Zola's Daffodils 3.16.24

Zola's Grapes 11.4.23

Zola's Salmon 12.2.23

Zola's Strawberry 3.16.24

11/4/23: Zola Stella, the winner of the 32nd Street Farmers Market annual Pumpkin Guessing contest. Her dad said that she took one look at Farmer Billy’s gargantuan pumpkin and said, “207!” The pumpkin weighed 206.3 pounds. Her prize was $50 worth of market tokens. That’s a lot of waffles she can buy. Today she bought funnel cakes, another form of fried dough. Several people stopped by my stand to ask about the weight of the pumpkin, I think because I was set up where the giant pumpkin was last week. It was fun showing them Zola’s photo.

Zola and I bonded over our love for the grapes from Reid’s Orchard. I shared an arctic berry with her, which I had opted for from Reid’s today because they didn’t have seedless grapes. We dissected the flavor. “It’s like kiwi,” I said. “But not fuzzy,” she added. “It kind of tastes like a grape at the end!” She agrees. Zola hung out at my stand while her dad finished the market shopping.

12/2/23: Zola still has some of her market tokens to spend. She’s going to look for a Christmas gift for her sister. For herself, she might buy some hot apple cider from Blacksauce Kitchen, and she draws the cider on one seed and keeps it for herself. On the other seed, she draws a salmon, which represents the salmon that her family prepares every week. Her favorite way to cook it is with a mustard and brown sugar sauce. “It’s all from the NY Times,” her dad Andy tells me. This week they’re doing a miso dressing. I tell him about the rockfish I bought from Captain Don, and the butternut squash bread I bought from Doppio’s to go with it. Zola loves rockfish. “We should have this every week!” she told her dad. But at $22/lb, that’s a hard request to fill. I did my best to give the fish justice that night, cooking it in the cast iron pan that Dad gifted us last year, which is way too heavy to be useful. I have to use two hands to move the oil around the pan. The skin stuck to the pan and the filet broke into pieces, but it was cooked, and mild, and we enjoyed it with the roasted brussel sprouts and butternut squash.

3/16/24: Zola's latest editions to her Story Seeds: a strawberry and daffodils. Daffodils are in full bloom and some vendors are starting to display strawberries from Florida. Teaching Zola and her sister about seasonality is important to Andy. He hopes that she'll grow up appreciating foods for their seasonality, preparing dishes that highlight tomatoes only in the late summer when they're ripest. He wants her to look forward to what's in season. For Andy and his wife, living close to the 32nd Street Farmers Market has become a non-negotiable.