Farmer’s Market Bounty: August 3, 2008

British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawkings is going to blow up Los Angeles! At exactly 12:36pm  on Sunday afternoon, his computer-generated voice echoed across every media outlet, “You-have-twenty-four-minutes-to-save-the-world-before-I-blow-California-into-a-supernova.”

Maybe it’s because we’re in tinseltown, or that we just walked past the Batmobile at the Arclight movie theater, but that’s how we felt this weekend when the wife and I arrived at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market just minutes before closing. We’d been transported into a bad episode of hit TV show, 24 and time was not our side. Our minds raced with worry as we sprinted down Ivar street through the thick sea of shoppers. Would we be able to make it through the entire market? Would the good produce already be taken? Would our favorite farmers already have made the trek back home? Channeling bad boy Kiefer Sutherland, we raced down the aisles buying on raw instinct.

Thankfully, Stephen got cold feet and decided to postpone the apocalypse.

It wasn’t until we arrived at home, flush with endorphins, that we realized what kind of bounty we had captured for the week: Raspberries, pluots, plums, nectarines, peaches, heirloom tomatoes, grapes, avocados, black mission figs (because you all had so many fig ideas), carrots, summer corn, arugula, wild greens, haricots verts, peppers, celery, chives, basil, mint, zucchini, swiss chard, charlynne melon, leeks, fleurs, and spring onion and cucumber Soledad goat cheese.

As always, we welcome ideas about what to make this week, so please send in your ideas. Who knows, you might get a dish named after you.

The “Farmer’s Market Bounty” series is a weekly, typological photo essay of my Market shopping, which charts the possibilities of seasonal eating.