Just got back from Hollywood’s farmer’s market. Ooooh yeah. A weekly street party while you get the shopping done. Here there’s, for example, good live music (the buskers are actually good and not just playing three chords on loud rock guitar – Santa Monica buskers take note), fun things for kids to do, free movie test screenings to be had, etc. Here, gender takes values in a continuum as opposed to a discretuum, and overall it’s a much more diverse and, yes, fabulous crowd.
Do make comparison to yesterday’s haul if you wish, but there’s no intentional significance in it. Also, I just realised that I left out of the photo a crop of lovely peaches and nectarines. Too heavy for the basket. No, I’d not seen purple cauliflower for sale before today either. Very interested to try.
Off do do some physics now. Will tell you about some of it shortly, I promise.
-cvj
October 2nd, 2005 at 7:42 pm
Man that looks outstanding.
October 2nd, 2005 at 11:36 pm
Is this the one in west hollywood? good for a gender continuum
I’ve never been but my dad has mentioned it I think.
October 2nd, 2005 at 11:53 pm
Vegetables? Where is all the fisssssh?
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:05 am
No Sam, it’s in proper Hollywood. Not the Beverly Hills snuggle-up. The rougher, grittier sort of Hollywood. Across from the Arclight, in fact. Near Sunset and Vine. Or Hollywood and Vine. Half a big block West of that. Stretching between Hollywood and Sunset, in fact.
Come. It is great.
-cvj
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:10 am
Janet’s Cat:
(Sung by Gollum in The Two Towers, by J.R.R. Tolkien)
PPCook: I know, I know.
-cvj
October 3rd, 2005 at 2:49 am
They LOOK good, but how do you make vegetables TASTE good? I have trouble eating them, they all taste bitter to me.
October 3rd, 2005 at 6:19 am
Out of interest, are those vegetables also available in a supermarket and if so for less/more? quality?
(vegetable eater from australia wondering whether he could survive in the US…)
m
October 3rd, 2005 at 7:56 am
Pyracantha: If you don’t like vegetables, how to make them taste more the way you like depends upon how you cook them. There’s a lot that can be done. Also, there’s a wide variety of flavours in the vegetable world to choose from. Bound to be something you like out thre.
Michael D: Some are, some aren’t. Quality varies. Rare to get in a supermarket stuff as consistently good as that which was picked off the tree that morning by the person you’re buying it from. But you can do well for vegetables in several supermarkets here, and cheaper.
There’s no shortage of thoughtfully good food in the USA, but in some places you might have to make a bit of extra effort to find it. Maybe pay a touch more. But it’s there.
Purple cauliflower is delicious, by the way folks!
Cheers,
-cvj
October 3rd, 2005 at 11:10 am
Purple vegetables are generally rather good. I look forward to trying this myself in due course.
cmj & matrix
October 3rd, 2005 at 12:02 pm
Clifford: If Gollum had been fluffy and cute, he would have been unstoppable….
Pyracantha: All vegetables taste bitter to you? That’s interesting. I wonder whether it’s a physiological quirk of yours, or whether it’s the vegetables. It might help (if you’re not already) to get hold of some really fresh vegetables. After they’re picked the sugars start to turn into starch, so corn, carrots, or tomatoes that have been lying around for a while are markedly less sweet than when they’re fresh. At big supermarkets frozen vegetables are often your best bet, because they’re generally picked ripe and frozen soon afterward, while the fresh ones are often picked green so as to survive shipment. On fresh produce, check where things are grown — often the labels say where they’re from — and stick to locally grown, or at least grown in the same hemisphere. Also, don’t cook them too long: green vegetables in particular should still be bright green when you’re finished cooking them. Globe eggplants are the bitter ones; any eggplant that’s long and thin (e.g. Japanese eggplant) is a better bet; go for red or yellow peppers, not green.
If all else fails, herbs and spices could help.
Matrix: I find purple bell peppers almost inedible — way bitterer than the green ones — but that’s not a mark against purple vegetables in general.
October 3rd, 2005 at 2:11 pm
Hi Matrix and cmj!
Also found purple ocra, believe it or not. Also tasty.
Janet: I grew one purple pepper this year. Hoping for more.
-cvj
October 3rd, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Pretty pepper! Is it really that shade of pinkish-mauve? Looks like some of the lighter-colored varieties of Asian eggplants.
October 4th, 2005 at 12:32 am
Yes. Strangely, it only ever produced one. I’m still waiting for another. It’s very sad that I only got one.
-cvj
January 9th, 2006 at 1:54 am
[...] Anyway, the new semester at USC starts tomorrow. For various reasons (helping out the department and such), I volunteered to take on an extra class and so I have two classes to teach. You should see my weekly calendar! So today also saw me (after a bit of pottering in the Hollywood farmer’s market for vegetables) digging into old lecture notes, designing new web pages, rewriting old lecture notes, and planning fun things and other goodies for the young ‘uns….. routine tasks of the job, but done doubly. [...]
March 2nd, 2006 at 9:13 pm
[...] A disclaimer: This is not really a recipe for beef noodles (beef “lo mien”), as I am not giving you measurements and the like. I am giving instead suggestions about things: ingredients and procedures….. I’m telling aspects of what worked best for me after a few attempts, a least so far. I’m also celebrating the “jazz” aspect I’ve noticed in Chinese cooking, which is the wonderful serendipitous aspect: I never use exactly the same things every time….. There are some broad themes for the framework, but some of the details can be swapped for others…. For example, I just like throwing in the butternut squash later on….. some nights I don’t…I use something else. And my green leafy vegetable can vary a lot too…..I just get a variety of things on the market on the weekend, and open the fridge and see what I feel like on the night. [...]
March 27th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
[...] (1) So on my wanderings through the Hollywood Farmer’s market yesterday (see right an earlier picture of the sort of loot you can get there), I decided to stop at my favourite tamale stand for lunch. While eating the tamale sitting on the curb, I met a very interesting person, Ysanne Spevack, (who was also sitting on the curb, chowing down on some excellent jerk chicken and fried plantains from the stand opposite) who’s an expert on the organic food industry, a mine of information about it and generally fun to talk to. See the amazing website that she edits and helps write, for more information about organic food. Excellent! [...]
July 30th, 2006 at 10:50 am
[...] Other vegetable shopping pics: Hollywood, Santa Monica, Aspen. [...]