Haymarket at Closing Time

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-05-05T02:40:15.212Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

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Historically produce shopping was mostly in open-air markets, but in the US produce is now typically sold in buildings. Most open-air produce sales are probably at farmers markets, but these focus on the high end. I like that Boston's Haymarket more similar to the historical model: competing vendors selling conventional produce relatively cheaply.

It closes for the weekend at 7pm on Saturdays, and since food they don't sell by the end of the market is mostly going to waste they start discounting a lot. You can get very good deals, though you need to be cautious: what's left at the end is often past the end of it's human-edible life.

Today Lily was off at a scouting trip, and I asked Anna what she wanted to do. She remembered that a previous time Lily was off we had gone to Haymarket and bought three containers of raspberries (18oz, half a kilo) for $1. Many of them were moldy, which was clear before before buying them, and we'd had a fun time sitting in the park hunting for the ones that were good eating.

We decided to go back, which is easier now that the Green Line runs from Ball Sq. We bought a few different things and tried them out:

We were pleasantly surprised that the raspberries were tasty and non-moldy! We decided to buy more, but it was still a few hours from closing time and we weren't ready to go home yet, so we visited Paul Revere's house. I was especially interested to see that it had a folding bed, which was apparently a common way to maximize usable space in cities during that period:

We also visited City Hall Playground, with several slides:

You can see the infamous cop slide in the background. Anna was initially afraid of it, but ended up going ten times.

I wasn't planning to wait quite this long, but Anna had such a good time at the playground it was hard to get her away. Around 6:30 we walked back over to Haymarket, and found one vendor with raspberries who was willing to do $15 for two boxes (12 6oz cartons, 2 kilos, per box). I got four boxes (18lb, or 8 kilos). Anna helped transport:

The kids were very excited to be able to eat all the raspberries they wanted! I emphasized that this was 'special', which is a term I use a bit as jargon with the kids to designate something as "not how the world usually works". We ate about three cartons fresh, shared a bunch with housemates, kept a few more in the fridge for the morning, and I washed and froze the rest.

We normally go through quite a lot of frozen raspberries, which I use instead of jam, so in addition to this being a fun adventure it also saved us about $60. But this was an unusually good trip: sometimes I've gone and the only things at excitingly low prices have gone bad or are not foods I'm interested in.

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