Look What the March Brought In

I actually went through with it. I proclaimed that I would get my (hungover) ass to the Dupont Farmers Market and with a few nudging texts from friend, westcoast, I made it. What I didn’t realize during my original proclamation was that it would be stinkin beautiful in DC and all of the hibernating foodies in the city would also make the trek to the market. That wouldn’t have been an issue had we not arrived at the market only 30 minutes before closing. (One day I will start a farmers market that opens at 11 am and closes at 4 pm.)

Here’s what March looks like at the farmers market.

Celeb sighting! Recent James Beard Award nominee for Outstanding Chef, Jose Andres of Minibar, also hits up the late-shift at the market.

I’ve been wondering what I’d find in early March. We’re about 6 weeks from the first asparagus stalks and ramps, right? So here we are with months-old apples. I tried a sample slice: sweet, juicy and a tinge mealy. We didn’t buy any.

There were sweet potatoes.

Lots and lots of sweet potatoes.

In front of The Copper Pot’s stand, we also ran into Sweetgreen owner Nicolas Jammet and PR exec Dusty Lockhart (and her baby Porter. She’s married to Mr. Copper Pot.)

You may remember Sweetgreen as listed in last week’s post, Burns My Bacon: Never-Ending Salad Ingredients, as one of the many salad places to open recently. You may also remember that I had such lovely things to say about salad bars. But seriously, Sweetgreen is fab. I was being dramatic. You know. I’m a blogger. I have to think of a million things to write about every week. Thanks for being so nice to me when I was bitching about your awesomely fresh salad ingredient options.

Anyway.

I didn’t buy any of what I’d consider spring greens grown in a greenhouse. To spite myself, I instead bought a limp, kinda wilty bunch of rainbow stemmed swiss chard. With an easy “And how much are you charging for this?” I got the greens for a buck!

Unfortunately, parsnips, the trigger for my farmers market run, were all picked through by my late arrival. I didn’t even bother bargaining for a better price for these sad looking root vegetables. Here’s hopping for another warm weekend and a less hungover Sunday morning.