My Leave

Time has come to an end. Having the opportunity to blog for the first time for a school assignment about the farmers’ market has given me a great experience in my writing. Not only did I learn more about the farmers’ market, I also learned more about my writing and how important it is to include my opinion in everything I write. Now I know how it feels like to be a blogger who types up paragraphs of opinion and information on a weekly basis.

I hope my readers enjoyed reading my ‘Adventures’ while gaining new information along the way that may or may not have convinced you to visit a farmers’ market. My gift to you is the knowledge I gained about picking fruits and vegetables from spending time with my parents. I hope you will pick out the best cherries, tomatoes and persimmons whenever you are doing grocery shopping. Remember to keep in mind, buy fruits and vegetables during its season for it will be cheaper and better quality. Also be careful of the things you eat in which you don’t know where it came from or how it was grown. If you do decide to visit the farmers’ market, remember to ask those simple questions to the representatives. Sometimes simple questions can give you surprising answers. Also if you have the time and is interested to know more about fast food companies and farms, I would recommend you to read the three books I read, listed on the post “The Overview.”

 Unfortunately I will discontinue blogging further about the famers’ markets by the end of this week. But feel free to continue to comment below on any posts if you need more tips and information about San Francisco Farmers’ Market and I will try my best to answer your question from what I know. Please understand I may not be able to respond as quickly as possible since I will be away from America.

Adventure 5: Cherry Picking

Have you ever been to or thought about going to a cherry farm miles and miles away from San Francisco just to purchase the finest quality cherries? A round trip will likely cost more than $40 dollars of gas and many hours of your time traveling. Certainly it is a great experience to visit a cherry farm at least once in your life, but why not purchase cherries from local farmers ’ markets instead. During the cherry season in mid-May through mid-August, farmers and representatives drive all the way from their farms to San Francisco to sell cherries. These cherries normally come in wine, red, yellow-ish and white colors.

The best time I would suggest to purchase sweet cherries would be near the end of May and in June. Sweet cherries are usually wine colored and some of the yellow cherries are also sweet. But if you love sour cherries just like me, make sure to purchase them in mid-May before they ripped. Most sour cherries come in bright red color.

Cherries are usually sold by pound at the farmers’ market, not to mention the super market also sells them by pound as well. Price varies depending on the vendor. The last time I bought cherries from the farmers’ market in San Francisco cost me $2.99 per pound. I bought three pounds of bright red cherries and ate a few samples to satisfy my cravings. Having a farmers’ market nearby my house selling farm picked cherries has been very convenient for me.

Cherry Picking Tips

Depending on your desired taste, whether sweet or sour, will determine what ‘kind’ of cherries you will be picking. For sweet toothed, as I mentioned earlier, the wine colored and yellow-ish red cherries are the best choice and for sour toothed, the best choice is the bright red. There is no difference in picking either sweet or sour cherries. All the tips I will be providing applies to all cherries.

When picking cherries, you want to make sure the exterior skin is clear and bruise-free, just like picking strawberries.

You don’t want to purchase a cherry with a wormhole or a bruised spot, I wouldn’t.

The next thing you want to do is choose cherries that are not extremely soft like the inside red part of the watermelon or extremely hard like an apple, but in between.

The last step you have to do now is choose the cherry you would like to eat: bright red, wine colored, yellow-ish red or white.

Picking cherries sound easy right? I hope my tips will be an additional help to you when picking cherries in the future.

 

Cherry on Top

Besides eating just the cherry itself, some people find it better using cherries in their recipe. Popular cherry usages include cherry pies, preserved cherry on top of ice cream or drinks, dried cherries to eat as snacks and plenty more. You may find restaurants that use cherries in their food as edible decorations. Try including cherries in your dish and share what you made in the comment below.

Adventure 4: Alemany's vs. Heart of the City Farmers' Market

After visiting several farmers' markets in the Bay Area, I decided to focus on two specific farmers' markets that I often visit. Every week I would visit the Alemany Farmers' Market and the Heart of the City Farmer's Market which is located in front of City Hall in the financial district in San Francisco. During my spare time after work in the financial district, I would take the Muni to the farmers' market in front of city hall and during my spare time in the mornings on the weekends, I would visit the Alemany's farmers' market. Both of these two farmers' markets have been opened for quite a long number of years and have been constantly adding new produces and making changes. While both farmers’ markets carry produce and are beneficial to shoppers, only the Heart of the City farmers’ market carry fresh seafood that are beneficial for shoppers interested in cooking seafood.

As we know from my previous Adventure post, the Alemany Farmers' Market open during the weekends as early as 5AM in the morning. Many different vendors coming from different cities in California bring their produces to sell here. Similarly to the farmers' market at City Hall, both farmers ‘markets consist of varieties of produces and vendors. Although the farmers' market at City Hall is available a little later in the day from 8AM to 2PM on Saturdays and similar times on other business days, the market is very accessible during the short amount of time it is opened due to its small size. Although the Alemany's Farmers' Market wins over the size of the market and the number of vendors compared to the Heart of the City Farmers' Market, the Heart of the City Farmers' Market has a much diverse variety of food ranging from fruits to desserts to live seafood. Not only does it consist of varieties of produce options, the Heart of the City Farmers' Market also has a convenient picnic table set up in the middle of the farmers' market for people to sit and eat. This allows people to enjoy themselves at the farmers' market while being entertained by a band of musicians down the road.

One interesting comparison between the two farmers' markets is the fact that the Heart of the City farmers' market sells live seafood. This was my first time seeing a seafood vendor at a farmers' market selling fish (Cat fish, Salmon, etc.) and crabs by the pound. Here are some photos of the seafood being sold here: <image>

As I walked around, I noticed the Heart of the City farmers' market were mostly selling fruits like tomatoes, pomegranates and not so much of the vegetables. People who can’t cook are also welcomed to purchase freshly made dishes from the many food trucks available at the farmers’ market. Between the Alemany and the Heart of the City farmers’ market, there are more food trucks located at the Heart of the City farmers’ market. Although the Alemany farmer’s market does not have as many food trucks as the Heart of the City market, the Alemany market surely has more food vendors. These food vendors include Hispanic food, pizza and so on.

As for payment, both farmers’ markets accept cash, tokens (from Food Stamps) and credit cards. But here is the catch to credit cards. The Alemany farmers’ markets accept credit cards in exchange for tokens. Those who plan to use credit cards would have to visit the office located in the middle of the market and exchange for tokens. On the other hand, the Heart of the City farmers’ market does the same but some individual vendors accept credit cards instead of having you go to the office(in this case a booth) to exchange for tokens. This makes things a little bit more convenient for some of us because we don’t have to spend extra time to get the tokens.

Conclude

Overall, these two farmers’ market has been my most visited farmers’ market and I will continue to make more observations. Because there is so much more observations I made from my visits to these two farmers’ markets, I will not be listing everything out but feel free to ask a question or comment below about the farmers’ markets.

Adventure 3: Supermarkets vs. Farmers' Markets

During this week, I decided to walk into the Manila Oriental Super Market located in the Excelsior district (4175 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA). This supermarket was pretty huge for a supermarket in the Mission district. There's also a parking lot outside the market and shopping carts available for customers. You can find so many food categories-fruits, vegetables, snacks, canned food, ice cream, frozen and live poultry-as well as house cleaning and kitchenware tools. At the farmers' market, you often to rarely, find any ice cream, kitchenware and or house cleaning tools.

As I walked around, many people would gather around the seafood section waiting to get their seafood weighed, cut and priced. Just watching this process at the seafood section made me wonder why many people come here and if it’s mainly for the seafood. I notice many farmers' markets have one to three to rarely any poultry sold. I have encountered only two farmers' market selling seafood and poultry located at Stonestown and Pier 1(also called Ferry Building Farmers’ Market). Just as an overview, the Pier 1 farmers’ market is one of the largest farmers’ market in San Francisco, consisting of over 50 vendors. I will be covering more about these farmers’ markets later in my future posts.

I decided to walk into the vegetables and fruits isle and found big selections of many produces. Compared to the farmers' market, I can buy almost all my groceries-green onion, bok choy, zucchini, bitter melon, cilantro-here without having to wait for the right season. Although shopping at the Supermarkets provides a wide selection of fruits, vegetables and seafood, you won’t be able to purchase the freshest items like in the farmers’ markets. There is nothing wrong with shopping at Supermarkets, but you just won’t get the freshest vegetables and fruits. Most importantly you won’t be able to know how the produce was grown and where it came from. Many supermarket items are usually shipped internationally and sold in America.

Choosing the Right Tomato

I think it is important to know how to choose the right produces, whether they’re ready to eat or not when it comes to fruits and vegetables. Many times you can tell if an item is fresh or rotten. Although I will not be providing all the tips on how to choose the right produces, since I am not an expert on that, I can provide you some tips I do know.

Here is one:

When choosing red tomatoes, I usually go for the soft, hairy texture feeling and red colored ones. Because there are many shades of red, here is an image of the red I am speaking about:

As you can see there are also these types of red tomatoes that may not be ready or are overly ready.

By hairy texture, I am talking about the feeling of the tomato. Some tomatoes have a clear smooth surface, sometimes appearing shiny. Usually I do not go for these tomatoes because from what I know, shiny produces have wax. Although you can guarantee the farmers’ markets have organic produces, you should still watch out for the little things that you may be eating.

As for the description soft, I am talking about the feeling of the tomato. While some tomatoes are heavy weighted and some are too soft to a point where the tomato would splat open when you drop it, the perfect tomatoes for me would be in between those two. It is not easy to tell the difference between being too soft or too hard of a tomato from just looking at it. You must hold the tomato and touch it in order to know its texture. Sometimes smelling the tomato can help you determine if the tomato is sweet by its aroma. To determine its sweetness, we want a tomato that smells not as sweet as a cantaloupe and not as plain as a Jamaica fruit.

Conclude

Overall the trip to the Supermarket was an eye opening experience. The market definitely made me feel prepared because they have almost everything I needed. Even so, the farmers’ market is a better place for more organic produces, rather than the few day shipping produces or package snacks.
Comment below if you need more tips on choosing fruits and vegetables or share your way of choosing fruits and vegetables.

Adventure 2: SFSU Farmers' Market

During this week, I decided to stroll down to the farmers’ market at San Francisco State University, which is held in front of the Humanities building every Thursday from 10am to 3pm. This farmers’ market is not a very well known place and is not very large in my opinion. <>

Although this is not my first time coming here, during this visit I was able to gain new information and made new observations compared to my other past visits. From my observations I saw a few familiar faces from the last time I visited this farmers’ market and a few new faces. <>

Again, communicating with the vendors allowed me to gain some new interesting facts, which made this visit different from my other visits because of the new information I learned from a vendor representing the ASI Student Association, an organization at San Francisco State University. One representative sitting there was promoting local fruits, vegetables and flower seeds to students and visitors coming by the farmers’ market for free. Because of my curiosity and the bag with a farmers’ market logo I saw at the table, I decided to walk up to the representative and asked what he was there for and what is that bag right there. He responded saying the bag is to promote the farmers’ market on campus and is for sale at a price of $10 dollars and everyone is welcomed to take as many free packs of seeds as they desire. <>

This was such a coincidence because my friend and I were just thinking about planting some vegetables in my backyard but we needed seeds. I asked him why were these seeds free and he told me that local farms in California donated these seeds to San Francisco State University ASI Association to provide students a way to grow their own crops and plants. One interesting fact I found out about the free seed giveaways was the fact that each time a pack of seed is given to a visitor including students, the farms will provide more seeds for the school to hand out.

These seeds travel from cities including Petaluma, California and Mansfield, Missouri through an organization called “Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.” Their mission is to “…educate people about rural heritage, to teach about our crops and gardens, about cooking and food preservation, about traditional animals, craftsmanship and music.”<>

I thought this was interesting because students can have the experience of planting and growing something, which allows them to learn something new and create a positive feeling for one-self. If I didn’t walked up to this booth and asked any questions, I wouldn’t have learned anything or gotten myself any of these seeds for free.

Learning about the ASI Association was not the only thing I learned from this farmers’ market. As I walked around at 12pm, I observed the number of students buying and visiting the market. There weren’t as many students earlier when I arrived, but later at noon more students gathered here. I saw many students gathering around the “Golden Waffle,” a dessert truck that makes and sell pancakes and other desserts to students. <>

Along with the dessert truck, many students also visited the booth selling tamales and bread. These were the top popular booths from my observations. I also walked past by the Hummus booth. The hummus representatives were calling people to come and try their samples. I tried the avocado dip with their chips and it was delicious. I walked further down and saw vendor selling blackberries for $3 a basket or $10 for 3 baskets. The blackberries looked very good but I did not purchase any. <>

Overall, revisiting this farmers’ market at San Francisco State University provided me new information, observations, and offers that I can compare with to other farmers’ markets.

Adventure 1: Questions

As the temperature gets colder, fruits and vegetables we normally find during the early summer are no longer available at the farmers’ market. As winter approaches, different local organic fruits and vegetables are arriving at the nearby farmers’ markets allowing us to have a new taste, combination in our diet and some facts that we can acquire from communicating with the vendors.

Once again I visited the Alemany’s farmers’ market this past Saturday. At that time, I did not have anything specific in mind that I wanted to purchase until I was given a phone call from my parents to buy basil leaves. I walked around and asked vendors about basil leaves and only one vendor was selling basil leaves for $3 dollars a bunch. I was wondering why this seemed quite expensive compared to the usual $1 per bunch I’ve seen before from other vendors and supermarkets. One of the vendors told me basil season is in the spring, not the winter and that’s why they were pricey. I decided to purchase the basil leaves…but with an offer to the vendor. I asked if I can purchase two for $5 dollars and he paused for a moment. He agreed to sell me the basil leaves and he even joked around about remembering my appearance to claim his $1 dollar back. After that purchase, I spoke to a different vendor from a different city not too far from San Francisco. She was talking to me about the two types of persimmons she was selling. The first type has a flattish shape and heavier weight compared to the second type that has more width and height, almost looking like a tomato when I first saw it. She offered me a whole persimmon as a sample. The persimmon was definitely sweet but I did not purchase any for myself and instead I purchased cilantro for $1 dollar a bunch from this vendor.

Visiting the farmers’ market this Saturday and speaking to vendors about basils and what they’re selling this season allowed me to feel bonded with the farmers’ market. Compared to a supermarket in which you are unlikely to acquire as much product information besides the sticker labels, shopping at a farmers’ market allows you to ask questions about their products, where they’re from and how they grew their fruits and vegetables. Here are some very basic questions you may ask vendors:

1. What city are your produces from?
2. How do you grow your fruits and vegetables?
3. Why do you come all the way here to sell at the farmers’ market?
4. What other locations do you sell your produces?

Asking ‘origin-like’ questions allows you to feel comfortable around the produces that you purchase and know where it’s from and how it was done.

Have you tried asking any questions to a vendor at the farmers’ market yet? Were you able to acquire any interesting facts? What are questions that you would ask? Share your story in the comment box below.

THE OVERVIEW

Are you someone who often cooks or someone who often buys something to eat? Whether you cook or not, the farmers' market is a place for everyone. While the majority of the farmers’ markets sell fruits and vegetables, food trucks and food stands are also available for freshly made food. Those who can and cannot cook have the opportunity to grab something to eat while shopping around, listening to music performances and talking to farmers and friends.

 

As a child, I have been visiting specifically the Alemany’s Farmers’ Market every Saturday on a weekly basis. My family and I would arrive at 8A.M. with our cash ready to go. The first thing we would always do is try a bunch of free samples of fruits before purchasing any. My mom would teach me how to pick out the right fruits and vegetables by looking at its texture, smell, and the sound of it. Because my mom cooks, she would always purchase a lot of vegetables for her recipe. On the other hand, I cannot cook so I end up buying freshly made pizza or Hispanic food from the food stands. Sometimes I would sit at a table provided at the farmers’ market eating my food and watching a music performance by three old men. Having music performances at the farmers’ market just made the environment livelier and welcoming.  

 

How it All Began

 

While I had no particular reason to visit the farmers’ market, my parents often visit the farmers’ markets for the freshest fruits and vegetables. Not until I read three books titled "Fast Food Nation," "Food Inc.," and "Omnivores Dilemma" did I find my reason to visit a farmers’ market. Reading these three books changed the way I view fast food companies and convinced me to visit the farmers' markets even more. The surprising information I learned from reading these books completely caused me to feel sorry for the slaughterhouse animals and convinced me to read nutrition labels before eating.

 

Even if I was convinced to visit a farmers’ market after reading three books, that is not the only reason I would visit a farmers’ market. As I grew older and entered college, my parents didn’t have time to cook every meal for me and I began to have less time to cook something for myself due to school activities and work, therefore I would purchase food from corner shops or restaurants. In addition to buying food from restaurants and corner shops, I decided to look up some easy cooking recipes and buy the ingredients at the farmers’ market since going to Alemany became a habit. I ended up buying some eggs after hearing the chickens are cage-free raised, tomatoes, garlic, green onion and carrot. These were the simplest ingredients I gathered to make an omelet.

 

After that visit, I decided to visit the farmers’ market at San Francisco State University. Although the farmers’ market here was small, there were a variety of things being sold. These include fruits, vegetables, cupcakes, flowers, hummus, popcorn and several food trucks that sold Indian food, waffles and many more. I decided to purchase Indian food and it was delicious. From here on, I continued my adventure to the next farmers’ market at downtown Civic Center and so on.

 

Have you ever tried any of the food from the food trucks at any farmers’ market before? Comment below to share what you eaten and or planning to eat in the future.