SEATTLE AVENUE

WOW the goodies you can find at your local Farmers Markets!

My husband Henrik and I like to meet the farmers, learn about their farms, and hear their recipes and ideas. The atmosphere outdoors is fun and the produce changes with the seasons.

We especially like to buy fresh, organic vegetables and cheeses. Last Sunday he spotted a colorful Spring salad with various lettuces, yellowish-red edible flowers and dill. Put your head inside the bag and it’s like a symphony of sweet green smells with a top note of fresh dill.

Curious folk like ourselves walk around and look at what other people bought. There are seven Seattle area Farmers Markets: Broadway, Columbia City, Lake City, Magnolia, Phinney, University District, and West Seattle and over 100 Farmers Markets throughout the State of Washington.

You can read about the benefits of shopping at Farmers Markets at the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance and Washington State Farmers Markets Association. For those of you living in other states, call your Chamber of Commerce.

Do you have recipes you’d like to share?

These twiggy vegetables are Seabeans. They’re also known as salicornia, glasswort and beach asparagus. They grow on beaches and in marshes and are generally available during the summer (seabeans used to be burned and the ashes used as soda for making glass and soap.) They have a flavor reminiscent of a day spent at the ocean — salty, briny and the slightest bit vegetal with a bit of a crunch. So far we’ve found them good tossed in salads and as side dishes. Blanch them to remove some of the salt.

These are vegetables that Dr. Seuss would surely love. Fiddlehead Ferns. They’re only available for a short time in Spring. It was a little weird the first time I ate Fiddleheads, they look so strange, but they were delicious. I sautéed them in olive oil and fresh crushed garlic and served them hot. I was also told they’re good on the grill brushed with a mixture of olive oil, garlic, and lime or lemon juice, and since we’re all about the “Q” that will be how I cook the next batch (if I can get more this year.) Traditionally, fiddleheads are served with butter or oil and seasoning. Cooked with garlic and/or bacon they develop a more complex flavor. They’re supposed to be very good with morel mushrooms, too.

These are garlic curls also known as scapes. They’re the tender flower stalks that grows out of the middle of hardneck garlic before the garlic below is full grown. They break these off so that the plant can devote its growing energy into the storage bulb and not into making flowers and seeds. The garlic curl season is only about three weeks long. We saw them last week and I said, “Let’s finish our once-around and then come back and buy a bunch.” Well the Farmers Market is worse than Costco. If you see something you want you better get it right then because when you go back it’ll be gone. Sure enough, we went back and not 15 seconds earlier a gentleman (whom I refer to as the garlic thief) bought ALL the garlic curls! I wanted to hunt him down. Well last Sunday we arrived earlier and marched straight to the lady who sells the garlic curls and bought two bunches. It’s sad they’ll only be around another week or two, I love them. Garlic curl pesto seems to be a popular recipe and they’re also good cooked on meats and sautéed with oil and seasoning. Sautéed they’re crunchy. I’m going to see what happens when they’re steamed. They have a mild smell and flavor and they’re smooth to touch.