My hunger for crisp, fresh lettuce overcame my fear of a horrible disease so I headed off to the Heirloom Farmer’s Market at the Rillito racetrack on Sunday. And what a surprise! It was much bigger and much busier than I had ever seen before. But, alas, if there had been locally-grown lettuce for sale in any of the booths, it was gone by 9 a.m. There were, however, a lot of other vegetables available.
Food and music at the market
There were also food vendors which gave the market an international flair. French on the left, and Maltese on the right, below. (And the temperature — heading for 102F — suggested the Sahara! I didn’t linger at the market this time to listen to the music.)
You could also feast on these “All American” favorites: pizza and ice cream–both of Italian origin but part of the American cuisine now.
Only in Tucson would you find these
Then there was a booth that I would characterize as “Only in Tucson”. Antler dog chews? Lava bracelets? Just your normal weird Tucson and actually attracting quite a few people! What I could not quite figure out after I got home and looked closely at the photos, was largish, kinda copper color new moon on the Lava bracelets table. Did it really mean something? Or was it more art? And I’m willing to bet the knives are hand-crafted. There are youngish blacksmiths here who specialize in knives.
As for the lettuce. I gave in to my lettuce-hunger and bought a bag of butter lettuce at Trader Joe’s and am hoping for the best. The best, of course, being no digestive upheavals.
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