Another thing Ann Arbor has going for it

is it's farmer's market. It's a convenient twenty or twenty-five minute walk from where I live and open year-round on Saturdays, and on Wednesday mornings from late spring to early fall. I discovered it inadvertently while out running one Wednesday morning way back in September, was horribly excited by my discovery, and as soon as I'd showered and eaten I set off to find it again.

I don't visit the market all that often, and so every time I go there, there is a different selection of produce. Last time each stand boasted zucchini and yellow squash and eggplant and other small, colorful varieties of summer squashes, as well as baskets and baskets of berries - blueberries mostly, and strawberries and blackberries and raspberries. This morning, a month or two later, the seasonal stock had shifted and I saw lots of peppers and tomatoes in all colors, varieties, and shapes. I knew peppers came in all sorts, but I had never realized just how many ways there were to make a tomato. Still, as fun as it was to look at the heirloom tomatoes, I can't imagine they would taste any better than the much cheaper and still aesthetically pleasing standard red garden variety.

When I visit the farmer's market, the volume and variety of fresh produce in nice, round, dollars-and-quarters prices tends to cloud my vision a bit and I often leave with more than one person, even someone like myself who loves fresh fruits and vegetables, can possibly eat before it goes bad. This time my memory of sadly sending almost an entire pint of mushy strawberries down the disposal was fresh enough to hold me in check. I spent only five dollars and came away with the fresh necatrines I have been craving but haven't been able to find in the store for a month, a handful of baby carrots (real baby carrots, not whittled-down grown-up carrots), and a tiny fifty-cent cantaloupe melon.

The melon was my favorite purchase of the day. Based on the selection at the local Kroger, I'd been under the impression that melon was going out of season, but there were melons all over the farmer's market today. Most of them were labeled "Howell Melons" but I think they are just cantaloupe melons grown in Howell, Michigan. I decided almost immediately, as I made my initial pass through the market, that I'd bring home a melon, but when I walked by a box of little baby melons for fifty cents each I was won over completely. The woman running the stand was very helpful, asking me if I was planning on eating the melon soon or waiting a few days, and whether I liked them firm, soft, or in between. Then, "let's see, where is it?" she said as though she were intimately acquainted with every little melon in the box, and she rummaged through and found one that just fit my melon-eating preferences, instructed me to keep it in the refrigerator until I was ready to eat it, and sent me happily on my way.

Now that I look at it, sitting on the edge of my desk at school waiting to be taken home and put in the refrigerator, it's really not much smaller than the late-season melons that get sold in the supermarkets for five times the price. And judging by the smell that has been driving me crazy all day as I've worked, it is going to taste much, much better. Maybe it'll help me look forward to day four of the sweet 'n' sour chicken...