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A sudden thought after reading another bunch of blog entries about the credit crisis and thinking about the etymology of "economy": so that's why those chapters in Jurgen and Figures of Earth were titled "Economics of (Whatever)". Also, the phrase "home economics" is something of a pleonasm.
The Mountain View farmer's market has a bewildering array of produce of various qualifications. At this point I'm pretty sure that strawberries selling for under $10 a half flat are conventionally grown stuff at a $1-2 markup over what you can get at Milk Pail Market. Organic strawberries are about $5 more. For the uninitiated, a half flat is 6 baskets, or about 3.5 litres (or 3½ quarts.)
Update (2008/06/18): Whoops! After taking out the 3 baskets I trimmed and froze and weighing them, it turns out to be only 2.5 litres.
Update (2008/06/23): Well hell, I got a half flat of strawberries from a certified organic grower this Saturday for $8. I'm batting 0/2 here.
Some vendors are also at Sunnyvale, although not the honey seller. I'm sticking with the can of mesquite from Trader Joe's, because I have Plans for the dark jar of buckwheat I got a few weeks ago. Other vendors are at Sunnyvale but not in Mountain View, such as the Dibrova sausage stall. In its place is TLC Ranch, which is a pretty bare-bones affair; just a guy, a board with prices, and some styrofoam coolers. I got some organic Italian sausage, hot and not, and have been working it up for dinner this week.
Cooking it on medium-low heat for about 25 minutes with summer squash works pretty well, so long as I cut the sausage up and don't try to cook more than one layer of squash slices at a time. Then add ¼ cup of cooking sherry, scrape up all the brown gunk, add a little water, shovel all of the squash back in, and cover it for 5 minutes. I can definitely taste the increase in caramelization over last night's effort with two whole links and the heat a notch lower.
