If you've been making do with brown lettuce and rock-hard tomatoes from your local giant-mega-supermarket and counting the days until you could buy produce with real flavor from the people who actually grow it, you have only a few more days to check off. Most Palm Beach County greenmarkets will reopen for the season by the end of October, so there's no excuse to be dining on potato chips and Lean Cuisine because you don't want to waste precious dollars on sad-looking, over-priced crap.
The Bigfoot of local greenmarkets in West Palm Beach
is back in biz on Saturday, Oct. 17. More than 60 vendors, including
such perennial faves as Swank Farms, Farmhouse Tomatoes and Pasta
Amore, will be offering their wares at the 15th annual market, which
will also feature live music in the Greenmarket Café and a Chef's
Showcase on the third Saturday of each month.
The Boca Raton Greenmarket is
going on 13 years and kicked off this season last Saturday with
everything from fresh mozzarella and pasta (Vito Volpe) to organic
produce and delivery (Healthy World Organics) to the excellent breads,
pastries and confections of Le Petite Pain.
Both the Delray Beach and East Boynton Beach
Greenmarkets start the 2009-2010 season Saturday, Oct. 31. Delray's
14th annual market boasts a Halloween theme, with pumpkin-carving demos
and trick-or-treating for the kiddies along with the usual greenmarket
stuff, while the East Boynton market augments its assortment of organic
and locally grown fruits and veggies with crafts from local artisans
and health and exercise specialists.
As for Lake Worth's Oceanside Farmers Market,
organizer Peter Robinson says it may be moving back to its previous
location near the Lake Worth Casino, but it depends on what kind of
support he gets from city government. For now, though, it remains at
the downtown location at North J Street and Dixie Highway.
Oh,
and if you're all the way out in Royal Palm Beach, Robinson is starting
a greenmarket there too. It begins Sunday, Nov. 8, from 11 a.m. to 3
p.m. at the Southern Palm Crossing shopping center. He says growers
from Loxahatchee and western Palm Beach are "coming out of the
woodwork" so you should too.
