A Taste of Nature’s True Bounty

“So this is what they’re sup­posed to taste like … ”

Sam­ple the vast array of freshly grown pro­duce at a farmer’s mar­ket and you’ll imme­di­ately under­stand that the bland super­mar­ket offer­ings are a long way off from nature’s true bounty. 

Freshly inspired by Bar­bara Kingsolver’s Ani­mal, Veg­etable, Mir­a­cle (Harper­Collins) in which her fam­ily resolves to spend a year on their farm liv­ing off what they can grow and obtain locally, I am keen to not only nur­ture my own veg­gie patch but sam­ple the pro­duce of local grow­ers too.

Brisbane’s Queen Street Farmer’s Mar­ket is cur­rently my favourite place to do that.  I am drawn to the array of fresh pro­duce that bears no resem­blance to that found in our super­mar­kets. Enter the ‘heir­loom tomato’—not the per­fectly round, red (and often taste­less) super­mar­ket vari­eties, but those our grand­moth­ers may have grown— in all shapes and sizes and colours rang­ing from deep red to shades of green, yellow—even dark maroon! Colour aside, they’re burst­ing with flavour! 

Small, exquis­itely sweet and colour­ful cap­sicums, creamy sheep’s cheese, fresh herbs, mouth-watering home­made sausages and smoked fish—strawberries so sweet and juicy you’ll want to wolf them down on the spot– is just some of the fare on offer. 

If you’ve expe­ri­enced the dis­ap­point­ment of bit­ing into a too-long refrig­er­ated peach at the tail end of sum­mer, or relented and bought a Cal­i­forn­ian navel while Queens­land melts, you’ll realise the impor­tance of buy­ing sea­sonal and local. There’s sim­ply no com­par­i­son when feast­ing on the real thing.

Awaken the taste­buds and visit a farmer’s mar­ket near you…

Jan Power’s Queen Street Farmer’s Mar­ket in Bris­bane, Aus­tralia is open every Wednes­day from 10am to 6pm at the Bridge End of Queen St Mall.