BY DANIELLE AQUILINE, AMES HAWKINS AND GREG PERRINE
There are lots of reasons that we wait all year, counting down the days until summer arrives: swimming pools, beachy vacations, backyard barbecues. It's a season constantly begging us to step outside, feel the sun on our faces, and have an adventure. It's a season that asks us to slow down, sit back, and sip on something with a lemon wedge. And, for us foodies, it's a season that offersfrom May through Septembera chance to shake the hands that feed us, a chance to visit our local farmers' markets.
Most of the time, when we go to a grocery store, we're looking to find the components for a particular, pre-selected meal. At farmer's markets, the meals find us. It's a game of chance, really. Though you may have a good idea of what's in season, and maybe you even know the vendors well enough to predict their goods, shopping at a farmer's market is always a bit of a gamble. For those of us that really love to cook, those of us who are endlessly amused by food, that's part of the draw. We walk into the market with our canvas totes and our wads of cash, and we let our senses take over. We're drawn to the scents and the sights: a plump red tomato, a waist-high pile of corn, or baskets of crusty bread from the local bakery. We go to the farmers' markets because we accept the challenge; we're going to take what the good earth gave us and we'll turn it into a meal.
We now live in an age where we can jump online, point and click our way through grocery store isles, and almost magically have everything we need delivered to our front doors. If we do opt to go to the grocery store we can scan our own items in self check outs, never having to talk to another human being. So actually going out doors and talking to someone about food they've had a hand in producing, well, can be intimidating. We are here to help, we want to take some of that stigma out of the search, and give you a play by play of how to take food from market to menu.
In our next Amuse Bouche series, we will share meals that began at a farmer's stand, recipes that took shape as we perused the finds at each of our weekly farmers' markets. We'll not only tell you about what ingredients we found along the way, but we'll also tell you where we found them.
Of course, there are no GLBTQ farmer's markets and so it may seem that our focus on this particular theme may leave us lacking in terms of talking about our shared queer community. ( Short of North Halsted Days, we can't even imagine what a queer farmer's market would look like! ) Even so, we'll be sure to let you know whether there are locations that are particularly friendly or in other ways appear to cater to the queer community.
Since we all live in different parts of Chicagoland, we'll be sharing stories of farmers' markets in three distinct areas: downtown, in the city's smaller neighborhoods, and in the suburbs. Each of these communities play host to a number of markets that we want to explore ( and we hope you do, too ) .