Sorry to hear your experience. Mine is the opposite.
I live between the Union Square and Abington Square farmers markets in Manhattan.
Delicious food
Great variety
Low prices in season
Friendly farmers
They've made nearly all grocery stores into disappointments. I get over 90% of my food from them and my CSA. Plus I bring my compost there. Because of them I cook nearly everything from scratch, with ingredients picked around 24 hours before I bought them.
Shopping at those farmers markets, and picking up my CSA delivery is the highlight of my week: I can't wait to see what I'm going to love eating.
Nothing wrong with that but I think you're showing up at the wrong place. It's like going to a flea market; novelty and maybe deals are the point more than knowing they're going to have whatever it is you need.
Yup, I've said as much elsewhere in this thread. Good for fun treats, not so good for the urban resident trying to get a cooked dinner in front of his family every meal.
> not so good for the urban resident trying to get a cooked dinner in front of his family every meal.
Vegetables from the farm is how I create meals every day, plus legumes and nuts from the bulk food store, probably 90+% of my calories. I don't buy packaged food. My vegetables come from the farmers market and farm share.
I bring compost through Manhattan because I love living here and the alternative is putting it into landfills, which I'm not willing to do. It means carrying a few pounds a few blocks maybe once a month to where I was going anyway to get vegetables that are more delicious, healthy, and cheap than any alternative.
How do you say it's cheap in farmers market? My experience in SF and SEATTLE is always that farmers market is way more expensive than Safeway or Costco.
I'm with spodek here - I also live near the Union Square Farmer's Market and it's a terrific resource.
Sometimes I'm feeling like something specific for dinner that may not be in season - and thanks to modern agriculture I can still go to the supermarket and get the ingredients. That's definitely not a need that the farmer's markets can fulfill.
But you absolutely can cook very reasonable dinners with the seasonal ingredients you get at the farmer's markets, and I enjoy doing so frequently. Doing this repeatably and reliably for dinner requires a wider breadth of recipes, but IMO is a skill well worth cultivating for not just nutrition but taste.
Personally, the changing of food with the seasons is IMO one of the great joys of life.
It feels like you're talking past the others in the thread here - many of whom can and do rely on CSAs and farmer's markets for their everyday cooking (and not just "fun treats"). Nobody's saying you must not use supermarkets (I sure do), or that CSAs/farmer's markets are the only way to go, but they are fairly complete sources of ingredients for meals.
I live between the Union Square and Abington Square farmers markets in Manhattan.
Delicious food
Great variety
Low prices in season
Friendly farmers
They've made nearly all grocery stores into disappointments. I get over 90% of my food from them and my CSA. Plus I bring my compost there. Because of them I cook nearly everything from scratch, with ingredients picked around 24 hours before I bought them.
Shopping at those farmers markets, and picking up my CSA delivery is the highlight of my week: I can't wait to see what I'm going to love eating.