Haymarket

I just spent the last ten minutes scraping gluten-free french bread dough from in between my fingers and from the cracks in my signet where the antiquing would have been.  The would-be loaf is sitting on top of the stove taking its sweet time rising, so I thought I'd write. 

Let me put the bread in the oven.

In the last week I made the move to New England, which brought with it new markets to be explored.

Today around noon, LH and I traversed the city by T to brave our way to Haymarket, an open-air produce market with dirt cheap surplus.  As she had warned me, it wasn't a site for the faint of heart.  With a duffle bag strapped to my side, green bags in both hands, and my wallet clutched severely under my elbow, we pushed our way through the sweaty crowds, all swarming for $6 boxes of Haitian mangoes and 50 cent bunches of bananas.  $1 bunches of green asparagus and five pound bags of $2 sweet potato.  Cash only.  Count your change.  And your fingers for that matter. 

Amid the loud Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern merchants were the much louder, much pushier natives (read: Bostonians), effectively slapping customer's wrists with their jeers any time someone tried to hand-pick their own produce instead of accepting what was given to them from the underbelly of the stand.  At one stand, a somewhat swarthy merchant made bets to passersby.  "Try this strawberry.  If it's not sugar sweet, I'll pay you $20!  I'll pay you $40!"  Beyond the noises were the smells.  As you pushed through the market, you wafted between the aroma of those summer-ripe berries and, more unfortunately, the somewhat putrid, distinct smell of rotting vegetable. 

Off to the side were the indoor markets, somewhat more permanent than the weekend market they girded.  A fish market next to a Halal butcher ("Have your next goat slain here") next to a grain store next to a cheese shop.  Each of these indoor markets seemed to beckon from below, with a set of stairs leading down into each one.

$15 later and I could barely waddle back to the T.  LH dragged a suitcase behind her.  Needless to say this is my new favorite thing to do on a weekend in Boston.  

The bread is done.  It's not exactly French Bread, but I'm not exactly French.  It looks and feels and tastes and smells like bread.  And it has no flour in it.  Success.