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.