My neighborhood has a greenmarket, but this year they moved it from Saturday to Wednesday. It's open when I go to work (who wants to carry a bag of tomatoes around all day?), but closed by the time I get home. After a phone call from my sister telling me about how she had gone with my other sister and my mom to get farm fresh peaches I decided that I wanted to see if I could get some straight from a orchard. So last weekend I went to http://www.cenyc.org/ to find where I could find a greenmarket on Sunday. Not wanting to make many subway transfers I decided to head to Jackson Heights.
I had never gotten off the subway in Jackson Heights before, I'd only rode past the neighborhood. When I exited the subway on to Roosevelt Avenue the surroundings looked about like I expected, but as I started walking towards Travers park I found myself in the historic garden apartment district. In the 1920s many buildings were built in this area with interior gardens and set away from the street so that gardens could be planted in front of the buildings as well.
View down the street of a garden apartment
The market itself was pretty nice. There were maybe 15 vendors of fruits, veggies, and meat. There was also a city agency doing a cooking demonstration, a learn to bicycle station, and a few people serving prepared food such as grilled corn, tamales, and gorditas (I had one of these, yumm).
View down the sidewalk
As I was walking back to the subway and pondering that yummy cheese that real Mexican food always has (think my yummy gordita) I spotted a Met supermarket. Jackson Heights has a large south american population (apparently primarily Colombian, Ecuadorian, and Peruvian) so I thought my best bet of finding that cheese might be in front of me. Not only did I find the cheese I also picked up some tostada shells.
My goods from my outing... Tomatos, cilantro, tomatillos, peaches, red onions, green pepper, and golden plums.
Lunch- tostada, smashed black beans, mixture of onion, tomato, tomatillo, lettuce, cilantro, and topped with cotija molido
looks really good, I've never cooked with tomatillos. Should probably give em a try. I did however do a food demo with stir fry on Saturday at the Blue Springs farmers market.
ReplyDeleteI haven't used them that much... but they are fun... I think the other time I used them was in salsa because Martha recommended. I bet your demonstration was better than this one. It was a squash dish, but the demonstrators were treating us like kids.
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