Health
Habits
Food
Weight 
Better Than Butternut: Roasted Delicata Squash Recipe
10 Simple Ways To Eat Less Without Noticing
Juicing: Stupid and Pretentious or Nourishing and Enlightening?
10 Tasty Carbs That Won’t Make You Fat
How To Start Working Out When You Don’t Like To Exercise
Focus More on Your Brain and Less on Your Diet if You’re Serious About Losing Weight
Home Court Habits: The Secret to Effortless Weight Control
10 Reasons You Aren’t Losing Weight When You Think You’re Doing Everything Right
How To Burn More Calories Without Breaking A Sweat
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Foodists
Farmers Market Update: Easter
Spring Garlic
I haven’t seen crowds like this at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza farmers market since summertime. The Easter crowds were in full throttle gathering goods for tomorrow’s festivities. Luckily for market goers, the spring vegetables were certainly worth fighting over.
The signs of spring today were particularly apparent at Far West Fungi where wild miner’s lettuce, ramps and fiddleheads were all available. Miner’s lettuce (as I learned last week on KCRW’s Good Food podcast) is a delicate green ideal for spring salads. It’s leaves are shaped like a tiny lily pad with a cone of small flowers growing from the center. Ramps are tiny wild leeks that could very well be my favorite egg addition of all time. Fiddleheads are the tender curls of baby ferns. They can be sauteed and served much like asparagus.
Fiddlehead Ferns
Miner's Lettuce
Heirloom tomatoes are starting to appear, though they still didn’t look good enough to buy. But I could tell that one day soon there will be rejoicing at Summer Tomato.
Other notable findings include fava beans, lilacs, asparagus, rainbow chard, sugar snap peas, morel mushrooms, strawberries, artichokes, kale flowers, sorrel and arugula.
Note: The How To Get Started Eating Healthy series will continue on Monday with the next addition, Seasonal Shopping. Consider this post a warm up 😀
Lilacs
Rainbow Chard
Today’s purchases:
- Miner’s lettuce (Far West Fungi)
Leeks
- Ramps (Far West Fungi)
- Baby fennel (Heirloom Organic Gardens)
- Baby lettuces and arugula (Star Route Farms)
- Baby leeks (Dirty Girl Produce)
- Rainbow chard (Capay Organics)
- Carrots (Capay Organics)
- Red kale (Marin Roots Farm)
- Mediterranean cucumbers (Madison Growers)
- Chinese broccoli (Chue’s Farm)
- Garlic (Chue’s Farm)
Ramps
- Kiwi (Four Sisters Farm)
- Collard greens (Everything Under the Sun)
- Navel oranges (Hamada Farms)
- Raisins (Hamada Farms)
- Eggs (Boulette’s Larder)
- Ono (San Francisco Fish Co.)
- Coffee (Blue Bottle Coffee)
- Pain epi and soup baguette (Acme Bread)
In response to your recent postings about healthy eating, I just wanted to say I am making a shopping list today based on your recommendations and I am so excited! (even more excited than my usual, can’t wait to go to the grocery store excited, which is saying a lot) Many of the items you listed are things I love to cook with but don’t always remember to buy for lack of a list or good memory. Thanks!
By the way, I’d love to see more recipes involving canned fish. I recently made a tomato sauce with canned tomatoes and anchovies, among other things, and I could not believe how good it was! I had no idea! But since I’ve never cooked with canned fish before (besides tuna) I’m not sure what to try next. I don’t want to experiment too much in case I get it wrong and get totally turned off to canned fish, but I know your recipes are usually amazing.
I will certainly try to incorporate more canned fish recipes. I had the same epiphany a couple of months ago when I first made puttanesca. One thing I have been doing lately is putting those balsamic asparagus and carrots on top of some canned salmon (as I mentioned, be sure to get boneless and skinless if you buy it). This is yummy with a hunk of Acme bread.
I also like boneless skinless sardines in oil. I will frequently toss them into a stir fry with greens, or put them on a salad. You are right to be cautious, however. I have had bad experiences when the sardines weren’t boneless and skinless (yuck!).
Happy to inspire 🙂
Great pictures this week. I love the fiddleheads and miner’s lettuce, so unique!
Agreed! What did you end up doing with the Miner’s lettuce?
+1 on Miner’s lettuce pic
Hallo Darya,
I tried watermelon radish for 1st time 2 weeks a go at Fresh Choice.
Then I read your posting dated Nov 2008 that you bought it at SF Farmer’s Market, Embarcadero. Have you bought it lately with same vendor at Embarcadero? I usually go to Alemany Farmer’s Market.
No, I haven’t bought it lately. It was really spicy and a little difficult to eat last time, so I didn’t have many uses for it. I do remember that I got it at Heirloom Organics, if that helps you at all. To curb the spiciness, I marinated it about half an hour in red wine vinegar.
I have to mention your leeks too, those are some of the best looking leeks I have ever seen!
Your photos are beautiful and make me so excited about Spring! The weather here in Vancouver is finally warming up and my vegetable garden is coming up. I love Spring!
Thank you! I know I am very lucky to be near such an amazing market. But I am jealous of your garden!
I’ve seen pics and heard about those fiddleheads, I cannot wait to see what they’re like. You really do have the best farmers market I have ever heard of….
Thanks for the picture of the garlic. I went to the FM today and saw this item. When I asked what it was and he said garlic, I thought he was crazy. Where were the cloves? I figured he didn’t know what he was talking about. We all have a lot to learn, especially me.
I learn something new almost every week at the market. Today I bought red kale rabe, which looks like purple broccoli. But I’m getting ahead of myself… post isn’t up yet.
Glad I could help 😀