Trout Lake Farmer's Market Vancouver

Leave it to Vancouver to have a lake in town where they can hold a weekly summer farmer's market.
The market was filled with plant vendors selling everything from vegetable seedlings to larger landscape plants like the beautiful Japanese Maples pictured below. The most interesting was the guy selling Venus Fly Traps - so cool!


In addition to farmers there were several people selling crafts and a couple of food vendors, serving up everything from sausages to coffee and of course lots of baked goods.

Maple Latte - only in Canada!
My favorite was the crepe trailer, kind of makes you think they've been doing this since Woodstock! Judging from the line they make damn tasty crepes.

Speaking of Woodstock and Canada Joni Mitchell comes to mind and well, you can never read/hear these lyrics too many times (at least I don't think so)...

I came upon a child of God
walking down the road
I asked him, where are you going?
And this he told me

He said I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm,
Just join in a rock and roll band.
Get back to the land and set my soul free.

(He said) we are stardust, we are golden,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

So can I walk beside you?
I've come here to lose the smog,
I feel like I'm a cog in something turning round and round.

Maybe it's just the time of year,
Maybe it's the time of man.
I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning.

(And then)we are stardust, we are golden,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We are stardust, we are golden,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
Everywhere you look there was a song and hope and a celebration.

And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.

We are stardust, we are golden,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We are stardust,we are a billion year old carbon,
we are golden
We just got caught up in some devil's bargain
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

Vancouver has several markets all over town, the one at Trout Lake is the one my friends here say is the best, it is located a 10 minute walk from the Commercial drive Sky train station in, what felt to me, like a rather remote, bucolic suburb, not really convenient for those of us who are dependent on public transport, but worth the schlep none the less. Luckily Granville Island Market is easy to get to and right in the downtown center and open all year round! For more information on Vancouver markets check out their site.

Granville Island Market and the South China Seas Trading Company

The inside of one of the bigger market halls.


From this handsome fish (pictured above) comes a vast array of far less handsome looking products (pictured below), Salmon Jerky, Salmon Candy, Smoked Salmon...This is the garlic guy, he's been growing it all his life and makes a dizzying array of hot sauces and salts and even some picked garlic tops. His company is called Oddball Organics and he ships all over the world. It was his smoked garlic chipotle salt that I went for he said it tasted great with butter on popcorn and something tells me he knows what he's talking about!
I love the South China Seas Trading Co. I make a point of visiting every time I am in Vancouver. It is the best SE Asian supply store I have ever been in North America,certainly way better than anything we have in NYC. You can always find wild limes, lime leaves, fresh galangal, Thai eggplant and on the day I went they even had fresh cluster of green peppercorns (which the Thai use very cavalierly in curries). The only thing I found to be weird, which is as far as I can tell a Vancouver thing is that it seems impossible to find fresh cilantro with the roots still on. I check at the farmers market today and in Chinatown. Particularly in Thai curries coriander root is used to make chili paste and nothing really can be substituted. In NYC every where in Chinatown that you buy cilantro has the roots still on. Seems to me a farmer with a greenhouse could make some money supply Vancouver's large Asian population with all year cilantro with roots! In addition to all the exotic stuff they also had a well curated selection of local seasonal delicacies like fiddleheads and morels.