As is my Tuesday ritual, I took a walk over to the Grand Concourse and 161st Street so that I could stock up on a week’s worth of vegetables and let me tell you $25 gets you a lot!
I was able to walk away with 9 ears of corn, 2 bags of Bok Choy, 2 bunches of delicious, purple carrots, a bunch of rainbow swiss chard, a bunch of kale, 5 beautiful and plump tomatoes, a bunch of white onions, a bunch of red onions, two eggplants and a bunch of celery.
All that for $25 bucks and for those of you who are part of the SNAP/EBT/Food Stamps program you would have received $2 in Health Bucks per $5 spent and could have walked away with $35 worth of produce for $25.
The Health Bucks is an excellent program to encourage the most at risk population to purchase healthy food options in a community plagued with high rates of obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
The market today was packed with folks and by 1pm, a number of stands were running low on some of their items as residents snatched up the yummy, local and freshly picked produce.
The cooking demonstration stand was crowded as the demonstrators gave healthy cooking demos in English and Spanish, handing out samples and along with recipes which you can collect each week.
Also at the market you can find a composting station where you can bring your food scraps and dump it in the bin. The bins are then in turn taken to Governor’s Island and dumped where a team of about 3 dozen chickens do the rest by eating the scraps which in turn, well, makes the fertilizer and compost!
The Bronx Borough Hall Farmers Market is open each Tuesday from about 8:30AM – 5:30PM and runs through the end of November.
Shop local and support local farmers, the lifeblood of our communities!
