Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market

Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market

I took my folks out to the Wednesday Santa Monica farmers market while they were out visiting and as always, it was a feast for the senses. We threaded our way through the crowd and took it all in. It seemed like there was a lot to see during this visit. The colors were vibrant as if all the produce decided to celebrate one last hurrah with a showy display before transitioning and slowing down the growing season for the Autumn and Winter months when cabbages, dark green leafy things, pumpkins and roots begin to make their appearance.

Fall has finally arrived with the presence of persimmons and pomegranates. We picked up one of each. The fuyu persimmon was eaten later that day and was really sweet and had a good texture to it. As for the pomegranate, I still haven't decided how I'll put it use. There's a Persian dish I like called fesenjan which is a tart chicken stew with walnuts and pomegranate mollasses. I want to try and make it but it calls for pomegranate mollasses or syrup and not necessarily fresh pomegranate seeds so this one will probably end up peeled apart in a salad of some sort. A friend of mine said that when he was growing up in Iran, he would take a pomegranate and roll it around on the table until it got all squishy inside. Then he'd tear a small hole in it, insert a straw and suck out the juice like a juice box.

Really crisp looking apples and juicy pears seemed to be everywhere. When I think apples, I think apple pie and when I think apple pie, I think pumpkin pie. When I think pumpkin pie, I think Thanksgiving. When I think Thanksgiving, I think... Wow! it's next week already. Better get off my butt and figure out what we're having.

Everything else we picked up was great. We ate the orange and yellow carrots and the radishes for dinner that night with a bagna calda of olive oil, anchovy and garlic. We also had the purple globe artichoke steamed with mayo on the side for scooping. All excellent. The limas were quickly boiled and eaten as a side. They tasted firm and green like fresh edamame rather than the stodgy canned variety. Oh, and we wrapped the asparagus in irish bacon and grilled them. We didn't get a chance to use the little heirlooms tomatoes or the zucchini flowers that night but we'll find a use for them I'm sure.

Little Heirlooms

Zucchini Flowers

I could go on forever writing about how good everything was but I think you get the idea of how impressed I was with all this stuff. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Fresh Shelled Lima Beans

Yellow Carrots and Zucchini Flowers


Young Asparagus


Carrots and Radishes


Purple Globe Artichoke


Rose Fingerling Potatoes