Grand Haven Farmer's Market

We started out in small groups to explore the Grand Haven Farmer's Market. We had a list of items to find and explore. We found 2 organic items for sale, eggs and cheese. Some of the food that was not familiar to many of us that we saw were koosa, kohlrabi, shallots, okra, and Stanley plums. The vendors were happy to tell us how to prepare these items. We all vowed to try a new fruit or vegetable this week.

This group had a list of items from all of the students of what we should buy to snack on when we were done. We had to make some important choices but we really couldn't go wrong.

Some of the vendors let us sample the fruits and vegetables. Oh and did I forget to mention that we also got to sample the donuts and fudge too. All of the vendors were helpful in teaching us about their products. We learned about sizes of packaging for the fruits and vegetables like a peck, and a quarter peck, or a bushel or half bushel along with pints and quarts.

We got to discuss our favorite fruits and vegetables. There were quite a variety of favorite foods.

We found out that there is much more that just fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmer's market. There were fresh cut flowers of many varieties, potted house plants (one called a goldfish plants with little orange flowers) and outdoor plants (one with very small orange ornamental pumpkins) , organic eggs and cheese, rootbeer and sour apple soda, granola, salsa, chocolate covered blueberries, donuts, coffecakes, jams and breads.

Most of us tasted something we had never eaten before. Some of the foods that we had not tasted before were tomatillo, plums, some dark colored small tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. Tomatillos are part of the tomato family. Tomatillos are small tangy tomatoes that have an outside paper like husk covering that you have to peel off before you can get to the tomatillo.

We got to taste 2 kinds of homemade soda and sparkling apple cider. They all were delicious.

We had a great day at the farmer's market!