Summertime — okay, technically give it a few more days — is a glorious time at Los Angeles farmers markets. The marine layer burns off, the sky is cornflower blue and perplexingly clear, the heat hasn't been turned up as high as it's going to get in, say, September and October, and the market stalls are loaded with crates of stone fruit, boxes of boysenberries and Pakistani mulberries (“they come in later than the other ones,” says farmer Bill Coleman, “and they don't stain”), the glut of squash and corn spilling onto the sidewalks, late season citrus and general greenery and sudden baskets of flowers, both edible and decorative.
It is a happy scene: better than Prozac, and a whole lot more practical, as you can pick up dinner at the same time as you clear your head. Unless you happen to spill a box or two, like these currants and berries from Pudwill Berry Farms, which tipped from the cart wheeled up 2nd street by the folks from Church & State. They went back for more, so I guess you'll know what to find on the bistro menu this week, along with those pigs ears. Turn the page for a photo gallery of what's in season right now.
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