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The Market:
Santa Monica Farmers Market
Santa Monica, Calif.
Arizona & 3rd Street
Market Notes: Winter has finally arrived at the
Santa Monica farmers markets. There are no more fresh tomatoes
-- at least none that I'd care to buy. The tomatoes that are on
display are either grown in greenhouse -- and I've never had a
greenhouse tomato that was worth my money -- or fraudulently
purchased at a wholesale market, trucked in from deep in Mexico, but
sold as if it were California-grown. There some
interesting-looking dried tomatoes, which I'll try before the winter
is over. There are quite a few strawberries, which are
available year-round in California but begin to be worth buying, in
my opinion, in late winter. I'll wait a couple more months
before I'll give strawberries a try. Today I zero in on those
harbingers of California winter -- cherimoyas and blood oranges.
Market-Goer:
Mark Thompson, publisher of this Web site
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What I Bought:
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Cherimoyas
Never heard of cherimoyas? You're missing a real treat.
They're originally from Peru but have been grown in subtropical pockets in
southern California for more than century. By some accounts,
cherimoyas are the best fruit on earth.
I don't know that I'd go quite that far, but I would agree that anyone who
tastes them would agree that they're delicious. Their only drawback:
lots and lots of large, rock-hard seeds, as in four or five per spoonful
of pulp (see below).
Price: $2.50/lb.
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Blood Oranges I
buy them for the juice, which I extract and then boil down, with a few
springs of rosemary and sage, producing a thick syrup that makes an
excellent vinaigrette.
Price: $1.50/lb or 5 lbs. for $6
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Bok Choy (left) and Yu
Choy
Price: $1/bunch
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