Saturday morning La Maya and I set out at dawn for a new-to-us produce market, a moveable feast hosted by a nonprofit group called the 3000 Club. What these people do is “rescue” produce that grocers and distributors would toss out because it’s not the perfect size or shape to sell instantly or because it hasn’t moved off grocery shelves in a day or two. Each year, millions of pounds of veggies and fruits are thrown in the landfill. The 3000 club acquires this otherwise doomed food. The produce is donated and sold through the group’s Market on the Move, where $10 will buy you up to 60 pounds (!) of produce.
Proceeds go to support food banks and other worthy causes.
So it was off to the nearest market. Semi trucks haul loads of produce to a number of churches and community centers around the Valley each weekend. We chose to visit one in a small food desert on the north end of the conduit of blight that is 19th Avenue, putting us down on the backside of Moon Valley in an area where the only supermarket, a decrepit Safeway, closed years ago.
The produce was incredible! Though selection was limited, it was huge. We found spectacular heirloom tomatoes, peppers, gorgeous eggplants, zucchini, crookneck squash, organic sweet grape tomatoes, piles of sweet corn. For ten bucks, I got as much food as I could carry (which was far from 60 pounds!). And this weekend I set out to roast it all.
Check out the bounty:
And take a look at these amazing heirloom tomatoes:
I couldn’t have bought those alone (or the three boxes of fancy organic “grape” tomatoes, either) for ten bucks. Amazing, huh?
They were on the high side of ripe and needed to be consumed or prepared right away, more about which later. Meanwhile, I needed some onions and carrots, which the Market on the Move didn’t offer. Six dollars later I returned from the corner ethnic market with more loot:
Mwa ha ha! All I needed to turn the MoM loot into gold, and then some. Plus a can of sardines in tomato sauce. w00t!
I kept half of one of those purple tomatoes and a large, firm red one for Saturday’s dinner, which was mozzarella slices sandwiched between juicy, sweet/tangy tomato slices drenched in a vinaigrette made of Meyer lemon juice (from the backyard tree), garlic, and olive oil, accompanied by some roasted asparagus and lettuce from the back yard.
Then I minced a half-dozen cloves of garlic and about a half-cup of back-yard parsley, which I stirred into about 3/4 cup of olive oil. Cut the remaining tomatoes in half, arrayed them in baking pans, and packed them with the garlic, parsley, and olive oil mix.
Set these in a preheated 400-degree oven and let them roast for about an hour.
When you do this, tomatoes melt down into an incredible sauce. All that remained to do was to lift them out of the pan into a bowl and whack them into a sauce with a fork. The result is staggeringly delicious. Perfect for pasta or for some of that eggplant that came from the MoM.
Then I roasted all the corn on the cob, as well as a bunch of asparagus I’d picked up at a Safeway. Tossed both in olive oil; flavored the asparagus with a little tarragon and the corn with some fines herbes.
Today I’m still cooking. I’ll convert the squash, onion, and eggplant into ratatouille, some of which I may flavor with a bit of that cilantro from the Mexican market. What’s left, I intend to use in a “vegetable stew” from the Provençal cookbook I picked up at an estate sale—it looks fresher and brighter than traditional ratatouille. The carrots will be roasted with sweet herbs, and the cabbage with onions, garlic, apple, and white wine.
By golly, there’s enough veggies there to last me for a month! 🙂 What doesn’t get eaten quickly will go into the freezer, ready to spring into action when needed.
Watch for organizations like this in your town. It’s an improvement over a CSA because you get to select what you want, rather than having to take what someone else puts in a food basket for you. And you don’t have to drive so far to find a Market on the Move venue. On the other hand, later in the day La Maya made a run on one at another site and found the choices and quality disappointing—apparently the quality of the market depends on the quality of the volunteers who are working it and the luck of the draw.
I’m soooooo jealous.
Wow, what a great organization! We don’t have anything like this in Chicago. The Greater Chicago Food Depository does pick up and distribute excess produce as part of their mission, but they don’t distribute it in this way. It’s so great that this org takes the produce to the food deserts! Awesome!
YUM. Those photos and descriptions are mouthwatering.
Where I live, farmers’ markets are easily accessible, and in season it’s easy to get good produce for less than they’re marked in grocery stores. (Nothing like this value, though!) I like that Market on the Move has a flat rate for entrance — it seems much easier for both the organizers and the customers than juggling change. (Also, I’m not that great at haggling.)
Aw rats, I was really hoping that we had one up here. That’s really cool though, I’ll have to enjoy your harvests pictorially. MMmm…
Yummmm! I’ll have to try what you did with those heirloom tomatoes. Well, I made the following from my stash. First, I baked the eggplants and made baba ganoush; two containers went in the freezer and one in the fridge. Then I chopped and chopped until I had most of the ingredients for a fabulous minestrone soup. I added ingredients from my pantry, like garbanzo and northern beans, but between my box of veggies and what I picked up from the CSA this week, I had plenty to throw in there. Then, and I’ll have to share this recipe with you, I made Israeli Chicken with the HEIRLOOM tomatoes; it’s never come out as good as it did last night. I’m in heaven and thrilled to be consuming more veggies than meat!
@ La Maya: Glorioski! Got any leftovers? I’ll be over for breakfast… 😉
Amazing to discover that other cities don’t have this great program. I hope it spreads around the country — retailers and wholesalers discard an enormous amount of perfectly good produce every day. This plan fights waste while it helps fund food banks. Who would think Phoenix, fount of the retrograde, would actually come up with an original, progressive, environmentally friendly, and resident-friendly service like this?
Oh neat-o! And I live right by Gateway. Hmmmmm….
I have been doing Bountiful Baskets, which is a produce co-op that’s in several different states. It’s $15 for a conventional basket, which get you maybe 30-40 pounds of fruit and veg, assorted. You don’t know what you get each week. They also have special add-on, like cases of apples or citrus, bread, granola, etc. They have fixed locations for pickup.