Thursday, March 19, 2009

Farmer's Market Plethora

The Farmer's Market in Raleigh has what I refer to as a bulk produce section. It is equivalent of a Costco or Sam's Club for produce. Would you care for 60 tomatoes? Then Farmer's Market bulk is the place for you. However, 60 tomatoes are not a wise investment for the single person, or most married couples with fewer than 8 kids, I imagine. All that changed, though, when one of the gals from church suggested a few of us go in on the bulk items together and parcel them out. Save a little here and there.

Correction: Save a lot all over the place. We have only had one bulk food adventure and apples, green beans, broccoli and Roma tomatoes were purchased. I only got the broccoli and tomatoes, but all of them looked great. I left the rendezvous point with about 6 bunches (two stalks each) of broccoli and about 12 Roma tomatoes. My rough guess is that had these been bought at the store, I would have paid $10-15 for the amount. I left paying only $6.50! And now I have vegetables I can eat for a whole month.

The question soon arises - what do I do with all this produce? A lot of the green bean getters had so many beans they soon were making impromptu friends with neighbors and anyone willing to take a handful or two. I have been enjoying tomatoes on my sandwiches, especially BSTs (I use spinach instead of lettuce, hence BST). I stuffed some of my broccoli in scraped out tomatoes and cooked them in the over for a bit with some Parmesan and buttered bread crumbs - tasty! I may make some tomato sauce to pour over my pasta with broccoli florets. And broccoli is one of my post-work, pre-dinner munchies now.

Only two or three weeks until another Farmer's Market bulk day. Yay!

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