Shop at the Farmers Market
By: Lauren Harkawik
Tags: Health, Food, Cooking, Self, Healthy Eating

In “The Art of Simple Food,” Alice Waters, the executive chef, founder, and owner of Chez Panisse, makes the case that the best way to buy your produce is seasonally and, when possible, from a farmers market.

“When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is,” she writes. “This is what we’ve learned at Chez Panisse after years of sourcing, preparing, and tasting food. Food tastes naturally delicious when it has been grown with care, harvested at the right moment, and brought to us immediately, direct from the producer. But food like this is not the privilege of a restaurant like ours. The same local producers sell the same fresh food down the street, at the farmers market. And anyone can buy it.”

I read “The Art of Simple Food” a few months ago. This passage in particular has been on my mind for the past few weeks as I’ve committed to actually going to the farmers market every Saturday morning to buy my produce from local farmers.

Indeed, much of what Waters says is true. The food has pure flavor, and it is fresher than it would be from the store, because it was harvested and then sold directly to me. There is no in-between period where it’s on a truck, and then in a cooler, before it gets to my refrigerator.

I do think, if you can, shopping at the farmers market for your produce — even if just for a couple of weeks a year — is a good thing to work into your food approaches. But, I have some caveats. Or, at least, things to be aware of.

Photo by Allie Smith on Unsplash

Access:

The first and most glaring, of course, is that not everyone has access to a farmers market. I only have access to a really good one six months out of the year (we do have a winter market, but it is much less produce-focused because, well, the northeast in the winter does not have a lot of produce).

Tip: if you don’t have a farmers market, see if you have any farm stands around. If not, you can still shop seasonally. Though many major grocery stores tend to have the same stuff year round, there are certain items — squash, watermelons, etc. — that show up more abundantly when their time has come.

Cost:

I’ve been going to the market with $40 in my pocket and pretty much spending it all. It’s hard to keep track of how much I’m buying and what it really means in relationship to a weekly grocery budget.

Tip: Pick how much you want to spend and only use that much as your cash (it’s fine to have some backup in your wallet just in case you find something you can’t pass up). Also, do a few rounds of the market before you start buying things. Weigh decisions against each other.

Abundance:

One problem I have at the farmer’s market is that I get the same really excited feeling I did when I was 8 and I’d first get to a carnival and I’d be like “I WANT TO RIDE ALL THE RIDES. I NEED ALL THE THRILLS. AND THE COTTON CANDY.”

Actually, shopping at the farmers market made me realize I’ve been having this feeling — and not reigning it in — at the co-op for about a year now. Which is why I kept ending up with too much produce. Everything there is local, organic, and beautifully-displayed. I want to buy it all, and sometimes I have — with no plan of action.

This is one area where shopping at the farmers market has helped me shop more sensibly and work produce into my meal planning in a way that’s sensible and seasonally-inspired. Because I can’t afford to buy everything, nor can I physically carry it all around the farmers market with me, I’ve had to make purposeful decisions about what I buy.

Bottom line:

I do think that buying from the farmers market is an “eating well best practice.” It shifts your perspective toward the produce portion of a meal, it allows you to connect with the season and what your locale offers in each season, and it allows you to talk to the people who grow your food. These hit all of my marks in terms of my food values.

However, I think the most successful way to shop at the farmers’ market is to go in with a plan in the form of knowing how much you want to spend and how much you really need.