To Market, To Market

There are few activities that bring me more simple joy than buying fruit and vegetables from growers markets. I trace my love of produce shopping back to the weekend farmer’s market that would spring up outside the BART station when my family moved to San Francisco in the early 70’s. Back then, you simply could not get fresh vegetables in the middle of winter in Ohio, and it seemed so decadent, so hedonistic to buy artichokes or oranges on the street in January. When we moved to San Jose, my mother and I would make weekly sojourns to the Berryessa Flea Market, returning home with armloads of fresh veggies, avocados, sticks of pepperoni, and jars of exotic olives. As much as the actual procurement, I adored the interaction of being in a crowd of shoppers, jostling for position in front of a stack of crisp apples. How well I remember my first encounter with a pale green chile, which I found on the ground. I thought I had scored a small fortune, until I bit into it and wiped my eyes, which flowed like faucets all the way home…

With that knowledge, I often marvel that it took me nearly two years to visit the Sydney Markets, the mother of all produce markets.

Passing beneath the giant fair-ground style entry gates, we joined a parade of cars in chaos, all searching for prime parking around the crowded perimeter of the markets. Averting several Mexican stand-offs, I slipped into a nearby covered parking garage only to find it mysteriously deserted. I felt as if I had won the parking lottery, and we set off towards the enormous warehouse that seemed to be the center of commerce.The main building is about the size of two football fields and was packed from end to end with stalls of growers hawking their goods.



“Lovely, Lovely Beans – on sale for the next half hour – only $2 a kilo. Get you Lovely, Lovely Beans.”

“I got yer freshest Mangoes. Mangoes Here. Only $16 a flat.”

“Garrrrlique. 1$ a bag. Garrrlique”

I was instantly overwhelmed and could only wander aimlessly up and down each aisle, palpating pears, pumpkins, and pomegranates, cooing at the cost of carrots, cantaloupes, and capsicum, salivating over celery, cilantro, and strawberries, awestruck by apples and avocados, and totally repulsed by crates of fava beans.

Unless you operate a restaurant or a produce stand of your own, the best way to tackle the Sydney Markets is with a group of people among which you can divide the bounty into more reasonable portions. While the discounts are deep, they are dependent on quantity.

I have completely underestimated my ability to eat an entire flat of mangoes before they succumb to the voracious appetites of the cloud of fruit flies which now inhabit my kitchen. Turns out I enjoy buying produce a lot more than I actually like preparing it, and now the bottom of my refrigerator is slowly dissolving into a thick slime of lettuce and lovely, lovely beans.