Eight farmers market strategies

As much as I savor the fresh food at the farmers market, I enjoy the vendors almost as much. Watching generations grow up at the Midtown market has been a blast, and really, what kind of week is it when you don't get to have Julie from Pflaum Farms wish you a great week?

While the produce is tempting enough on its own, I'm an easy upsell. Two for five? Sure. One vendor is clearly getting into the marketing angle, with fancier appellations like "legendary beans." While buying some of his "heirloom beets," he offered a deal where he'd take a dollar off if anyone also bought beans or flowers. Since I'd already been eyeing his lisianthus, I was an easy sucker. "Take your time," he told the woman there picking out a bouquet from a wide array of choices. "The record is 29 minutes. Her husband left."

Lisianthus are long-lasting beauties. Those tight buds open up to soft lavender rose-looking blooms.

Between the weekend market and the new monthly midweek Nokomis market, I succumbed to way too much temptation. So expect this week to be filled with blog posts about how to use up green beans, peas and zucchini.

My main tactics for making sure all those goodies don't go to waste:

1. First off, get everything out of those plastic bags you might have gotten things in; the produce will spoil less rapidly if it's not trapped in plastic and you'll be more likely to use it if you can see what it is you have on hand.

2. Transfer berries like strawberries, raspberries and blueberries to a glass container, trying to make sure they're in as shallow a layer as possible to avoid promoting mold growth.

3. Wash and spin dry any greens immediately so they're ready to use just like those store-bought boxes.  That includes beet greens, which otherwise wilt very quickly. I chiffonade the beet greens and store them to toss into risotto, into pasta, or just sauteed with garlic and olive oil on the side. (If you're using a plastic box, putting a paper towel in the bottom helps soak up moisture that would encourage spoilage.)

4. If you've got beets, wash those in the leftover lettuce-washing water. The sooner after picking that you roast them, the more tender they'll be and less time they'll take to cook. Put them in a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and add at least a 1/4 inch of water to the bottom of the pan. Cover with foil and roast at 400 for 50 minutes or until tender, adding more water as needed. When cool, peel and store for a salad of lettuce, sliced beets, goat cheese crumbles and balsamic vinaigrette.

5. Put on some tunes and shell those peas. No way will I ever get around to that on a weeknight. Store in a glass container. Ditto with green beans: snap the ends off and store.

6. Peel back husks of corn and silk the ears, if you plan to grill them, or husk and silk them if you plan to blanch them. (A great topping for corn: soften a stick of butter, mix in 1 tablespoon thyme leaves, the zest of 1 lime, 2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a sprinkling of paprika.)

7. If you don't have a plan for how to plan to use the largesse, chances increase that it becomes compost fodder. Haul out the cookbooks, fire up the Epicurious app, or if you've got magazine back issues like me, just grab a couple of July issues from past years. Since I'm me and can't help that, I create a chart of what all I've got to use up and note which recipes I want to try. I also try to keep up my tickler file in the computer slugged "Ways to use up ...." Otherwise I can never find back that really great-looking recipe that I saw in November that called for oodles of fresh tomatoes or fresh cucumbers.

8. If you wind up with too many greens like arugula, kale or collard greens and are running out of new recipes, remember that you can always just blanch them in hot water (or broth if you want to add more flavor) and toss them in the food processor with garlic, pine nuts, a sprinkling of salt and as much olive oil as you need to make a pesto. Any pesto freezes well, so you can add it to pasta or vegetables mid-winter.