Getting Personal

I’m going to come right out and say it: I miss the Greenmarket. This year is the [Greenmarket's](http://www.cenyc.org/site/) 30th anniversary and I’m going to miss the events (September 16th for those of you who can attend) and the benefit dinner at Blue Hill (although the $1000 ticket price may have kept me away even if I was home) and the Greenmarket Restaurant Week (although I will beeline to [Union Square Cafe](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/1) the moment I get back, where it’s always Greenmarket week).

When you go there as often as I do (nearly every Saturday and often Mondays and Fridays, year round) the Greenmarket becomes like a like a familiar organism, with its cycles and patterns, and you meet people. You see how they and their products fare through the season, then it gets cold and many of them go away for a little while. In the spring, they come back, ready to be part of the cycle again. I’m missing one of the most magical times of the year, though, and I’m a little sad about it.

As July ramps up to August, people wander through the market looking for the corn and tomatoes that aren’t there yet. They see the greenhouse tomatoes and the early corn (which sucks, IMHO) and wonder where the summer jewels are. Then, one day, seemingly out of nowhere the place is overrun with tomatoes: there are enormous fire engine red beefsteaks; wrinkled, bursting smoke-on-the-water brandywines (sorry, I couldn’t resist the Deep Purple reference); luscious crimson federles; picture-perfect white and yellow striped green zebras; and tiny, bursting teardrop and cherry tomatoes in yellow, red, orange and green. There are suddenly stacks of corn as high as the tents that hold them; white, yellow, bicolor, jersey, sweet, red, horse corn; it’s all there. Berries abruptly decrease in price as the wild bushes fruit with the increased heat.

I’m going to miss **Bruce and Tom** from **Coach Farm** getting more and more sleep deprived as the summer wears on, becoming more random as they hawk their goat cheese like carnival barkers. I’ll miss the obscenely long lines at the **Egg Guy** (Knoll Crest Farms), with the once-a-week-yuppies stocking up on chicken and eggs. Of course, I get my eggs from **The Secret Egg Guy** (don’t know his real name, he’s the guy who sells heirloom Italian squash varieties, west side of market, across from Gorzynski’s) when I pick up one of the enormous *striata d’italia* squashes he has. The eggs at Gorzynski’s are better than either of them, but they only have a small amount, always gone by 8AM, and they don’t grade them, so they’re difficult to bake with.

I’m going to miss the h-h-h-hotties from **Frat Boy Farms** (read: Sycamore Farms), who sell lasciviously swollen tomatoes (cheaper than anybody else in the market) in t-shirts with the sleeves torn off, their perfect muscles tanned from the sun and glistening fr- UH OH. Sorry about that. There are prurient reasons for going to the market, too. (Someday I will figure out how to diplomatically tell the parable of **Pretzel Hottie**.)

It’s sad not to be there, but kind of beautiful how the market goes on, impervious to the loss of any single element. The organism thrives not just on its own energy, but the energy of the community.

Listening: the sadly defunct The Low Road’s “Devil’s Pocket.”

Reflection and Rice Milk

Omnivorous Fish claims to be a blog about “eating, drinking and opining,” but looking back, it seems kind of sanitized: plenty of eating and drinking, but not so much opining.

Maybe this is because I have been busy and been a little depressed about being on the road, away from the Greenmarket and the Agent. Maybe it’s because I’m sitting in an extended stay studio in fucking Holland, OH drinking Rosenblum zinfandel out of a plastic fucking frosted tumbler. Maybe this is for some other reason, but whatever the genesis, it seems a little impersonal. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten has hinted that some of the acerbic comments I make in life are missing, and that my “voice” comes and goes.

Sorry.

Looking back on what’s been written, I can say that one thing that is odd is that all of the restaurant reviews I have written have been positive. I haven’t been to a stinker restaurant lately, outside of the chains I have been afflicted with recently; and if you need me to tell you that PF Chang’s and Chili’s suck, then you don’t need me: you need your fucking head examined. I did go to a terrible independently owned restaurant in Toledo yesterday (The Distillery), but it’s really a bar that has food, and when you walk in, you pretty much know it’s going to be terrible: it’s too dirty to be good, but not random enough to be one of those kick-you-in-the-nuts-out-of-left-field-good places.

One thing is for certain: I have used a lot of colons so far, and may use more.

I found a natural foods store in Toledo, called [Claudia's Market](http://www.claudiasmarket.com/). When you walk in, it seems like the real deal, resplendent with the Sweet-Looking Cropped Hair Girl at the Wall of Teas and Herbs, who told me I just take the whole jar up to the counter, where they will weigh out what I want for me (no doubt with a bone spoon and a set of brass scales using moonstones as counterweight), and the Militant White Girl With Dreadlocks at the cash register. We got some goodies, including buckwheat-flakes and some [Honest Teas](http://honesttea.com/page.php?id=211). NK got some [Virgil's Root Beer](http://www.virgils.com/about.shtml) and we shared a few items like my fave on cereal: [Rice Dream](http://www.tastethedream.com/pages/products/ricedream.php) Original Enriched. [*What I forgot to mention was that it had the most abominable produce I have seen since my last trip to the Whole Foods in our neighborhood. Truly abysmal. Very disappointing since we had to get on THREE different interstates to get there.-jf 8/17/06*]

It may come as a shock to you who don’t know me, and some who do, that I like rice milk. Do you know why? It doesn’t have the lactic protein aftertaste that milk has, and when I eat something first thing in the morning (like cereal) I don’t want that ice-cream-you-forgot-in-the-back-seat taste in my mouth. It was actually a serendipitous discovery: I was volunteering at [Falcon Ridge Folk Festival](http://www.falconridgefolk.com/) one year and they had run out of milk at the coffee table, and my choices for my coffee were soy milk (elgruckgah!) or rice milk, which I begrudgingly tried. If you’re unaware, rice milk tastes just like milk, only without the lactic cow taste. Now it’s a staple for cereal, and because it keeps indefinitely, I always have some around (I often keep some ultrapasteurized milk around, too). It has been used as a stand-in for milk in pancakes and muffins, although usually augmented with some clarified butter (there is ALWAYS butter at my house).

Before I forget, I’m listening to “Catch Me When I Fall” by **Daybreak** from their album First Light.