Market on the Move

Here in Arizona we have an unusual situation. Fresh produce is trucked up from Mexico and is inspected in Nogales, Arizona. Sometimes for one reason or another, the produce does not continue on its journey north. It might have started to go bad, it might be too dirty or have scratches on the surface of the produce, or the trucking schedules might not be set to pick it up. When the warehouse is full and another load is on its way, the warehouse will take the produce to the landfull. About two full trailer loads get dumped every day.

Market on the Move is sponsored by a group called The 3000 Club. Each week three trucks pick up this donated produce and bring it to rotating sites in Tucson and Phoenix. For a $10 donation, people can choose up to 60 pounds of produce. The rest goes to food banks. This is a tiny fraction of what I brought home today:

I brought home:

25 lbs of Roma tomatoes
6 large salad tomatoes
3 quarts of grape tomatoes
1 basket of cherry tomatoes
2 kinds of hot peppers
10 green bell peppers
8 red bell peppers
10 zucchini
10 yellow squash
13 small ears of corn
5 eggplants

The Roma tomatoes turned into 13 pints of diced tomatoes and 9 pints of salsa, along with some of the peppers.

The eggplant and more bell peppers turned into a Spanish eggplant dish for the freezer. You'll see that on the menu a couple of times over the next month or two.

Tomorrow some of the zucchinis will find their way into zucchini muffins for the freezer for our regular Monday muffin breakfasts.

We gave away a lot of the produce to our neighbor and a friend who provides us with delicious bakery bread for free every 2 weeks.

It was a busy day, but I'm feeling very satisfied.