I had never been to the Green City Market before, its sad, after all i am a Chef and the Green City Market is by far one of the best places to get fresh produce from local farmers. At least this is what i was told by friends and what you read in the papers as well. It was decided, Renee and I were going to go, we made plans to get up early and go on Saturday. We woke up around 7:30ish, made some coffee and were off. The drive into the city from the suburbs was not that bad, just hop onto 55 and take it to lake shore, follow that to the north side. Parking was a bitch, Renee and i circled around to find a place, then i went the wrong way, finally got turned back around and found a spot right in front of the market, i was impressed.
For being so late in the growing season i was not expecting much, i mean it was the first week of November. I was proven wrong as soon as i got closer i saw the array of fruit and vegetables. There was just boxes upon boxes of carrots, purple carrots, fingerling potatoes, russet potatoes, squashes, jalapenos, habeneros, apples of all varieties, i could go on.
I was in a culinary heaven and i wanted it all.
This was just amazing, the produce looked so fresh, we were offered some fresh apple cider as were looked around, Renee and I first had to do this just to take it all in then decide were we were going to start. We were first looking at all of this carrots, they had baby carrots with the tops still on. They were in mixed bunches that had three different colors, orange, yellow, and purple, we had to get some. They also had a bunch of much bigger ones that were there, i like to call them horse carrots, because they are truly big enough to feed a horse. These had white carrots in with them.
While Renee was looking at the carrots i want off on my own down the path and say what looked to me to be cauliflower. As i got closer it was cauliflower, but in different colors. I mean i have seen green cauliflower before so i was not that surprised to see purple cauliflower. What i was amazed at seeing was the spiky looking cauliflower. It is yellow and instead of having nice tight florets like a normal cauliflower has it had spikes as the florets. I was amazed so much by this and the fact that i am a fan of cauliflower i bought one of each.
We walked around a little longer, picked up some great onions called candy cane onions, some fresh bulbs of garlic, shallots and some leeks. It had been decided that day thay Renee and I were going to be making bacon and leek risotto for dinner. I was purusing the squashes when i looked down and say a bucket, the bucket was full of dried popcorn on the cob. I myself a fan of fresh popcorn not that crap in the bag stuff was amused and yet not amused to the point of buying, perhaps on another trip. 
Our last stop was to this old gentleman on the corner of the row whom upon entering the market had a crowd of people aropund him to the point we could not see what he had so we knew we had to stop and see. Once we got to him we could see why people were around him. He was selling fresh mushrooms that he had just picked. He had a huge chunk of Hens in the Woods on the table. This thing was big, there was a customer in front of us as Renee and i gapped at the mushrooms. The mushroom forager disaperaed for a minute and returned having just weighed a chunk of mushroom for this lady, it was 60 bucks for the chunk. Renee and I looked at each other with amazment. He had one other mushroom there, looked like shitake mushrooms, but i know for sure it wasnt, the name slips my mind, but they grabbed a handful of them as well. When all said and done, the couple in front of us spent 90 dollars on these mushrooms. After talking with the forager and asking prices it was safe to say that we left empty handed, to expensive for me. However the pure joy of seeing a mushroom that big and Renee and I being truly novice foragers ourselves we were delighted at the opportunity to see such great mushrooms, produce and most of all great company.
