Wow. Another farmers’ market. I’m not sure what to really write about this one. I sort of used up my one farmers’ market bit for last week’s article. This is kind of awkward.
The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) hosted its first Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar of the year last Sunday, April 8 beneath the Jones Falls Expressway at the intersection of Holliday Street and Saratoga Street.
This one was about twice the size of the 32nd Street Market, hosting many of the same vendors alongside other local businesses and organizations. This time, we visited Dangerously Delicious Pies, Zeke’s Coffee and Ekiben.
If I’m being completely frank here, I’m a freakin’ hot dog. But if I’m being a little less frank than that, we didn’t actually consume the pie until a preposterous eight hours after the end of the market! I know it’s going to take a lot for all two of you loyal readers to forgive me, but please do and read the rest of the segment on pies: Segment on Pies, my debut album.
The blackberry pie was so delicious! The sweet oat and nut exterior balanced well with the fruity interior. The blackberry pie filling itself was a nice combination of sweet and tart, not overwhelmingly either, but giving the pie a sturdy structure. The only complaint I have is that the outside could have had a slightly crispier texture. I was about to buy up the entire stock: These pies are seriously, gravely and dangerously delicious.
Courtesy of Jesse Wu
The Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts hosted its first Baltimore Farmers’ Market & Bazaar of the year last Sunday.
Zeke’s Coffee is just always a hit. Their Market Blend is a classic. I drink it every single morning in Biomaterials. I bought a bag of Shot Tower Espresso Blend, which came with a free cup of coffee. My ego had already been hurt by an unfortunate midterm score, so I chose the light roast of the day which was their Hippie Blend. The Hippie Blend gave off a bit more of a green, fresh plant taste, but it was still highly enjoyable for me. I look forward to trying out the Shot Tower and to future events featuring Zeke’s Coffee, which is locally roasted in Baltimore.
I have seen so much of Ekiben from local blogs, specifically Choi Sauce Boss, who posts about it constantly on the blog and Instagram, and it always looks so good. I had a macro freakout when I saw their stall at the market. I think my freakout reverberated throughout the entire farmers’ market, because once I got in line for the awesome-looking bun, the line started growing exponentially like the mass loss of an amorphous polymer undergoing bulk degradation or the solution to a linear differential equation with a positive root.
They were selling curry fried chicken bun sandwiches with dressed cucumbers, chopped cilantro and sambal mayo. They did an amazing job of combining foods from different cultures and making something completely new and beautiful from it. The bun itself was a Chinese style hua juan, pure white and soft like a pillow in your mouth. It’s so amazing seeing the Chinese hua juan, the Indonesian sambal sauce and the South Asian curry all made so accessible by the familiar (arguably American) experience of a fried chicken sandwich.
Other vendors were selling flowers, fresh produce and meats, but I don’t have the time or the housing situation to buy any of them, so I’ll just skip that for now. Damn the AMR I cooking amenities; that’s what I call kitchen situation.
Alright, I guess I had a surprising amount to say about the farmers’ market this week and the article was warranted. Anyway, I got a blog post to write and parents to disappoint, so I’m going to be done.
For those of you who want to check it out, the Charm City Circulator runs from the Homewood Campus at 33rd to Saratoga, and it’s just a few blocks from the stop to the market. The market hours are every Sunday from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m.
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