I wish I had learned to appreciate farmers markets long ago.  It wasn’t until this spring that I started to frequent them for my fruit and vegetable needs, so it wasn’t until recently that I realized what I was missing.

Sure, I had been to farmers markets a handful of times in the past, but I never bought much of anything.  I’m not much of a cook, so I would always be baffled by piles of chard, and I could never understand why people would pay extra for misshapen, miscolored “heirloom” tomatoes.  My mistake was that I never took a chance to actually taste any of the goods.

With a market in Palo Alto four blocks from my summer apartment, I decided to give those super-fresh foods an honest try.

*nibble* *bite* *munch*

Oh, the flavors!  I never knew how much flavor a tomato could have.  The peaches — so juicy.  And the strawberries?  Delightful!  It’s amazing how much better food can be when it hasn’t been bred for shipment across the country (or world).  It’s the kind of taste that will make one into a food snob.  Suddenly, the fruits and vegetables at the supermarket seem incredibly inferior.

What’s more, the food is usually less expensive than it would be at the grocery store.  It gets really cheap when the market is closing and everybody is trying to get rid of inventory.  For example, today I got a delicious cantaloupe for $1.50 and Yukon Gold potatoes for $0.25/lb.

It’s a shame it took me until age 26 to appreciate food that came directly from the farm.