Autumn harvest in apt 4F

Union Square Farm Stands

Pat and I went to the Union Square Greenmarket last Saturday.

Embarrassing foodie confession: I traveled 40 minutes downtown AGAIN on Monday to get more stuff. Obsessed much? Let's put it this way, if the Greenmarket made #1 fan foam fingers, I'd sport one.

Needless to say I am one happy clam at any open air market. I love seeing and tasting all of the fresh, organic and local produce. And it's great to meet the farmers and share recipes with shoppers and vendors alike.

For those of you who don't know, the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC is THE MOTHER of all farmers markets. Throngs of New Yorkers, including professional 4-star chefs, push and poke their way through the park on a quest to find the freshest homegrown produce. The market operates year round (on M, W, F, and Sat), but the market on Saturday is where it's at. Aside from amazing seasonal fruits and veggies you can get handmade pretzels, organic meats and cheeses, and homemade jams and honeys.

Here are a few shots:

This guy is awesome.

He was on rollerblades and had some major greenage sprouting out from his backpack...

Here's what we came home with:

Japanese turnips (you can eat these like apples)

tricolor cauliflower, tricolor carrots, Red Russian and curly kale

fingerling potatoes and baby carrots

flax bread, organic maple yogurt, 2 kinds of cheese and some awesome apples

peppery arugula and kale

garlic and delicata squash (dark chocolate and rosemary not from farmers market)

I ended up cooking up a "meatless monday" dinner with all our yummy stuff. I know my husband really appreciates when we have a meatless monday dinner (heavy on the sarcasm).

We ate:

A tricolor cauliflower salad

Dress 3 cups purple, orange, green and white cauliflower with:

-3 tbs olive oil

-1 1/2 tbs lemon juice

-1/4 c. chopped scallions

-1/4 chopped cilantro

-coarse sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Our cauliflower was young and fresh from the market, so we just ate it raw. But you could also steam it for 2-3 minutes, so that it retains its color and crispness but develops a slightly more tender texture.

I also made rosemary, thyme and garlic roasted tricolored carrots, fingerling potatoes, shallots and spring onions.

look how cool the purple carrots look once you cut them. Don't they look tye dyed?!

added herbs, garlic, and olive oil

and some coarse sea salt and pepper

and it looked like this:

It was a delicious dinner. We also had some sunflower and flax bread with left over bruschetta and crumbled herb goat cheese.

Ok. I'm in need of a little blogging advice: to any of you fellow bloggers who are reading this... how do you find the time to blog, go to work, cook healthfully, get good workouts in, keep in touch with long distance friends and family AND have a social life? It's been a tough balancing act for me. Blogging seems to eat up a lot of free time, but all the blogs I follow make it look so easy!

Any words of wisdom?