Fruits, vegetables and snow at the pike place market

Seattle’s recent first-in-a-long-time white Christmas didn’t slow down shoppers at the Pike Place Market.

 

You could see your breath in the air, but no frost on these fruits and vegetables.

 

A friend who has lived for 30 years down south by the airport and no longer frequents the Market asked, “Where do the fruits and vegetables come from, now that it’s winter?”

 

Her question refers to the Pike Place Market’s history of being a place where you can buy produce directly from local growers. When we were children, we came downtown from the neighborhood of Ballard on the bus with our mothers to meet the growers and buy their fresh offerings.

 

My mother whispered to me a common belief in the 1950s that the reason the vegetables were so nice was that the Japanese truck farmers used an unmentionable fertilizer. Still, we bought and enjoyed eating their vegetables.

 

In those days there were a lot of little farms an hour’s drive from Seattle. We called them “truck farms” because that’s how the farmers brought their produce into town. Now you’ll find condos and shopping centers and Bellevue and Microsoft. A lot of today’s produce comes from growers in eastern Washington, on the other side of the Cascade Mountains.

 

But bananas and pineapples and guavas and mangos? I imagine they come from the same place traditional grocery stores like Safeway and IGA Kress get them. Modern transportation makes it possible for us to enjoy all kinds of exotic fare from far away locales.

 

The snow is gone, but the market is always full of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as art work, fish stalls, bakeries, crafts, pubs, restaurants and shops that make up this amazing place. No wonder The Pike Place Market has now become such a popular tourist destination.

 

And by the way, even though Rachel Ray called it “Pike’s Place Market,” the correct name is Pike Place Market, because the entrance is at the intersection of First Avenue and Pike Street.

 

Today I discovered an unusual green vegetable from northern Italy that I’ll tell you more about next time.