Farmer’s Market Shopping List: Apples, Eggs, and Self-Importance

I love the local Farmer’s Market.  I go almost every Saturday morning.  That said, I am a middle-aged white woman.  I also enjoy restaurants that specialize in brunch, home décor shops that also sell scarves, and places where you paint your own coffee mugs.

My routine at the market is repetitive.  I buy an over-priced coffee on my way in and dedicate the next 30-45 minutes to stuffing food in my face.  I convince myself that locally-produced bacon, organic eggs, and bread baked by a Mennonite woman are “health foods”.  I sample enough cheese to keep me constipated for the rest of the weekend and I eat ALL the cinnamon buns I intended to take home to the family.  Then I fill my re-usable grocery bag with vegetables, pay twice what I would pay at the grocery store for them, and go home.

I don’t over-think the experience.  It is what it is.  But this week, while waiting in line to buy my over-priced coffee, I overheard two women in front of me having a conversation about the food choices “some people” make.  Please note that these two were so thin they were at risk of blowing over in a strong wind and they were sharing a single cheese-cube sample, so I was immediately wary of their expertise when it came to appropriate diet choices.

Anyway… the more I listened, the more troubled I became about their level of self-righteousness.  It was clear that they saw themselves as somehow better than the “some people” whose circumstances differ from their own.

Those two skinny bitches totally ruined my morning at the market.  Why? Because they cracked the lens in my rose-coloured glasses and made it impossible for me to over-look the obnoxious, privileged behaviors all around me.  Trust me… I wanted to ignore it!  I love dead-pig and chicken embryos on a warm croissant.  And cinnamon buns.  And cheese on toothpicks.  But suddenly, all I could see was the crazy shit:   

• A white guy in dreadlocks giving chicken-seasoning tips to a middle-aged black woman while she prepared Caribbean food at her booth
• A frantic mother trying to get her toddler to spit out a strawberry after discovering that it was not from a “spray-free” farm
• A line up of people eagerly paying $4 apiece for “artisan” bars of soap that smell like a combination of rosemary, hemp, and gym locker. Note: The “doggie soap”- which smells exactly the same – sells for $6/bar.
• A group of American tourists buying up $30 bottles of something called “blueberry icewine”
• A woman discretely spitting her carob-bar sample into a napkin
• A man grilling a scent-free-soy-candle peddler about the materials used in the wicks. Seriously dude!  How big a deal could this possibly be?!?
• A trio of Ivanka-Trump lookalikes, sipping $8 smoothies while lamenting the fact that they could not afford to buy $6 pints of organic blueberries. While still lamenting, they bought the berries, multiple loaves of spelt bread (FYI…“spelt” is Latin for “made of rock”) and 2 bottles of the strangely gooey $30 blueberry icewine.
• A couple arguing about which cheese booth was the most “authentic”. Is there inauthentic cheese? 
• Another couple arguing over which loose-leaf tea would be best for someone with cancer. Seriously?!? Don’t you think that if loose-leaf tea cured cancer we would all hear about it?  Why would this be a secret thing that only the tea lady at the local Farmer’s Market knew about?
• An organic herb booth selling $10 pots of basil that looked suspiciously like the ones on sale (3 for $5) at the Superstore down the street… same size, same plastic descriptor sticks in the pots.

Sigh…

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a Saturday morning at the Farmer’s Market.  Or brunch.  Or painting coffee mugs. But there is nothing inherently “right” about these activities either, so everyone needs to dial down the attitude a little bit.  Because it is pretentious. And offensive (yes dude with the dreadlocks – I am talking about you!).  And most of all, it is sucking the joy out of my binge-eating!

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