meat products (I bought phony sausage links for $3.69); Yoplait Lights for $0.69 cents each (I bought 4), and…  eh. That’s enough of that.  I’m even boring myself.

On the flipside, however, I saw moldy grapefruit on display, and the flies that had already found them.  Yuck.  That’s when I pushed my cart right out of the produce section.

I’ll share a couple of the other things I bought later in the week, and OHHH! I nearly forgot! I’m pretty sure this dude was checking me out at Superior Grocers!  I can’t say I was looking my best – I confess I was still wearing my gym clothes, despite have finished the workout over 8 hours prior – but this guy somehow ended up strolling by me in 4 different aisles, and I could see in my periphery the sideways glances and lingering stares.  Too bad he had a skeevy, lecherous vibe and a cart overflowing with junk food, and the whole thing made me feel altogether uncomfortable.

But hey.  I can’t think of the last time that’s happened to me in public…  so…

Keep it up, David!

Jerky

I have a new favorite stall at the Beverly Hills Farmer’s Market.  I’ve been going most Sundays since February or March to the Beverly Hills Farmer’s Market, but only discovered this booth about a month ago.  The farmer’s market takes up one long block  – with a row of stalls on each side of the street, and customers walking up and down the middle.  Here what it looks like, from one end:

About the first half of the market is straight up produce.  Then, the second half, farther away from where I park, is all prepared foods: bread, BBQ, tamales, sandwiches, gyros, and so on.  It always smells amazing, but I usually stay away just because I come for produce, and I’m not very interested in buying any of that stuff.  Last month, however, while introducing my friend Tavi to the joys of the farmer’s market, we wondered the entire length of stalls, and there, at the very far end, was the stall that I must now visit every time I’m there.  It’s the jerky stall:

The stall is run by Smokin’ Mamas Fish (visit their website here), and they make all their own jerky, and it’s all lower in sodium than store-bought jerky, and it’s fantastic.  They sell it by the ounce – 1 ounce for $2.  They have a total of 8 flavors (although I don’t think I got all 8 canisters in this photo):

They also sell delicious smoked salmon, which I’ve sampled but haven’t purchased yet.  Today, I decided to go with 1.5 ounces (cost = $3) of their Teriyaki jerky for a post-workout protein source (I had just come from a class at Slimmons).  It was So. Freakin’. Delicious.

Other than that, I mostly kept my wallet in my pocket today.  Since I cleaned up nicely at the Burbank Farmer’s Market yesterday, I didn’t have much of a shopping list, although I did pick up a huge Maui onion for $1.50.

Keep it up, David!