skizziks

You always hear the people on the food channel talk about fresh ingredients, you read it in all the cookbooks, etc etc.

I have the luck and luxury of a local farmer's market, and I got some red onions and some eggplant (and other stuff) and I gotta say...

FARMER'S MARKET PRODUCE KICKS ASS!!!!

I make lots of baba ganouj, (eggplant) and it tasted a zillion times better with the locally grown eggplant. It wasn't just me, others who ate it also said it tasted better.

The local eggplant had taste, the supermarket eggplants, while I thought they had taste, now taste like Styrofoam.

Same with the red onions. I love red onions, but the local ones were so much sweeter.

So, I can attest to the fact that, a huge part of making a tasty meal is the freshness of the ingredients. If you have access to a farmer's market, by all means, USE IT.

The only downside is, now I am suspect of the food at the supermarket, and I think I'm missing out on flavor in produce I can't get locally grown.