Hello Again!
It is already the first week of August, how crazy is that? I started out the week with shopping at Wegmans and buying plastic free produce items for the “No Cook Corn Salad”. It was strangely hard to find plastic free produce items, and I was surprised by how many pre chopped, cut, husked, prepared vegetables were available and wrapped in plastic. It does reduce time, but it was striking to think about how convenience is taking over the food world.
I went to the CCE Tompkins county kitchen next to prepare the corn salad. I chopped tomatoes, corn, cilantro, scallions, garlic, green pepper, and carrots. The recipe smelled amazing, and I packed it up for the three markets this week.
First I went to the Ithaca Wednesday Market. It was a gorgeous day and I handed out over 30 samples. People seemed to really enjoy the recipe, and they took copies of lots of my handouts. I enjoyed interacting with customers, and the market was lovely.
The next day I woke up early and drove out to Corning. The market was beautiful, and full of people! I had so many lovely interactions with customers, and I got a lot of goof feedback about the work CCE is doing in the community. People were kind, happy, and excited to hear about my passions as a college student. It was amazing to talk with so many people who were genuinely interested in what I had to say about nutrition, food security, and preventative approaches to health. The market manager was kind enough to go print me 50 more copies of my recipe because so many people took my samples and recipe sheets.
Finally I went to Dryden on Saturday for a very small market. I was there from 9-1pm and only talked to 6 people total. It was eyeopening to see how slow the market was compared to the weekend Ithaca market. Although it was painful to sit there for so long, I was able to work on evaluating some of the education sheets and activities that FMNP provides for its market educators, and it was good to have the time to get to work on that.
Enjoy these photos below!
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