Fresh produce

      If you have not been to Boston's Haymarket, please understand that these pictures do little justice to the event. It is huge, monstrous, expansive, and thrilling in a way not captured in these staid photographs. Towers of produce, cardboard signs reading things like "7 oranges for a dollar" and efficient if not somewhat grumpy stand owners who continually ask passersby not to touch the mangos though bright-eyed shoppers wandering the tent aisles seem so seduced by the sea of produce they can't help a squeeze of a tomato or two despite the reprimands.

     I may have gone a bit overboard--totally engrossed in the energy of the market I accidently purchased enough greens for four people instead of one. They have taken over the right hand corner of the kitchen counter, proud and leafy. It's a shame that leafy greens rarely look so magnificent once they've been cooked. I don't have any photos of the prepared vegetables--the kale tossed with shrimp, the collards reduced in balsamic vinegar. Cooking these greens until they're tender and small always seems a delicious indecency. Better to remember them tall and heroic, quietly usurping the majority of the counter-space with the still stiff structure of their leaves.

     Another thought for today--I adore reading through the tracking analytics that reveal the Google search terms that generated a link to this blog. The idea, of course, is that you can see what key terms generate the most traffic, and adjust your tagging accordingly. I use the list for comic relief; a good laugh to start my day. This morning's list offered up the best yet...

Google search sequence returning one hit: "is saliva from squirrel on tomato dangerous." 

...that, dear readers, is the best argument I've heard for washing your produce before consumption. It may look fresh, but you never know what devious little woodland create has drooled on it.