Sunday, September 13, 2009

The Joys of Central Market on a Sunday

During my "unplanned sabbatical", I have carefully avoided Central Market on the weekends. If you can shop in the middle of the afternoon, you should shop in the middle of the afternoon, is my motto. {An aside here, the always impressive meat counter is fantastic on Friday afternoons.}

This morning, however, I found myself needing to go on Sunday. EEEKK. THE WORST day to go to Central Market. It's very crowded, full of food tourists and sample-seekers and generally incredibly aggravating. So, I decided to go early, as close to opening (8:00 a.m.), as I could muster and re-discovered something I'd forgotten. As long as you don't need to buy wine, (it's illegal in Texas to sell alcohol before noon on Sunday) Sunday morning is a great time to visit. The sample stations are just beginning to pop up and yes, there are more people than a typical weekday afternoon, but, most of these people are at least semi-serious foodies; a treasure-trove of ideas for an aspiring foodie, like me. I love to watch what people choose, especially produce I'm not familiar with or ambitious cuts of meat or any seafood. (Beyond already cooked shrimp, I'm pretty much afraid of everything in the seafood department.) Discreetly scoping out their carts will frequently send me backwards in the store to grab something new. Today was no exception, I walked in with a list of eight items and walked out with two bags full of stuff.

Yum!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do not fear the seafood department! Seafood is your friend!

KB said...

I agree. I LOVE seafood. I'm definitely not afraid of eating it, just cooking it. Seriously, I even cheat and buy the already cooked shrimp.

Heather said...

Ha! You sound like a food tourist now! (But not in a bad way.)

Anonymous said...

We shall have to remedy that fear! Shrimp is possibly the easiest to cook and so super quick! Crab cakes are a lot easier than most people would have you believe as well.

I'm now starting to branch out into areas that I was formerly uncomfortable like lobster. Although I still won't boil one live. Killing poor defenseless creatures is my husband's area of expertise!