To-mae-to, To-mah-to

I don't think I've talked about the farmers' market yet, or laika agora, so that's what I'll do in this post. On our street on Mondays and June, and just a little farther down the road on Mondays in July there's a laika agora, or farmer's market. A bunch of people set up stalls, vegetables and fruits mostly, but there's also a clothing stall, a fish stall, and one time there was this guy that was selling spices, teas, honey and nuts. It's very nice and extremely cheap for the amount of produce you can get, not to mention it's all extremely fresh with a pretty big selection for local produce. When you walk up and down the one long aisle they've set up in the middle of the street with stalls on either side of you, vendors will shout back and forth in Greek, saying things like that they have the best produce or the freshest stuff, or the lowest prices. There's mountains of the produce at each stand, towers of lemons and tomatoes, castles made of almonds or walnuts. Not actual castles but you know what I mean. Some people give us samples, like one guy asked us to try some of his almonds and asked us if they weren't delicious, which of course they were but I also just really like free samples. I've gotten lots of potatoes there and garlic to make mashed potatoes. I've also gotten some local fish with I roasted off in the oven one night. Most of the dinners I've made here, I've made with stuff that I bought at the farmers' market. It's one of the best things and I've enjoyed it with the time I've been in Greece. It'll be one of the things I miss most when I leave, because we don't have things like this back home. Back home we don't like in such a tight nit community with the ability to walk down the street to the store without fear of getting attacked. If I wanted to walk to the store back home that'd be crazy, it's a 10 minute drive into town and I live off a major highway so walking would be a bad choice. We don't really have farmers' markets back home. WE have flea markets and you used to be able to buy produce from farmers at these but now it's a people with tables full of junk from their garages trying to rip people off on trash. I'm from a small town so there's something we have close to the laika agora, but I think it might only be maybe one Saturday a month, it could be every Saturday though, I'm not sure. In our downtown area, where the courthouse is, sill a 10 minute drive from my house, they'll close off one or two streets and people will sell produce and stuff. I've seen stalls for local honey when I've driven by. I've never been though so I'm not really sure what they have but I think it's mostly arts and crafts. Also back home, we have a lot of houses and a few farms, that have pick your own stuff, mostly strawberries and blueberries. You can also see tables and trucks set up on the side of the road with produce, sometimes a lot cheaper and better than the stuff at the store. That might actually be the closest thing to a laika agora back home, just a truck or someone outside their house with a few baskets of produce, mostly tomatoes, set up waiting to see if someone will stop and buy.