For the discriminating foodie, three shopping meccas by Ronald Holden
A fundamental truth underlies everything about food: unless you grow it, raise it or catch it yourself, you need a marketplace in which to find it. Even if you bake your own bread, you still need to buy flour; if you raise tomatoes in the backyard or a pot of herbs on the windowsill, you still need to buy salt and pepper.
One of the reasons Seattle has become such a great food community is its abundance of raw materials: seafood, mushrooms, fruit, clean water. Add to that the hardworking farmers, fishermen and foragers, and the well-established networks for getting the ingredients of their goodness into the hands of buyers. In short: we've become a city of great marketplaces.
We'll look at traditional, small-scale farmers' markets in upcoming issues. For a start, though, a stroll through three of Seattle's biggest and most colorful.
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on October 31, 2012