Cleaning Out the Farmer’s Market

Last week I went to work for two days. The kids, as usual, spent that time at my parent’s house.

BOY do I have something to share about THAT couple of days! But that’s for tomorrow.

For now, let’s focus on food trials. 

We took our regular 3 day break from the cauliflower trial during the three days the kids were at my folks. Zac had been doing beautifully on the cauliflower prior to that! No FPIES symptoms at all!

While he was at my parents, though, he started having funky diapers. Not bad, really; just…not good.

The poop made his butt turn bright red every time, so much so that by the time I made it home he had a couple of red welts on his heinie. It was also loose and diarrhea-like.

Not. Good.

However, not necessarily the cauliflower! While my parents are ACES at taking care of my kids, I think it is well established by this point that Zac is a super stealthy Ninja-food-stealer, and he proved his mad skills while with my folks.

To their knowledge, he sneaked at least one of Jed’s crackers and (I quote my Mom here) “went to town” on Jed’s post-goat-milk-run pork rind treats. 

And that’s just the stuff they know  he snuck!

I swear that child is getting more brazen by the day at snatching food. Just this weekend he stood right next to me at the kitchen counter and grabbed a french fry, looking at me the whole time to see if I would stop him!

The only way to stop Zac from trying to sneak food is to either A) never eat anything unsafe for him at all, B) handcuff him to your side, or C) watch him like a hawk whenever food is present and immediately clean up all food as soon as the non-Zac-eater is done.

“C” is what we usually all shoot for, but life happens, you know? Jed suddenly decides he needs to go potty (for which he requires an audience), or the phone rings, or something on the stove is boiling over, or, frankly, you just forget for an instance and BAM! The stinker has snatched some food.

Well. All that means is that I’m not convinced cauliflower is the culprit, especially since his funky diapers continued after I got home. FPIES reactions usually improve over time, not continue or even get worse.

Since I’m still hoping cauliflower will be a safe food, I needed to procure more of it for him.

We didn’t resume the trial over the weekend; I wanted his heinie and poops to clear up completely before we did. Fortunately, he was perfect yesterday so the cauliflower trial resumes this morning – and I definitely needed more cauliflower for that!

Besides, even if cauliflower eventually proves unsafe for Zac, I have many, many, many ways to prepare it for Darrel and Jed! Organic, healthy cauliflower won’t go to waste in my house!

So Saturday morning we made breakfast, and Zac and I headed to the Farmer’s Market.

In the pouring rain. 

Fun times.

We were kind of late getting there. The Market was still going strong when we arrived, but we were only an hour before closing time. Lots of things sell out by that point.

As we approached, I started to get nervous; the Market is set up on the town square, and the first two WHOLE SIDES I walked past had nary a cauliflower head for sale!

Suddenly, though, I saw a table with 7 heads of cauliflower laid out all pretty. 

As I walked up, Zac strapped in his Ergo and an umbrella pouring sheets of water around us, a man came up beside me.

I spoke first. “Hi! Do you use pesticides?” I asked the ladies.

“Nope. We’re organic.”

“Any fertilizers?”

“Nope. Just water.”

“Excellent!” I noticed they had some yellow colored cauliflower aside the regular cream colored ones. “I’ll take all your regular cauliflower, please!”

That’s when the man next to me finally spoke. “Darn!”

I looked at him and noticed he was smiling. “I’m sorry!” I really did feel sort of bad about that, but, you know, “keep my son alive” outranks, right?

He just kept smiling as he trotted away, calling out “That’s okay! There’s more over here!”

I did call after him that he could have the yellow cauliflower, and the lady at the stand yelled out that she had more in the truck, but he was gone.

Oops.

However, at the mention of more in the truck I asked how much she had.

“How much do you want?” she replied. “I’ve got this tub,” as she hauled out a huge blue tub, “and some more over here.”

I just smiled. “Sure.”

(pause in shock and silence for a moment)

“Um…okay. Do you have a car you could pull up closer so I can help you load it?” she goggled.

“Yup.”

“Okay, while you do that I’ll get it all put together and figure out a price for you.”

So Zac and I went straight back to the car, I strapped him in and we maneuvered the complicated one-way street layout combined with closed down roads for the Market to get the car as close as possible.

When I came back, she was still sorting out cauliflower. I asked her how much longer cauliflower would be coming in, and she said 3-4 more weeks.

Then she nicely offered me anything I wanted at the table for free. I chose some excellent looking green beans for Darrel and Jed’s dinner.

Looking at the pile of cauliflower at my feet, she seemed nervous when she said, “Okay, well, for all of this, I guess…maybe…$70?”

No problem, sweetie! I paid the nice lady, then asked for her phone number so I could make sure to get more cauliflower later. She willingly gave it and said I could text or call her any time.

• Total time at the market: 15 minutes
• Total cauliflower obtained: 31 heads of regular white, and the 3 heads of yellow she threw in as a bonus!
• Total time I’ll spend this week freezing cauliflower: more than I ever thought I’d spend in my whole entire life

We’ve got a new freezer being delivered on Tuesday (boy do we have a story there!), and I bought a FoodSaver after the Market on Saturday because we knew that this summer was all about finding new safe foods for Zac – and getting enough of them to last until next summer. 

I think I’ll be cleaning out the Farmer’s Market a lot this year!

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Have you ever cleaned out the Farmer’s Market? Did you shock the vendors when you did? Oh, and, any tips on preserving cauliflower?