What's looking good, in season for May?

[Shane Greenwood]

Hi Hounds, what are you seeing this month in the markets that looks good and where are you finding it? Last night in SC we had lots of vendors with fava beans. I also found nice garlic scapes and stawberries are showing up but I didn't try them yet. Looks like asparagus is out and I didn't see green garlic any more. What is lookng good for this month?

[Shane Greenwood]

Had a farm dinner on Saturday night in the Dry Creek Valley and the chard was great. The veg garden was bursting with beds of rainbow chard.

[512window]

I just picked up some tasty Brook cherries. Green garlic is good. I've still got many artichokes on my own plant so they should be in the markets as well.

[Tobias]

Blueberries!

[Shane Greenwood]

Where did you see blueberries? Were they local?

[Robert Lauriston]

The ones I see at the Berkeley farmers market come from Stockton.

[lmnopm]

The first apricots I had were not bad - they weren't very sweet but had decent apricot flavor. They were better than the first white peaches, which varied from ok to spit out. Both from BB.

[jsaimd]

Strawberries I have had have been good and plentiful, and rhubarb. Otherwise much fruit is still storage fruit and rather sad. Cherries show up end of May usually. Frog Hollow is reporting 2 weeks from now they expect to harvest their cherries and they are usually pretty accurate.

for veggies we continue to enjoy our snap peas, favas have been great, although the baby ones are hard to find now, so you have to prep them fully. Leeks come almost every week in our CSA box and fennel is plentiful, although those stick around for a long time. Baby spring greens shouldn't be missed. Young rapini, collards etc. are more sweet and tender than their larger fall counterparts.

[majordanby]

cherries should be coming out soon. they're in season for like a month, so get yours when you see them up for grabs.

oranges and lemons are nearly gone...so, we should see, along with cherries and strawberries, the slew of spring/summer fruits (peaches, et al).

[mariacarmen]

Fresh garbanzos, at Evergreen Market in the Mission. Mission between 21st and 22nd.

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Evergreen Market
2539 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA

[Robert Lauriston]

Garbanzos are just coming in. Once was enough for me, though. Those things have the worst prep-to-payoff ratio ever.

[daveena]

They're good if you pan-roast them unshucked:

http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jul/...

[roster]

are the baby artichokes still in or are they past?

We just braised our first round of them from last weeks Berk market.
If I had known how good they were, would have bought a 10 LB bag.
Hope they are still available this week!!!

[mariacarmen]

They're work, but not any worse than fava beans, i think. I like steaming them for a nice bright green garbanzo hummus.

[Robert Lauriston]

Garbanzos have about 0.8 beans per pod. Favas usually have at least five. And fava pods are easier to shuck.

[mariacarmen]

i thought garbanzos have two... but yes, they are small sometimes. fava pods are easier, but if you're then peeling the individual sheaths (and some dishes call for that), that's double the effort. anyway, even though favas are my favorite, i have found garbanzos worth the effort too.

[Robert Lauriston]

Strawberries are finally good. Fava season's just peaking. English peas still improving. Asparagus.

[Shane Greenwood]

The favas I had were definitely at the peak of flavor and several vendors had them. Definitely going in for more this weekend.

[wolfe]

I had some Swanton strawberries that actually tasted like strawberries. They were probably 1/2 to 1/4 the size of the tasteless monsters.

[Shane Greenwood]

I love Swanton, did you pick them at the farm or were they at a market?