Strange Foods at the Farmer’s Market, Episode 1

I know this post is going to make everyone in the country outside of California hate me, but so be it.  We’re blessed with good weather here, and this past weekend was particularly nice – especially considering most of you in the Midwest were locked in your houses due to hostile frigid temperatures outside.

I decided to take advantage of the nice weather by going to the farmer’s market (there’s a great one here in Santa Monica right by our apartment) and purchased some items for what I hope will be a weekly feature here on The Plant Eater.   Each week I’ll buy some plant foods that I normally don’t eat… and eat them.  This week there were a ton of things to choose from at the farmers market.

I found my way over to this fruit stand that had persimmons, tomatoes, lemons, and a weird green fruit I’d never seen before.  Turns out they were guavas – not that crazy of a fruit, but to be honest, I’d only had guava in juice before and had never tried eating the actual fruit.  So I talked to the guy and he said I could either buy the firm or the squishy ones, depending on my taste.  He also mentioned that I could eat the entire fruit – nothing to peel and no rinds to throw out.  Here’s a couple of the guavas I picked up.

They were both delicious – citrusy and tangy – but the thing that bothered me were the seeds inside.  There weren’t too many of them, but they were relatively big – about half the size of a pea.  I’ll probably end up getting them again, but I’m not dying to buy any more immediately.  I also picked up a package of dates.

Again, not that crazy, but there were about 10 different types of dates to choose from, ranging from sweet to not so sweet, so I decided to pick up a carton of the ones right in the middle.  Holy lord these things are good.  There’s absolutely no reason to eat candy when these things are in existence – they’re better than anything you can buy in a box or bag in the sweets aisle.

I’m a big fan of artichokes, and the other day someone was telling me you could eat the baby ones raw, so I decided to pick a bunch of them up too.

I peeled some of the tougher leaves off each one, sliced them lengthwise down the middle and squeezed some lemon juice on top.  Pretty tasty, although nothing special.  I’m a bigger fan of the large artichokes.  I’ve got a few of these left, and I’m going to try slicing them relatively thin and adding them to a salad.  I’ll let you know how that goes.

I’m just realizing this series will have to be postponed for a couple weeks since I’m going out of town, but the next time I head over to the farmer’s market, I’ll pick up some other stuff I usually don’t eat.  I saw some cactus there that I’m kind of interested in trying.  Like my post yesterday, the point is that the possibilities of the kinds of plants you can eat is endless.  Not eating meat isn’t limiting, unless you’re at a place like Applebee’s.  Eating mostly plants is a good opportunity to try some more of the delicious food items growing out of (and sometimes under) the ground.