Who doesn’t love a good market?

I’ll gladly visit one in any incarnation. Fortunately, the people I’ve jetsetted with also enjoy that scene, so it doesn’t seem odd when we spend more time tracing tight alleys through dingy markets than waiting in a herd to see some famous landmark or another. Love stateside, local markets too…farmer’s, Asian, meat…I don’t discriminate. Too bad some of the places I’ve lived aren’t as hip as Austin and can’t seem to get a decent marketplace together. Like Myrtle’s Market at the beach. Although it has a couple of dedicated vendors, it only operates for about a quarter of the year. Columbia, SC was a bit of a different story with the outdoor flea market on Hwy 1. They had rows and rows of local goods and managed to sandwich a sizable square of tables selling all sorts of Mexican treats like cheap avocadoes, a myriad of peppers and nopales in between the car stereo section and the black velvet religious painting section. Now there’s also the All-Local Farmers' Market that my buddy from Gervais and Vine restaurant in Cola has been nurturing. It’s held the 2nd Saturday of every month on the patio of Gervais & Vine in the Vista, and the 4th Saturday of every month in the parking lot of Rosewood Market according to localharvest.org. And I was lucky to have that alley way market in Joetsu-shi, Japan with adorable vendors and far-out wares, from grilled fish on a stick to shark steaks, from root veggies to rice balls. It was even more awesome when I figured out the method to its scheduling madness (twas only open on days that end in a 4 or a 9).

All this brings us to the market scene in our fab new city. These folks take their local produce and livestock seriously. Rachel, Logan, Andy and I packed the car and headed downtown several Saturdays ago. The Austin Farmer’s Market also operates on the north end of town on Wednesday afternoons. The variations in color, shape, size of the produce was dizzying.
There were unusual veggies like this beautiful kohlrabi (according to Wikipedia: a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage that will grow almost anywhere. It has been selected for its swollen, nearly spherical, Sputnik-like shape. The name comes from the German Kohl ("cabbage") plus the Swiss German variant Rübe ~ Rabi ("turnip"))

There's so much variety...

There was also plenty of meat on offer.

All sorts of pastured livestock, naturally raised beef (which we made yummy blue cheese burgers out of subsequently), fresh feral hog and even a parked truck with an operating rotisserie on the rear that was turning out aromatic chicken.

There were herbs, flowers, baked goods, canned goods, crafts, musicians and empanadas served up with an invitation to use their microwave and enjoy it on-site, which we did.

These pictures are very telling of how awesome the local spirit and harvest are, more so than these words, but they still can’t do justice to the utter bounty. There are so many prospects for the fabulous foods there and each just begs you to figure out how to perfectly prepare and enjoy them.