Spokane's Downtown Farmers Market

Today was my first trip of the season to the Spokane Farmers Market (now at Browne and Fifth). I always miss the first two weeks due to end of the semester stuff. But the first weeks are always a little thin anyway.

I enjoyed being back at the Market with its new location. Catching up with people I talk to every week in the summer (yes, those people are the farmers) and meeting some new ones, too. Had a great chat with a new face at the Farmers Market and will be back to talk with him again.

Even though the produce was a little thin at the market this week I did get the asparagus and spring onions featured here. And I also got chives, lettuce, cucumbers, potatoes and some potted herbs.

Still not entirely sure how these will work their way into the dinner party I am having on Monday night. I know the mint from the potted herbs and the chives will be in the wild rice salad (more on that later) that has been requested. I had hoped for some fresh raspberries for raspberry chicken, but it has been a cool spring and I guess it is a little too early for that.

One way to eat more ethically, I think, is to eat locally and the farmers market surely lets one do that. Hard to get more local than food grown close enough for the farmer to drive to get it to you. And eating locally helps one eat seasonally, too. Another ethical value. None of these things are hard and fast -- there are usually some exceptions.

That brings me to the wild rice salad. It uses both wild rice (I brought this back from my last trip to Minnesota, where it is in fact a local crop) and white rice, which is not local. I don't buy local white rice. It is a crop that gets to us from the developing world mostly by ships using little fossil fuel and creates a market for the economic development of those in poverty elsewhere. These are some of the competing values that make most "rules" about ethical eating merely guidelines. (And yes, Doug, if you are reading this, I realize that I am talking about the difference between rules and guidelines.)

A lot of what I will be talking about this summer is local and sustainable food and a lot of it will come from the farmers market. I admit, I do slip up sometimes and eat junk. But, with so many food choices to make, the more I can make ethically the better. I can't choose perfectly, but there will be another choice to choose something better, the next meal or snack, which is only a few hours away.