Farmer's Market Finds!

I'm inspired by all the advice I've read from environmentalists that say "Eat local, eat organic, and eat what's in season!"  Now organic may not always be feasible, but if we can at least have some farmer assurance that they don't use conventional fertilizer and pesticides, I'm satisfied.  For now...  And yes, I do realize how fortunate I am to live on the West coast, where farmer's markets can run all year round, and have ripe goodies no matter when you come.  We are blessed here, and I am told that it's much harder to eat within a 100-mile food radius of your home if you live in areas less-suited for rich farming.  I'm not intending to evoke jealousy from you cold-climate lovers, but here are some goodies I picked up at the farmer's markets recently:

These are gorgeous.  It is art in the form of a root vegetable, color beyond my wildest beta-carotene-dreams, and I am in love with them:

Purple carrots!

These are purple carrots, with orange and yellow flesh inside.  We roasted them in the oven, and they were delightful!  It was fun buying them, chopping them, photographing them, cooking them, eating them, and now blogging about them.  I highly advise you snag some of these if you find them, as you can see I was clearly smitten with them.  A little olive oil and seasoning, plus some ripe local avocados on top, and voila! Lovely, healthful lunch :)  It helped that I sort-of went along with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen (my favorite food blog).

Besides my newfound love of purple carrots (which, by the way, were too woody for snacking raw, so let me just put that out there for you who had dipping in mind!), I was also able to score a great deal on some strawberries at another farmer's market.  I got 4 little green baskets of strawberries for such a deal that I had to photograph them as I was washing to cut and freeze them (some to eat now, the rest to freeze, can't have any going bad on me!).  It was a lot of strawberries, and I am now smoothie-equipped!

Well, as this is also my glass blog, it must marry up to the obsession somehow:  I'm now inspired to see what vegetables I can represent well in glass, as I already have two glass carrots (photo to come, promise!), have made a few other veggies, and will likely try for a gardener's necklace SOON.  Stay tuned.  And, eat fresh and local if you can. :)