True Colours

There's a farmer's co op nearby of five farmers that each grow a different selection of fruits and vegetables. They don't sell to stores.  They don't ship their produce long distance.  These folks are embracing the concept of the 100 mile diet.  Once a month, they come to town and set up shop in one of the community centers to sell directly to the public.

So late in the season, their selection was limited; but their sweet carrots were at their peak.   The line up was out the door and around the corner... people were buying 50 pounds or more of carrots, as well as potatoes, beets, cabbages, parsnips or brussel sprouts.  They sold out in less than two hours.    Lucky for me, I showed up early.

Isn't all that colour great?  If you think those mechanically shaped mini carrots at the grocery store can compete with these ones, you don't know flavour.

I don't have room to store huge volumes of vegetables, and one of the crispers in my fridge is already full of (big) carrots from my dad's garden, so I only bought what I could use fairly quickly.   I'm wishing now that I had a cold room.





And as an aside, I made strawberry jam this morning.  I wasn't organized this year, so I hadn't made enough from local produce to last the year.  I had to buy strawberries that were imported by the grocery store.  

I was tempted to (but didn't) add food colouring.  Look at that washed out colour.

Whoever heard of pink jam?  When I make that recipe using strawberries from the garden, it's red.  Sadly, the flavour is pretty washed out this time too.