Boston area greenmarkets: 2012 edition

[FoodDabbler]

What are people finding that's (a) good, or (b) bad?

I've only been to the Harvard one so far -- last week and this. I got moderately good tomatoes both times from Silva and some other stand (whose name I didn't note) and moderately good corn from the same stands. The peaches at Silva today showed promise. They're in an odd state right now: overripish on the outside and hardish on the inside but the flavor gives me hope for the future.

Ward's berries had very good raspberries today, and good gooseberries (which I shall turn into an intense tart-hot Kerala pickle).

It's depressing to see Danish Pastry House hawking its mostly mediocre wares at these markets, but if you close your eyes and walk past you can survive.

[FoodDabbler]

Got some mustard greens, water spinach and very fragrant cilantro at Davis yesterday (didn't get vendor's name), as well as peaches and raspberries from Kimball. The peaches were nowhere nearly as flavorful as those from Silva, and the raspberries not as good as the ones from Ward. I forgot to mention that I also picked up some fish yesterday at Harvard from the fish lady there.

Dinner last night was from these two days of greenmarketing: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/8583... .

[teezeetoo]

Cindy's fish at the Brookline market is excellent. This year the Hmong farmers aren't there and I find the greens not nearly as good at the other vendors. Don't know if it is vendors or a poorer quality harvest but I do miss the Hmong. I have gotten some decent arugula, chives, parsley and radishes but not the best I've ever had.

[FoodDabbler]

I think Cindy might be the person I bought from at Harvard. Does she also sell small containers of lobster meat ("my specialty" she said to me at Harvard on Tuesday)?

[teezeetoo]

[e-mail] - cyndi i think it is, sells at the brookline farmer's market on thursdays and, during the winter, at When Pigs Fly every Tuesday - you can see what she has in any given week and order on line - once you are a customer she'll email you weekly to tell you what's available - she brings her fish in from the gloucester area and it is remarkably good (I give New Deal a slight edge because they also carry whole fish and a much greater variety but I've never been disappointed in the quality of Cyndi's fish). The Hmong, by the way, were back today!

[Jenny Ondioline]

That's right on schedule for the Hmong. They're never at Brookline before mid-July at the earliest.

[Allstonian]

FoodDabbler: That doesn't quite sound like Cyndi - she has 8-oz containers of excellent Maine crabmeat, but I've never seen lobster.

[FoodDabbler]

You're right. I did some web digging. It was C & C Lobster and Fish that was at Harvard on Tuesday. Their fish was decent.

I also found that the farm I've been calling Silva is actually Silvia.

[BostonZest]

Shopped Copley today. We bought lettuce and bunching onions from Atlas. Late strawberries that were so floral and sweet & blueberries from Hamilton, bread from Iggy's and the most wonderful sweet corn and purple cherokee tomatoes from Stillman's.

The one thing I occasionally buy from Danish Pastry house is their Kringle.

Penny
http://www.bostonzest.com/

[FoodDabbler]

I hate you for scoring these late strawberries.

(Although on eastern Long Island I once found, improbably in September, these fantastically sweet, fantastically tiny strawberries at a stand on the North Fork.)

But, enough about you. Will they have these strawberries next week, do you think?

(I like the kringle, too, and the occasional heavy, seeded bread -- but they have the palest, wanest baguettes I've ever seen.)

[gimlis1mum]

The strawberries were probably Alpines. They go all summer, may or June until frost. Picking them is labor-intensive and they don't last a day, I'm surprised you found them at all.

A couple weeks ago, we got good tomatoes and bad cookies at the Malden market. I forget the name of the cookies vendor, it was a bread stand (not Pientadosi).

[FoodDabbler]

Possibly alpines. But -- I swear -- I got them in September. I even read a NYT article that year about these strawberries. I'll try and dig it up.

[FoodDabbler]

Here's what I think I read: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/06/din...

(Hope you can get to it.)

[gimlis1mum]

Ooo thanks for that link! I'd seen Tristar in gardening catalogs. Maybe I needs to ant some next year...

[FoodDabbler]

If you ant some may I ave some?

[gimlis1mum]

Sure, and you could swing by the Biryani park food truck on your way home :-)

[BostonZest]

Sorry for slow reply, I missed this. I'll ask Barbara Hamilton about them. They did resemble alpines, small, very fragrant, very flavorful. Like all the flavor molecules that might have made up a big over-blown berry had been compressed into these small ones.

[Madrid]

BostonZest I was going to look for the thread you started a while back. I was at Central Sq yesterday and was so entranced with the greens and herbs sold by I think one of the Hmong farms...tried to look it up but the site isn't working. The smells were wonderful and they were spritzing down the greens without showering them to mold. I got two kinds of Asian greens I've never seen or bought before and I didn't have time to write down the names. These people are so lovely and their greens are so beautiful I want to put them in vases and use them for centerpieces instead of flowers. One of them told me they were growing a green introduced to them by Haitian friends...not callao, something more unusual. Anyway, I was thrilled to hear they will have fresh lemongrass later in the season.They are not growing sorrel this season.

[BostonZest]

This community and Flat Mentor Farms are a real asset to our local food shed. They take such pride in their products and it shows in the quality of everything they grow. I've had my first tastes of a few items from one of their stands.

Is this the one you wanted
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/799112

I also wrote about them for Serious Eats, on our site. and in my Fresh & Local newspaper column so you may have seen one of those pieces. I'm a fan!