farmers' market: autumn transition
I neglected to mention that I went to the Tuesday market this past week to pick up some more heirloom tomatoes: more green zebras, tigers, yellow ping-pongs, and wapsipinicon peaches, and a new-to-me variety called doctor carolines, which are rather like large cherry tomatoes (sweet, low-acid), very pale yellow in color.
This morning's haul is mostly late summer stuff, since it won't be around too much longer: red bell peppers, eggplant, green beans, porcelain garlic, basil, french orange melon, cippolini onions.
But I also picked up a beautiful little amber cup squash (colored like a red kuri, but actually looks more like a small kabocha), which I am happily contemplating turning into soup; so I got carrots and apples to go in the soup with it. In fact I got several different kinds of apple:
Wolf River: tart, to go in the soup with the very sweet squash. Originated near Wisconsin's Wolf River.
Chenango Strawberry: originated in Chenango County, NY, around the 1880s. Extremely fragrant; smells rather like roses, actually. Sweet rather than tart, melting rather than crisp; I've heard it makes a marvelous applesauce, though I've never tried that myself. It's extremely thin-skinned and doesn't ship well, so it's hard to find outside of farmstands.
Milton: I'd forgotten about these (the stand didn't have them last week). It's very small, very round, and very pink; sweet but with a tart edge to it, and nicely crisp but still tender-skinned. Apparently it's an early-20th-century cross between the familiar McIntosh and something called a White Transparent (of which I'd never even heard). Again, not usually found except at farmstands.
I probably should have picked up some Mollie's Delicious; I think they're really more of an early September apple. I'll have to get some if they're still around next week. Also Cox's Orange Pippin, the English varietal often held (by the English at least) to be the best eating apple ever, which I think is overstating the case a bit, but it is a lovely apple.
And now I have two fewer apples than I did when I started typing, and there's a very large cat settled into my lap and purring sleepily. Yes. A good morning.
This morning's haul is mostly late summer stuff, since it won't be around too much longer: red bell peppers, eggplant, green beans, porcelain garlic, basil, french orange melon, cippolini onions.
But I also picked up a beautiful little amber cup squash (colored like a red kuri, but actually looks more like a small kabocha), which I am happily contemplating turning into soup; so I got carrots and apples to go in the soup with it. In fact I got several different kinds of apple:
Wolf River: tart, to go in the soup with the very sweet squash. Originated near Wisconsin's Wolf River.
Chenango Strawberry: originated in Chenango County, NY, around the 1880s. Extremely fragrant; smells rather like roses, actually. Sweet rather than tart, melting rather than crisp; I've heard it makes a marvelous applesauce, though I've never tried that myself. It's extremely thin-skinned and doesn't ship well, so it's hard to find outside of farmstands.
Milton: I'd forgotten about these (the stand didn't have them last week). It's very small, very round, and very pink; sweet but with a tart edge to it, and nicely crisp but still tender-skinned. Apparently it's an early-20th-century cross between the familiar McIntosh and something called a White Transparent (of which I'd never even heard). Again, not usually found except at farmstands.
I probably should have picked up some Mollie's Delicious; I think they're really more of an early September apple. I'll have to get some if they're still around next week. Also Cox's Orange Pippin, the English varietal often held (by the English at least) to be the best eating apple ever, which I think is overstating the case a bit, but it is a lovely apple.
And now I have two fewer apples than I did when I started typing, and there's a very large cat settled into my lap and purring sleepily. Yes. A good morning.