Apricots, Weird Looking Cauliflower & A Guy With His Hands In The Cole Slaw.

This purple cauliflower, known as "graffiti," was offered by Oxbow Farm. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Okay, maybe the last Madrona Farmers Market of June — Friday, June 26th, to be exact — wasn’t as weird as that headline makes it sound, but if you missed it, how would you know? And let’s face it: if you skipped the Market on the 26th and went to the Big Box grocery store instead, you would not have seen this magnificent, purple Graffiti cauliflower from Oxbow Farm. The only graffiti you would have seen will have been on the back outside wall of the store near the loading dock, and the only cauliflower you would have seen will have been pasty-white, probably wrapped in plastic, devoid of flavor, and hauled there by train or truck for about a week over thousands of miles from Arizona, Mexico, or even further away.

Oxbow's Romanesco cauliflower, the only vegetable known to grow in fractals. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Speaking of really cool looking cauliflower, check out this Romanesco from Oxbow. For my money, this is the coolest looking vegetable on earth. Without a doubt, it is the only one that grows in fractals. And you thought your semester studying chaos theory was never going to be applicable in the real world, accept for when you were attending a psychedelic rock show, and they were projecting paisley fractals up on the big screen behind the band. (Dude. Turn it up!) But just check out the tight, rotating fractal patterns of these beauties. How cool is that? And they eat good, too.

Chef Seth Caswell of Seattle Chefs Collaborative with his hands in the slaw. Photo by Zachary D. Lyons.

Chef Seth Caswell, president of Seattle Chefs Collaborative, and owner of the soon-to-open restaurant, emmer&rye, performed a cooking demonstration on the 26th, and he showed us how to really get our hands into our work. Utensils are for wimps, right Chef? And how can you blame him, when Independence Day is right around the corner, and the market is full of gorgeous cabbages. It’s time for slaw!

Napa cabbage from Full Circle Farm. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Maybe not so much cool looking as just plain beautiful is this napa cabbage from Full Circle Farm. You know, for the longest time, I thought the “napa” in the name of this lovely vegetable referred to Napa in California. But when I was recently trying to satisfy a curiosity of mine about the various spellings — bok choy versus bok choi (they’re both correct, I learned) — I discovered that napa cabbage gets its name from the English pronunciation of the original Mandarin name for this cabbage. Oh, and bok choy/choi is also a Chinese cabbage, BTW.

ACMA Apricots. Photo copyright 2009 by Zachary D. Lyons.

Apricots arrived at the Market this week — these beauties from ACMA Orchards. It seems I was just pondering the fact that we already had strawberries, cherries and raspberries in the Market in June, earlier than I could recall, and now we can add Apricots to that list. Yup, this is going be a year for the books, so enjoy it. And whatever you do, don’t miss another week of the Madrona Farmers Market. Heck, next week, you’ll want to stock up for that 4th of July bash!

Tags: apricots, cabbage, cauliflower, chef, cooking demonstration, farmers market, food, Graffiti Cauliflower, Madrona, Madrona Farmers Market, Romanesco, Seattle, slaw.