Hi all,
Happy Thanksgiving. Hope everyone is finding the time today to reflect on what they are most thankful for. I find this is best done in the presence of family, friends, and/or a store-bought cylinder of cranberry sauce, but everyone should do it their way, you know?
What am I thankful for? There is a lot, of course. But I'm not up for digging too deep today. No ranting and raving about birthday cakes or American flags.
Today, I'll keep it simple. No politics at the holiday table, right? I'm keeping the spirit of that idea in mind with this one. Let's just enjoy each other's company today, reader, and feel free to go take a nap when you start to tire.
I'm thankful that I have great friends. It was on the way back from the North End after a couple of (boozy) coffee drinks with some of these friends when I first stumbled through Haymarket. I remember wandering through the open-air market, blinking into the bright lights and wondering- how much could a banana cost? Apparently, much less than I thought. Maybe it was the alcohol. (1)
I'm thankful I chose to return every weekend after to purchase my weekly allotment of fruits, vegetables, cheese, and, on occasion, fish. It's been a huge but welcome change in my life. Grocery shopping, always dull, has been a lot more fun in the hectic atmosphere created by screaming vendors and crazed shoppers. Did I mention, cash only? It's cash only.
I'm always thankful for anything I learn from. Somehow, I've learned quite a bit from this Haymarket experience. Naturally, I feel gratitude toward this long-running Boston tradition.
I'm thankful to know how expensive it is to store edible food. Most items here cost somewhere between twenty and thirty percent of what they do at the grocery store checkout. Initially, this gap seemed silly to me. Surely, the rich mega-corporations are exploiting my need to eat?
But then I considered whether it was sillier for me to expect to have the ability to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables at almost any time during my waking hours. A single bell pepper apparently takes somewhere between fifteen and seventeen weeks to progress from seed to full maturity. It takes four months to grow one pepper! And yet I take it for granted that I can just walk ten minutes away into an air-conditioned Whole Foods with just a few quarters and exchange those for a pepper that is ready to eat.
Broadly speaking, I'm thankful to have the option of not planning ahead for dinner. It seems like a luxury. That said, I do tend to plan when I can and, though I never planned to think about my meals a full week in advance, I am thankful that I started doing so. At the very least, it is much less work overall when I need to cook and prepare meals in bulk a few days ahead of time- a necessity in some cases when the food I buy is on the verge of spoiling in a day or two.
I'm thankful I learned that Haymarket is not a farmer's market. Some see this as an obvious fact but failing to see the obvious is something I tend to do from time to time, especially when bags of baby carrots are two for a buck. I suppose I assumed any food sales taking place in an open-air setup = 'farmers market' but Haymarket actually = 'surplus market'.
I'm sure I would have learned the distinction eventually, of course, but knowing it now helps prevent me from sounding like someone who never goes outside when I wander an actual farmer's market. I'm thankful for anything that confirms I regularly leave my apartment.
I'm thankful to know that mass starvation (Mass starvation? You know, like Massachusetts?) will probably come with a week's advance warning. This is because most of the Haymarket produce is in a local wholesaler warehouse for a few days before arriving at Haymarket. The timing is due to major food shipments arriving in the area on Thursday and Friday nights. To clear up space, these warehouses sell their stock in bulk to vendors who set up shop the following morning.
I'm not sure if this knowledge is useful but I'm thankful to have it. Can't hurt, you know? The alternative would be to read some book about it, possibly written sensationally. Some things are better learned from chatting with the venders and shoppers who experience all of this firsthand. (2)
I'm thankful that I think with clarity about personal expenses. Shopping at Haymarket results in a significant weekly reduction of the grocery bill. I cannot state a precise figure but I do not think suggesting I save in the range of thirty to forty dollars a week is out of line. Knowing that living further away from the city epicenter would likely reverse these weekly savings proved very helpful this summer when I was weighing my options for a potential move out of my current apartment. I'm thankful I came to this realization before making any decisions I would regret later, presumably while standing in line at a Star Market or, imagine, a Trader Joe's.
Thankfully, I learned where the best place to go for a meatball pizza is. Silly, no? Drop by Haymarket Pizza and grab a slice sometime. It's on me, assuming it costs about five bucks total. The slices are not award winning as far as I know but trust me, I've tried a lot of meatball pizzas and I keep going back to this one.
Of all the days of the year, today is a good day to comment on food. It is a feast day, after all, and in between mouthfuls of 'highly nutritious' food like stuffing and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, celebrating the unofficial start of America's first racially-motivated and land-grabbing geno- whoops, sorry there, almost forgot about that 'no politics at the table' thing!
I guess I'm thankful to have the freedom to say that sort of thing, though, were I so inclined. For now.
I'm thankful for all the silly pseudo-food we eat so that arrogant folks like me can feel superior for blogging about spinach every once in a while.
Most of all, though, I'm thankful for my reader(s). Thank you all, readers ranging from those who have read just one post of mine (unless it was that one about Wordpress- then I'm not sure why you came back) or who have diligently pored over each syllable (including the words 'seems', a word I seem to use about every three sentences). Though I must admit- I think I would do this blog without you- it is far more interesting, fun, and rewarding when other people actually read and react to what I put together.
So, thank you all for poking around these parts the past few months. Thank you for spreading the word when you agree that something I wrote is of some value. I anticipate that the coming year will present challenges with my schedule but hope to maintain a pace as close to the current one as possible. Someday, when I put a paywall up on this blog, I will make sure to reward you loyal ground-floor readers with at least fifty percent off on the first post! Perhaps you will utilize those savings on a bag of onions over at Haymarket...wait...have I told you about Haymarket?
Finally, I think we all can agree that perhaps the thing to be most thankful for on Thanksgiving is leftovers. Same spirit here- drop by tomorrow for my unofficial Haymarket shopping guide.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Tim
Footnotes / imagine complaints / I'm just gonna go watch football
1. No seriously, how much?
At Haymarket, usually about fifty to sixty cents per pound.
Someone tell Lucille!
This is actually the same price at some grocery stores. Not everything at Haymarket is a great deal.
2. Or I just pulled all the info from this article...
You decide.
