Haymarket dreams and disappointments

Sometimes Haymarket just sucks, and it's alright

I went to Haymarket yesterday, towards the end of the day as always so I could take the cheapest/crappiest wares sold there and make something out of them.

I've been noticing it lately that the fruits and veggies there are not priced at 'clearance' levels at all, in fact they're misleading about a bunch of fruits...The bananas there are the most expensive ones I've found anywhere, including at Whole foods, and they're not even organic like other expensive bananas. It's looking like the place is transitioning from a market to clear excess produce to a place where unsuspecting tourists and white people are tricked out of their money by being told the crap they're buying is farmer's market stuff whereas in reality it's just crap. What a bummer, they're a great place to buy supplies in bulk. This has been brought up before in the blog, but yesterday it was specially remarkable.

On three, four occasions I heard the shopkeepers say to their customers 'what, you want them for FREE?', which is a strange thing to tell people who're in there to buy your goods. Maybe it was the bargaining, but the aggressiveness by which things have been going there, I don't appreciate. What is even happening there, and where do those fruits that are ready to rot go to when they remain unsold at the market?

There wasn't anything good, no good deals or anything. Pomegranates were pretty cheap though not remarkably so compared to Market Basket or Aldi or Wegmans. Cauliflower was definitely cheap, but that's one place where I would not buy from a place with dubious quality...you don't know what's between the florets and it's better to not take chances on those. There were some good persimmon deals, if I'd bothered to put down some money I'd probably have snagged a nice amount. It didn't feel right, I didn't go to the ATM to get my cash out. I just observed. It's possible I was lazy or not motivated, but are things getting less fun at the haymarket?

The idea is to go to the Haymarket, let the offerings of the week inspire you, and use those in your projects. So if there's great lime deals, you use the dehydrator. When the gingers are cheap, it's time for ginger candy and syrup. When the plums are ripe for a sale, it's plumwine time! Etcetera. The cacophony and confusion of the market, the sellers who seem a little too aggressive, they're not conducive to thinking and planning project ideas. In retrospect, the Hachiya persimmon would have been a good idea, they were selling 8 ct for a dollar, probably a pound there at least, so five dollars worth of them, let 'em ripen for several days and a good deal of wine they'd have made. In hindsight... Still, the place didn't feel as friendly.

My next project is going to be fermenting winter fruit juices, after being 'inspired' yesterday. That means kiwi, pineapple, persimmon, and pomgranate. Pommes are still quite expensive, but I ain't making several gallon batches. Pineapple is really cheap, shockingly so. With either of those fruits though I'll finally need to chip in for pectic enzymes, to break the hairy fruits. That's taking things to the next level. Unclear if I'm ready for that yet.

I guess Haymarket is not a total disappointment, if I have a clearer idea of seasonal fruits and vegetables and the theme I want to be going in with. As somebody who lives in a city and still has access to farm-prices, I can't complain.