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.