market

At the heart of northern New Mexico tomatoes

At the heart of northern New Mexico tomatoes

Posted on by Pat and David
We first visited northern New Mexico back in the 1990s to write about chile peppers being bred at New Mexico State University's extension service farm. Rather than develop hybrids, the breeders were cross-pollinating traditional chiles with desirable characteristics to develop chile peppers with various heat levels that were suitable for different growing conditions. In other words, they were taking a scientific approach to seed selection the way farmers have been doing it since the advent of agriculture roughly 12,000 years ago. This fall, at the Santa Fe Farmers' Market, we discovered that the practice is alive and well with all sorts of plants. We spotted a chip-n-dip bowl with three piles of diced tomatoes and a jar of toothpicks. “Free samples” the sign advertised. Post-It...Read More
Launching a Stockholm stay at the farmers market

Launching a Stockholm stay at the farmers market

Posted on by Pat and David
When we travel for extended periods, we like to rent an Airbnb that gives us a taste of what it's like to live someplace, rather than just visiting. For a couple of weeks in Stockholm, we found a one-bedroom flat in the Kungsholmen neighborhood close to public transit. It's in a circa-1900 building with some Art Nouveau (Jugenstil) touches. Our apartment occupies the attic level — 5th floor by European reckoning, 6th by American. (A vintage open-cage elevator takes us most of the way up.) Whoever renovated did a great job coping with the angles and niches beneath the roof, giving the whole flat a bright, contemporary Scandinavian look. Even more fortunately, we have an outdoor patio with an electric grill and a thoroughly modern...Read More
Essex Market charts NYC’s changing tastes

Essex Market charts NYC’s changing tastes

Posted on by Pat and David
The oldest establishment in the New York municipal market system, Essex Market's latest re-invention arguably strikes the perfect balance between supermarket and food hall. The old Essex Street Market, created in the 1930s as the flagship of the city's public market system, became essentially obsolete in the 21st century. The latest transformation, which opened in 2019, nails changing tastes and approaches to food in New York. Essex Market (88 Essex St., New York, N.Y.; essexmarket.nyc), as it's now called, is as much a gathering space as a shopping destination. It's located in a fancy new complex with luxury condos and a movie theater. The basement level is technically a separate operation called the Market Line. As you enter Essex Market from Delancey Street, the Indian...Read More
Santa Fe Farmers Market rich with green chile

Santa Fe Farmers Market rich with green chile

Posted on by Pat and David
Our first morning in Santa Fe was a Saturday so we made a beeline to the Santa Fe Farmers Market. It operates all year long in the Railyard (railyardsantafe.com), an emerging redeveloped district south of the old city center. Several art galleries, cafes, and breweries have opened in the Railyard and it's home to a weekend “world market” as well as a market of artists and artisans. It's also the northern terminus of the New Mexico Rail Runner commuter rail service between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. But we were after food to cook in our casita kitchen. Vendors set up their tables in the large warehouse building adjoining the train tracks. In the summer, the market spills out onto the plaza around the building. But...Read More
Modern times at the Mercado Colón

Modern times at the Mercado Colón

Posted on by Pat and David
Valencia may not have the sheer number of buildings in the Modernisme style as Barcelona, but it does boast its own regional wrinkle of Art Nouveau. Valencianos reserved their most flamboyant structures of modernismo valenciano for the essentials of daily life. That includes the main post office, the train station, and two of the city markets. Had the city not built a neoclassical bullring a few decades earlier, the Plaza de Toros probably would have been Art Nouveau too. We've already written extensively about the Mercado Central, but the even more refined example of modernismo valenciano is Francisco Mora Berenguer's Mercado Colón. Mora studied under Domènech i Montaner, arguably second only to Gaudí among Barcelona's Modernisme architects. The Valenciano architect drew on some of the...Read More
Back to Spain – and the great Valencia market

Back to Spain – and the great Valencia market

Posted on by Pat and David
Since flying back from Paris in early February 2020, we basically stayed home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the last two years, we got fully vaccinated and boosted, washed our hands raw, and wore KN95 masks everywhere except in open spaces. We continued to test negative after a few close exposures to COVID-19, so all the precautions seemed to be working. (Fingers crossed.) It was time to return to Europe. As soon as we began looking for an apartment in Spain, one jumped out at us. It was in Valencia (visitvalencia.com), a city we wanted to know better but where we had already discovered that the food was fantastic. When we saw a spacious one-bedroom literally across the street from the Mercado Central, we leapt at...Read More
When the world reopens with a lobster roll

When the world reopens with a lobster roll

Posted on by Pat and David
It was a glorious June day with bright sunshine, surf crashing on the ledges, roses blooming profusely on the shore, and the iconic Cape Elizabeth Light (aka Two Lights) winking over our shoulders as we sat down to our first Maine lobster roll of the year. Make that our first since 2019. Since we live in Massachusetts, Maine barred us from crossing the border until recently. But we were chasing a story that took us to the slate shoreline at the southern entrance to Casco Bay. When lunchtime rolled around, the Lobster Shack at Two Lights (lobstershacktwolights.com) was right there. The lobster roll was ‶market price,″ which translated to roughly $20. No matter, we were in heaven. A brief rant interrupts this idyll As we're...Read More
In the beginning … was Greece

In the beginning … was Greece

Posted on by Pat and David
As we all keep living in the eternal present, we are grateful for the recent past. Last winter we caught the Paris sales and moved on to Athens, a city we had wanted to visit for years. Even while we were there in our rented apartment, we kept seeing ominous news of an infection that was sweeping Wuhan in China. Not long after we got back to Boston in February, it had jumped to Lombardy. The rest is already history, with more in the making. But we wouldn't give up that trip for anything. Even Greek friends told us we'd get bored after three days in Athens, but for us, a week was still not enough. Beyond the amazing sites from antiquity and the stunning...Read More
Enjoying the sheer immersion of a Mexican food market

Enjoying the sheer immersion of a Mexican food market

Posted on by Pat and David
Diego Rivera (see last post) wasn't the only one obsessed with Mexican food markets. It's funny that Americans think of Mexico as a place where all the meals are based on dried corn made into a bread (tortillas), dried chiles made into sauces, or dried beans made into burrito fillings. Given their druthers, most Mexicans eat fresh fruits and vegetables as their dietary mainstays. True, they do love to grill and deep-fry some foods, but the key to the Mexican table is fresh food. That could include some pretty exotic stuff. The basket of small gray stuff in the left pane above is huitlacoche—fresh corn infected with what American farmers call ‶corn smut.″ It's a fungus that makes the kernels ooze with an inky, musky...Read More
From the market’s parish church to the tastiest street in Paris

From the market’s parish church to the tastiest street in Paris

Posted on by Pat and David
In Paris this winter, we visited Saint-Eustache as consolation for the closure of Notre-Dame cathedral. With its soaring spaces and grandest pipe organ in Paris, Saint-Eustache (saint-eustache.org/) provided a real spiritual uplift. Although the church's present structure dates mainly from the 16th century, part of the plan was loosely modeled on the 12th-13th century French Gothic cathedral—a hint of glory by association. Saint-Eustache was originally the parish church of the market district, known as Les Halles since medieval times. When Paris moved the central fresh market to the suburbs in 1971, many people viewed the destruction of the old market buildings as a crime against the spirit of the city. One of the side altars in Saint-Eustache memorialized the loss in a mass of statuary...Read More