Not all vegetables are created (or grown) equal. This weekend I was able to do a bit of vegetable shopping at the local farmers’ market in Carlow. It’s not a particularly big market, but there is always a reasonable selection of vegetables.
What I like about farmers’ markets is that you can often find a more interesting selection of produce than the average supermarket will stock. That can mean vegetables that you might not find easily, but more often than not it means things like artisan cheeses that rarely make it into the main supermarkets.
In the photo below you can see the comparison in size between a “normal” parsnip that I got in Dunnes or one of the other supermarkets and the much bigger one from a local farm that has a stall at the market:
Fresh vegetables from a farm or a market may not be quite as “pretty” as the ones you’ll get in your local supermarket, but they’re going to be better. Also it’s nice to be able to support a producer directly – buying at the market cuts out the middle man!
I’ll be trying out a few variants on existing recipes with these rather large parsnips. They definitely lend themselves to something a bit out of the norm.