Union Square Farmers Market

A-marketing we go, in this crazy April. Loads and loads of lilac.

Crates and crates of asparagus, from New Jersey.

Bunches and bunches of...POKEWEED!? Lanis Farms: the coolest stall of all award. Who needs to forage anymore? Not only misunderstood pokeweed but ramps and claytonia (which I didn't know grew here; it is at home in Califorian climates).

And at Paffenroth's, below...FIELD GARLIC! Forgive me for shrieking, but I've been muttering out loud here and on Facebook about this for weeks: why don't farmers sell field garlic???

Well, they do. They also had crates of chickweed and nettles. Foraging has arrived. The nettles we bought were turned into a sauce-bed for crabcakes with ramps. The sauce needed work.

Beautiful stuff everywhere - this was at Lanis Farms, again. Tatsoi flowers.

Garlic scapes. They became a crunchy bed - with ginger -  for chicken steamed on ramp leaves over a soy and ginger bath, the chicken then crisped under the grill. 

Rivers of greens.

More ramps.

Some tulips.

Rose Meadow Farms' exquisite anemones.

And sweet peas.

And then a long break at the popular, unpopular Coffee Bar where I still love their Pasiosa - passion fruit juice and prosecco, and some very good pancakes and crispy bacon. Skip the huevos rancheros.