produce – Echo Park Now

Last Friday, I posted a sneak peak of all the wonderful goods I picked up at the Echo Park Farmers’ Market, all delicious goodies which I cooked up over the long holiday weekend.

This little Farmers’ Market shopping trip was meant to explore some the vendors and find out how far away (or close) the food at the market was coming from. It also gave me an opportunity to meet with blogger Valentina of the newly published Eastside Food Bites as we explored the sights, smells and tastes of all this great, local food.

While unable to interview all the vendors at the market, I do have some recommendations based on this recent experience as well as from some raving reviews from other Echo Park residents:

John Sweredoski helps customers at the Farmers' Market

Sweredoski Farms: Located in Bell Gardens (more less, about 15 miles from Echo Park) has a lot of herbs, lettuce varieties, really fragrant tomatoes, and other produce. The man behind the counter shown above is John Sweredoski; he is very friendly and knowledgeable about the produce he has available, and is there every week. From there I purchased an enormous zucchini and saucer squash, squash blossoms, potatoes, dill, and lemon basil. Everything is fresh, organic, and delicious.

Fallen Fruit Map

The folks at Fallen Fruit want us to know that you don’t always have to pay for your produce. There is a bevy of edible goodies just waiting to be harvested right here in Echo Park. So here is the deal: fruit from trees that are on public land or on branches that hang over public spaces are fair game! Home owners generally seem pretty happy to share as one tree can produce way too much fruit for one home. This way you eat fruit that may have otherwise have gone bad and save yourself a little coin. After all, times are tough. You have to make that lemonade with something.

Here is what their website says about the project:

“Public Fruit” is the concept behind the Fallen Fruit, an activist art project which started as a mapping of all the public fruit in our neighborhood. We ask all of you to contribute your maps so they expand to cover the United States and then the world. We encourage everyone to harvest, plant and sample public fruit, which is what we call all fruit on or overhanging public spaces such as sidewalks, streets or parking lots.

We believe fruit is a resource that should be commonly shared, like shells from the beach or mushrooms from the forest. Fallen Fruit has moved from mapping to planning fruit parks in under-utilized areas. Our goal is to get people thinking about the life and vitality of our neighborhoods and to consider how we can change the dynamic of our cities and common values.

-Fallen Fruit is David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young

Visit Fallen Fruit for more info and fruit maps.

UPDATE:

We have also created an interactive fruit map based on the above image, click here to view!

Tag Archive for: produce

Echo Park Farmers’ Market finds

Fallen Fruit Map