But things have changed! My work week is Saturday through Tuesday but my Saturday shift doesn't start until 3:00 pm so I now regularly visit the Santa Rosa Farmers Market a couple of miles from my house. Yes it is more expensive than grocery stores but oh, my goodness, how great is the produce!
Stone fruit this summer, peaches and nectarines and plums, have been outstanding. Eating a peach out of hand, the juice runs down your arm. The plums have been black inside and amazing! And the lettuces, all different kinds, and they all have great taste, none of the bland "I will eat this because it's good for me" salads any more. The lettuce actually has flavor! Carrots, small summer squashes, green beans, all of them are so good. Peppers are just now coming in and I will be roasting a lot of those and eating them on a piece of grilled bread!
Some items at the FM are a little over my budget, like the gourmet coffee beans at $20 per pound! That's a little much. I can almost see paying $8 for a dozen local eggs but I can't see paying $12 for them. And one purveyor was selling greens like kale and chard off the bunch, mixed up at $18 per pound! No thanks.
I pay the same amount of money for a loaf of the multi-grained battard as I would at the bakery from which it came. Same with tamales and salsa, the prices on those are very reasonable.
So there you have it, my journey into local produce and I am loving it. It isn't going to make me a "loca-vore" however, I don't adhere to that idea of only eating things that were raised or grown within five miles of where I live. I will still buy coffee from South America and beef that might have been raised outside of California. Heck, even the peaches were grown in Brentwood, much farther than five miles from Santa Rosa. But as long as the produce is so damned tasty, I will be a fan.
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