If you think only top restaurants have the inside track on fresh local produce, think again: You can save your dining-out dollars and feed your hunger for home-grown fruits and vegetables at Dewey Square Market, which officially opened yesterday across from South Station. This month alone it’s offering just-picked strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb (perfect for Mom’s pie recipe), Asian greens, broccoli, radishes, and summer squash—all from Massachusetts growers.
But even foodies who use their oven for storage and their fridge for cocktail olives can stock up at the farmers’ market, which offers ready-to-go baked treats, too. For a snack, sample the supersoft banana or cranberry-orange-walnut bread; for a dessert, take your pick of strawberry or rhubarb pie. After bagging a week’s supply of homemade goodies, you may want grab a colorful flowering plant to spruce up your empty kitchen (that way, when you serve up that pie to your friends, they might even believe you made it).
Dewey Square Market also features work by artists from the Fort Point community—paintings, pottery, handbags, and more—and is looking to expand its offerings through the season. For example, its parent group, the nonprofit Boston Public Market Association, is working with Blue Cross and Blue Shield to schedule health and cooking demonstrations at the market.
Like its sister market on the old Northern Avenue Bridge, Dewey Square is part of the Boston Public Market Association’s campaign to open a year-round indoor market similar to those in Philadelphia and San Francisco. The association is looking for a location, and hopes to launch that project within the next few years.
And although the idea of trenching through the snow to pick up fresh veggies seems odd, we say bring on the lettuce, cukes, apples, berries—and whatever else will keep our wallets fat and our tummies trim.
