Our day began at the Growing Center* — a wee sweet spot on Vinyl St just outside the happening-place-even-in-the-face-of-a-public-works-disaster that is Union Sq. We go to the Growing Center every couple of weeks to use their compost bins. Here, at home, instead of throwing our food waste in the trash, we save it up in plastic bags in the freezer until they get unwieldy. I really want to start a worm bin in the basement instead, but this scares Darry a little and so I haven’t pushed it. If anyone reading this is interested in giving me some worm guidance on the DL, please write!

IMPORTANT THINGS we learned from Lisa at the Growing Center: they are selling pepper and tomato starter plants RIGHT NOW! Go there and buy them, please, and your money will be used by a very lovely cause.

Also, Farmer Dave is STILL selling a few more CSA shares for his East Somerville pick-up (every Wednesday). The shares don’t start until July 2, so if you join now, you haven’t missed any. Farmer Dave is in Dracut and he has a unique + cool feature with his shares — you can choose your own flavor of veggies: New England, Brazilian and Central American.

We also visited the Union Sq farmers’ market for more strawberries and sugar snap peas ($5.25 total). This is the only one I’ve been to in the Bostonish area that always features live music. It’s also the only one that is set up sort of the middle of a really ugly snarl of traffic, but in spite of that, it’s quite a lively and rather youngish crowd. Stillman’s is there with meat; Drumlin Farm is there with lots and lots of veggies; and something called B&R bread is there with delicious-looking stuff. Alas, we were low on cash and couldn’t sample the goods. If you’re familiar with it, do tell.

And now, I gotta eat lunch. Bread from Hi-Rise, cheese from Cabot, and a salad: spinach and kohlrabi from our CSA share, strawbs and peas from the market today. Painfully earnest, completely yummy.

*The Growing Center is on a generous (by city standards) piece of property that used to have part of the old middle school on it. After lots of political maneuvering by hearty volunteers about 10 years ago, it was preserved as open space and even as a sort of garden. City kids cultivate it with the help of city adults who make my heartache for southern Vt or western Mass not so achey. They have an open house every Saturday morning, if you are curious. They also have lots of family-style events over the summer.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Farmers markets, Fruit, Meals. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.