To market, to market

We love the buzz of the farmers' market on Saturday mornings. A garland of vendors--selling everything from artisan-made cheese to freshly roasted coffee beans to organic free range eggs to the standard fruit-veggies-herbs fare--wrap around the perimeter of downtown's Hurkamp Park. We like supporting our local farms, keeping our money in our local economy, and to reaping the tasty and nourishing reward of fresh vegetables and fruit.
One particular vendor we usually buy from had a stack of hard, anemic looking tomatoes--sad looking really. A customer asked if these were the vendor's tomatoes (which, I suppose, is a fair question, since even though tomatoes are not yet in season, many farmers do use greenhouses). It was pretty clear to me that these tomatoes, though, hadn't seen a day of warm yellow sunshine. They looked like the crap tomatoes in the supermarket that only masquerade as tomatoes. The vendor replied, "No, we get these from Florida until our tomatoes come in." So much for supporting the local economy! (I had also noticed that another vendor had a crate full of avocados. Surely those aren't local, yeah??)
We did buy some peas, radishes, red leaf lettuce, a great pile of zucchini, and some beets. But now I'm really wondering just how local my goods are... Wherever the squash came from, it was pretty dee-lish. Last night we made pizzas at my sister's house using organic whole wheat pre-made crusts and yummy mozzarella. We sliced the zucchinis into thin coins--a cute veggie version of pepperoni--and, after grilling them with a handful of organic grape tomatoes, topped our pizzas with them. Once the pizzas met their melty and crispy fate in the oven, we topped them with fresh basil leaves from our home garden.

Ridiculously good. Ridiculously simple.

-R&N