Dirty tomatoes & candles disguised as vegetables

&Saturdays are usually when I take the exbf grocery shopping. He can't drive, and doesn't live near any markets (mega or otherwise), so we usually do our shopping together.

I'm still on my market high from last week, so I decided to explore another market. This time, it's a private enterprise that's only open six or seven months of the year. All the produce is either very local or grown within the province. It sits on the side of a country road and is surrounded by farmers' fields. Inside are crates of fruits and veg. Most look as if they were recently picked. The reddy-orange tomatoes still had some dirt clinging to them, giving them a slightly powdery feel--just like the ones my parents used to grow.

It was pretty much then and there I decided to make a roasted ratatouille. Pretty much all the ingredients are in season right now. We did go to the big, scary mega-mart to get the usual litter and some frozen things. The only thing the country market didn't have that I'd really like is yellow courgettes (lots of green, but no yellow).

I found one yellow one at the mega mart. It wasn't alone, it was surrounded by palid decorative gourds. The produce stock boys apparently don't know the difference between courgettes and whatever they put out in the bin...sigh...I don't claim to be knowledgeable of the different types of this or that, but I do know that these weren't courgettes...and if they were, they looked incredibly anaemic--rivaling the beige of a too-milky coffee, and had a bulge at the one end; whatever the impostors were, they could easily have been decorative candles.