A few weeks ago when I stopped by the Farmer's Market in Hoboken, I stopped by a table I hadn't seen before. Though the market had been opened earlier, it was my first day back since last year when they ended the season around Thanksgiving, so I asked the woman at the table if she was new or if I just hadn't seen her before. She said she had been there last year, but towards the end, and that they had also begun to do delivery orders over the months when the market was not open. The reason I was so excited was that she was selling mushrooms, which I love, and not just any mushrooms. The mushrooms on her table were so beautiful they looked like precious treasure.
I had just been thinking a few days before how much I missed Balducci's, one of the old stores I used to shop at when I lived in Manhattan. They had the most beautiful mushrooms year round, all different wonderful seasonal varieties of the most special kinds. But even though I do still shop sometimes in Manhattan, the Balducci's I used to shop at was closed a number of years ago, and though there are other places I've tried, I haven't been able to find another that was quite as wonderful. When I was thinking about Balducci's, the things I was really thinking about were the wonderful mushrooms, and because I've started to go back into Manhattan much more often these days, I thought that I'd have to start looking for a new place to find them. But then I walked by this beautiful woman's table full of the loveliest mushrooms I've ever seen, and now I have a place to explore and try new varieties I hadn't ever heard about.
The first week I decided on two packages, one with "a little bit of everything" as the woman selling them described it, and another that just had pink oyster mushrooms in it. I couldn't resist them because they were so beautiful, and I really wanted to buy everything on the table, but I knew I couldn't eat them all in the rather short shelf life mushrooms have, so in order to keep them fresh I just decided on the two boxes. But I'll be back for more as often as I am able. These mushrooms or fungi as she called them are treasures of the earth that are a precious gift to have and be able to add to the bounty of a table.
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