Farmer's market Haul 6/28/09

I was incredibly excited to go to the market today because I knew that I am pretty much set for my staples form my shopping last week which meant that I could be a little more free in my spending on produce this week.

This was a good week to be able to buy what I wanted because the market has exploded with all the summer stuff. For me and my friends, the market is as much social event as shopping so we always take a walk around to see who has what and for what price and to get all our chit chat for the week done. After we’ve seen everything, we start our shopping.

My haul for the week:

item	Cost/size	Cost/serving	servings
Milk	1.75/half gallon	.11/half cup	16
Eggs	1.75.dozen	.30/2	6
Rhubarb	3.50/lb	.70	5
Tomatoes	4.00/11 pieces	.28	14
Potatoes	3.00/ 20 small	.60	5
Peas	3.00/ lb	.60	5
carrots	2.00/ 4 large	.28	7
Zucchini	2.00/ 4 medium	.40	5
Cucumbers	1.00/3 med-lg	.16	6
garlic	.50/head
	22.50

The tomatoes were an amazing deal, I bought the seconds basket for $4 and got 11 tomatoes ranging from mid size to large. I decided against things like broccoli or cauliflower because I still have kale and cabbage left over from last week and because they weren’t actually that great of a deal. Both were about $1.50 a head but the heads were kind of small and would only have been maybe 2.5 servings. Next time I go, I’ll probably buy some and use it in stir fries and soups. Generally, the goal is to make sure that I have 35 servings (strive for 5) of vegetables. So I wanted to be sure that I was getting enough helpings. From the chart above, I ended up with 47 helpings, some of which are freezable.

After I’d finished my shopping and could barely carry my bags, I remembered that I’m going to be away Thursday-Monday . I know I can’t eat everything before Wednesday, even with some dedicated eating. But, this also means that I won’t be going to the market next week which is a bigger problem. I have a local market near work where I can get vegetables but I never really know if they have been grown locally or not.

My plan is to freeze half of the rhubarb, peas, and a bunch of the tomatoes. I’m figuring that the zucchini, carrots and potatoes will still be good. I’ll probably just try to eat all of the cucumbers before then or make a salad with vinegar which will make them keep a bit longer.

So, now I’m off to look at carrot recipes. The ones I bought are huge so I’m not just going to peel and eat them with salt. I’ll let you know what I find.