PHILADELPHIA CITY HALL FARMERS MARKET IS ON THE MOVE
it’s no longer in the Courtyard. Last week when it was booted to accomodate the filming of Transformers 2, it found a spot at the Northeast corner of Dilworth Plaza. Business picked up beyond the four walls of City Hall and now it will remain at that spot for the rest of the season.
Where you can still buy strawberries at $5 a quart, a price that has remained for the past 5 weeks since the market opened**. On a better note cherries and blueberries are both $3 a quart, and for some reason that price seems more reasonable. The girl at the Strawberry counter told me to go buy them somewhere else if I didn’t like the price, and you know what I will ’cause those berries look beat. I wish they sold cut flowers.
(Hughe’s Update) OK I did some research: Many farmers market sell strawberries at $5 – $6 a quart, and although supermarkets may sell them for $4 a quart, they are grown in California, so it is important for us to support our local farmers especially during strawberry season, but only if the strawberries look and taste good. But if you are going to use them for soup, it doesn’t matter what they look like:
Strawberry Soup
2 ½ cups of Jersey Fresh strawberries1 ½ cups of water ½ cup granulated sugar 2 TBSP of lemon juice2 tsp fresh lemon peel, grated, zest only½ cup Jersey Fresh white winePrepare the day before or several hours before serving.
Puree 2 cups of strawberries in blender. Slowly add water. Slowly add the ½ cut of sugar, the lemon juice, lemon peel and white wine and blend well. Refrigerate. Chill well. Before serving, garnish with ½ cut remaining strawberries sliced in half. Serves 6.
ok, here\’s the deal. $5 a quart for locally grown strawberries in season is a fair price. If you have no taste and can\’t tell the difference go to superfresh and spend a dollar or so less for some tasteless berries that were picked green and gas-ripened on the truck trip over from California. Go for it. You know nothing about food.
Actually my family is from a long line of farmers, I know something about food, especially strawberries as I picked them every summer when I was a kid on my uncle\’s farm. The price for the strawberries remained at $5 a quart for 6 weeks at the CH farmers market, right through strawberry season, with no fluctuation. Sorry if I insist on quality and a fair price, even for a good cause.