Heirloom Gardening, Food and Other Thoughts
As US citizens living abroad, it’s almost time to get our absentee ballots in. Will it matter? I suppose it’s not for us to ask such silly questions.
Lets hope it doesn’t come down to pregnant chads, conflicting electral and popular votes and the Supreme Court choosing our next president, but you never know… If it happens again, it won’t be for lack of us doing our part!
I’ve been meaning to post some pictures of our local Saturday farmer’s market for some time now. Last Saturday I took my camera along. Honestly it’s mostly locals who shop at this market, and someone with a camera really stands out and kind of gets in the way, which is why I haven’t made this post earlier. Above is a picture of the entrance. Everything sold at this market is supposed to be organic, but much of it is not certified. As far as I know, there is only one other organic market in the city, and mine is the only true farmers market as the other is simply run by independent market stand operators.
The horse was just dumb luck. We don’t normally have horses at the market. There are however a couple of horses that ride around the city giving rides and tours to tourists, and just as I picked up my camera one went past the market. A photo moment!
This market has a Dutch language website here. You might have some luck using Google language tools to translate it.
Above is my favorite cheese stand. They are a farm, and they do sell some of their own cheese. Mostly what they have done is collect organic artesian cheeses from small farms around Europe, and sell them. They are really expensive, but also have some very nice cheese.
The honey guy (above) is usually there, selling honey and honey related products.
There are only about 4 or 5 stands selling vegetables regularly, and this is one I like because it’s reasonably priced and of good quality. This market is actually on the small side, when all is said and done.
The most exotic stand there sells only mushrooms. Besides being very expensive, I honestly haven’t found much use for them. I like mushrooms, but I don’t really know how to cook most of these.
Besides these stands, others sell fruits and juices, grains, house plants, cheese, olives, breads and meats. Almost all the food related stands have farms behind them, but often sell other products that aren’t their own. There’s a stand that sells vegetarian goodies like handmade sushi, pate, sandwiches and so on. On the back side there are stands selling things like clothes and household things. There’s a woman who runs a Scottish baked goods stand, and there is a power foods stand where you can stock up on wheat grass juice and goji berries. Other stands come and go, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few.
I guess what I don’t like are the many non farmer’s market aspects to this market. Many stands sell things that aren’t their own, and these things often come from far away. I saw oranges this week, and these must have come from the southern hemisphere. I was hoping to get a picture of some the the large bunches of bananas that often adorn the market and must come from elsewhere, but there weren’t any this week.
You often see things like chestnut mushrooms, which all the food stands sell, all look exactly the same, cost about the same, and you know come from the same wholesaler.
While I sometimes appreciate being able to buy these things while I’m shopping at the market, and I have a lot of respect for the need for farms to work together because it’s pretty hard for one farm to provide enough variety year round to stock a single market stall by themselves, this really goes far beyond that. This is really a local farmers market, integrated with large scale food wholesalers. Also while I say local, many farms come from far away and are on the large side.
Also none of these farms offer Community Supported Agriculture subscriptions, at least via their market stalls. What sort of a true small farm would not choose to offer a CSA?
In fact, as far as I know, true CSAs are not available in Amsterdam. What we have here instead is the polar opposite, and it’s called a ‘Vegetable Subscription’. It’s run by the country’s largest organic produce wholesaler and is simply a selection of their choosing of all the leftover products that goes unsold through other channels. Real CSAs couldn’t compete with this on a price basis, and I think most Amsterdammers wouldn’t understand the difference, so it’s unlikely CSAs will take off here anytime soon.
What I just said about CSAs only applies to Amsterdam and probably most large Dutch cities. In the outlying areas I think there are lots of CSAs available, but I’m not really sure.
Grácia is one of Barcelona’s neighborhoods, and by luck we were in Barcelona during their annual street festival.
The neighbors on different streets get together and decorate their street according to a theme. I think there were around 10 or 15 participating streets this year, and we didn’t make it around to all of them, but a few of the ones we did see were really spectacular.
Here was one street that set up a machine to blow suds:
The theme of this street was laundry hanging out to dry:
This street was celebrating winter:
This is more of a beach if you are looking for a sun vacation. Above is a picture of Barcelona’s city beach.
Most of our holiday was spent in Spain this year. Steph and I both studied Spanish for a number of years, but hardly get to use it. We make a point of going to Spain from time to time, so we don’t lose it completely. We both like Barcelona, and there are frequently cheap airfares there. The official language in Barcelona is not Spanish, rather Catalan, but Spanish is widely spoken. Catalan is related to Spanish and often understandable if you speak Spanish.
If you go to Barcelona you can’t help but seeing some Gaudi. Here are two pictures from Park Güell, home to Gaudi for a while and where some of his art is featured.
Here’s Steph in front of the famous Gaudi Lizard:
Here’s one of the buildings in the park:
There was a neighborhood festival while we were there, and I’m going to put some pictures of that in a separate post.
We’re off for a couple of weeks. First a short visit just over the border in Germany, then a longer visit to Spain. I might have occasional Internet access but please excuse the delays in answering emails and approving comments with links in them, which may have to wait until I get back.
