Farmers Market Frenzy Is My Kind of Crazy

A lot of people look forward to their weekly trip to the farmers market the way most kids look forward to the last day of school. The words joy, anticipation, and abandon come to mind.

For me, the word dread also applies. I know, it sounds crazy, especially for someone who cooks and writes about food for a living. But crazy is just what I'm talking about, because from the minute I step out of my car and into the cluster of stalls that sets up every Tuesday in the parking lot of my local library, I risk losing my sanity. Not to mention my children's college savings.

It is just too much. Especially this time of year, when bins and baskets are brimming not only with the fruits and vegetables of late summer -- tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, blackberries, peaches, plums and melons -- but also with the beginning of fall's bounty -- hearty greens, winter squashes, turnips, apples and pears. I want to grab it all, bring it home, slice it up, cook it, can it, eat it, display it. Last week I managed to turn a pile of tomatoes into sauce, cukes into pickles, and rainbow chard into a filling for ravioli. The green and yellow summer squashes, (sliced paper-thin, sautéed with pancetta and garlic) also became a sauce for pasta. Oh, and apples and blackberries were transformed into tarts. The turnip greens wilted before I could get to them (though the turnips themselves are still good, thank heaven).

And when I consider what I had to pass up -- those ripe Italian prune plums (jam!), the raspberries (more jam!), the ruby beets -- I just want to fall on the ground and weep. And yet, of course, I can't stay away. I wouldn't dream of staying away. And so I have sought to regain control, with modest success. I've started making a list of what I actually need from the market each week, though I have yet to stick to it. I also limit the amount of cash I carry in my wallet, knowing that every last penny will go. This tactic worked beautifully until I learned that some of the vendors (Thanks, Amish meat man!) accept credit and debit cards. So now I've relented and allow myself to buy meat (and those lovely colored eggs from Araucana chickens) with my debit card and everything else in cash.

As you can see, it is a battle. But, praise be, I have discovered that I am not the only person who suffers from what I call "farmers market frenzy." The other day on Facebook, a friend and colleague (a food section editor and cookbook author) posted this update: "What is the name of the temporary insanity that takes hold while you're at the farmers market? The condition in which you're sure that you should buy everything you see and preserve it?"

Here's what her "insanity" yielded: cilantro pesto, pickled cherry tomatoes, refrigerator dill pickles (two versions), wild plum jam, regular plum jam (three varieties, with star anise), huckleberry jam, blueberry-citrus jam, and canned peaches in a lightly spiced syrup.

My Woman Up colleague Ria emailed me that she also suffers from this peculiar ailment, only she calls it Farmers Market Ambition, and she refers to the mad sprint of canning, cooking, and baking that follows these excursions as "Beat the Vegetable Clock."

Thanks to them, I didn't feel quite so loony tunes last night while I stayed up till all hours making more ravioli (these filled with an arugula and nut pesto).

I thought back to a wire story I read years ago when I was a newspaper reporter. It described a rare syndrome that strikes certain sensitive types who, upon their arrival in the city of Florence, are completely overcome by the sheer beauty and genius of the art that surrounds them and literally go mad. The details of the article, which I read cursorily at my desk at work, escape me now. I have no idea how many souls suffer from this condition or indeed if anyone has been diagnosed with it within the last 400 years.

I have been to Florence a number of times and ever since reading that article I've always felt a little deficient, always wished I were a little more like those people, more poetic, more able to deeply feel the beauty of what Brunelleschi and Leonardo and Michelangelo and Raffaello wrought so many centuries ago.

But I know that I am firmly, without a doubt, earth-bound. And while I could certainly stare at David all day, there is only so much you can do with a marble statue. But that eggplant over there, that curvaceous one with the shiny, purple-streaked skin? Now that's my kind of crazy.