One of the sweetest trips of summer are my weekly sojourns to the local farmer’s market. Here the bounty of the season is on display and the biggest problem I have is to select how much should I buy verses harvest from my garden. I always have the same approach: I carefully walk around the tables taking samples when offered making mental notes of who has the best tomatoes or nicest looking berries or a great deal on slightly damaged fruit. Then I swoop down after my initial view and take my pick. I often select too much as I worry about not having enough for the week.
In Kauai it is no different though the pickings are much more exotic making my choices more difficult. Pineapples, mangos, durian, passion fruit, birds-of-paradise, etc. are the radishes and carrots of the Garden Isle. Yet unlike its more temperate counterpart, the markets in Kauai have so many different things that your senses are overloaded with delicious scents that mingle in intoxicating ways. It is easy to find these markets as they occur daily Monday through Saturday, which has the effect of cutting certain activities short so you can get there and select the best of what ever you want. While you can still buy things like tomatoes, broccoli, lettuce and green beans, these markets are beyond belief as you sense that you are entering another world. (In Kauai, the vendors are much less strict than those of uptight New England as they let you preselect their wares and bag them on the side ready for pick up and payment after the market starts with the blow of a whistle.)
I passed one table where exotic orchids were being sold for $2 to $5 a plant, each one more beautiful and fragrant than the next. Another table specialized in cold coconut drinks right out of the shell. Another in cut flowers that had electric shades of green, violet and red. There were tons of Kauai sunrise papayas (the sweeter, juicer and deeper red cousins of regular papayas), mangoes, avocados, wing beans (Filipino vegetable), squashes, melons, bananas, and fresh pineapple. You can get ripe papayas—three for $1. Fresh pineapples for $3. Every morning we have been gorging ourselves on this guilty pleasure as when you live in the northeast of the U.S., nothing tropical is ever fresh and cheap enough to have every morning with your breakfast.
The strangest thing to me though was that some of the most popular tables were those selling simple lettuces and greens; ambrosia perhaps to the locals, but all too common to me (and a bit boring as I have been forcing greens down everyone’s gullets for the past month and a half.) Ironically these tables had people lined up six deep like ravenous bunnies looking to raid Mr. McGregor’s farm, though holding $1 bills in hand rather than using little furry paws to squeeze under the fence. As we were about to leave, one of my daughters suggested that we get some broccoli for dinner. No way. For as long as I am here, I’m going to be a tropical bird eating more than my fare share of fresh and succulent fruits. If I am going to eat vegetables, it will be something like a jicama.
