A freshly plucked chicken or a burlap bag of rice may be the last thing you want when you're on the road. Times food writer Hansen grazes in markets as far afield as Bangkok, where she recalls watching as a pretty girl prepared a dish of piping hot, utterly authentic Thai noodles. Feniger takes in foreign markets isn't limited to the sense of taste. They were so gorgeous. Suddenly I understood why art and food are related.
Markets are as much about people as they are about food.
On the Hawaiian island of Kauai, I learned how hungry people are for reasonably priced fresh produce when I went to a farmers' market at the ballpark in the old sugar plantation town of Koloa. Though it lies across the street from a little gem of a 10th century church, the piazza is nothing much to speak of as Roman piazzas go. But in the morning the market transforms the square into a Garden of Eden, where I bought juicy cantaloupes and fresh flowers. He thought of the market as a place for commingling. Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories.