What was I doing shopping at the downtown farmer's market today?

Actually, I know exactly what I was doing. Buying a shitload of basil for the 2010-2011 batch of frozen pesto. What I don't understand is how, knowing I'd be bringing home a giant box of vegetables, I also figured I'd toss in a basket full of Japanese eggplant.

Actually, I know exactly why I figured that. I love Japanese eggplant and it looked really good. Anyway, on to the farm box! Discards were just the napa cabbage we all knew was going bad anyway. In that position this week is the sage, which I haven't looked at because I don't wanna.

• Bonus Dill - I can always use dill.
• Bonus Pickling Cucumbers - I only took two. No, I don't know why either.
• Romaine Lettuce - a nice sturdy head.
• What can only be described as an extremely challenging quantity of fresh thyme.
• Two fresh yellow onions - not nearly enough to keep me from needing to buy onions.
• One head of garlic
• One banana pepper and three jalapeno peppers, which are, by the way, running about 50% hotter than grocery store jalapenos.
• One husky zucchini
• Two perfectly reasonably-sized cucumbers, which are entirely manageable since I plan to give one away. Guess grabbing the two picklers wasn't such a bad idea.
• One bag of purple beans, which I hope tastes different from the green beans but I am not holding my breath.
• One slightly unwieldy bunch of cilantro.
• A small handful of carrots, including some freakish skinny red and white ones.
• Five tomatoes, including the one traditional "split in the box and is no longer good" one.
• Two ears of sweet corn
• One small head of cauliflower
• Apparently anticipating my discard, one head of napa cabbage with very green leaf-tops.
• One bag of "asian green mix"
• Apparently anticipating my purchase last week of a giant bag of Yukons from Costco, a small bag of yellow potatoes - the first potatoes in nearly two months.

Again, we have a largely useful week. I'm really enjoying how very rarely the pure quanitites are overwhelming, but the variety is incredible. Oh, sure, I'd love tons more garlic and onions if they wanted to add them, and sure, the cucumbers have bordered on excessive, but overall I'm still really happy with the boxes from Driftless.

I even got my cabbage situation down to one red Savoy (and now one Napa) thanks to judicious use of slaw.