At the bottom of the horrifically steep hill on which I live, there is a covered market. I stop there regularly to buy fruits, vegetables and greens for the bunnies. The merchants recognize me and nod hello. The man who sells dried fruit sometimes invites me to sit behind his counter to drink tea.
If you never stepped outside the market walls, you could still tell the season by the changing piles of food. Recently, strawberries came in season. Mounds of cherries will be ripe soon enough, but now are too expensive. Later there will be mullberries, so fragile that if you're bag of them is heavy, half of that bag will be full of mullberry juice by the time you reach home.
Enginar (artichokes) are now in season, and bless them but their's is a long one. Some vendors sell nothing but. They sit with huge piles of them, deftly cutting and discarding the leaves and choke, then selling them in plastic bags with water.
Today at the market, one vender had built himself a green fortress of carefully stacked artichokes, as if prepared for a seige. Surrounded by three and a half walls, he sat in the middle, littering the floor with a speed that demanded my respect.
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A fortess made of artichokes- that would keep me away. I'm not a fan, they change of the taste of everything I eat and drink with them, and not in a good way. Apparently, I am part of a small percentage of unfortunate people who have this reaction.
And they're still in season here, too.
I remember now travelling with my mother in Istanbul at this period of time and seing pile of artichokes. strange as some memories are burried somewhere in your head and pop up sundunly when someone mention something. My mother loved artichokes and we would buy them and eat them raw with a vinaigrette at the hotel overlooking the mosque. I wish i were there with her again...
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