I just discovered this wonderful year-round oasis of fresh produce. It's a little scary to say, but since we've been out here our food budget has exploded to over $600/month! The price of good food is outrageous here. Until I discovered the Hay Market . . . like I said it's year-round. The only draw back is that it's only open Friday and Saturday! So, I'm quickly learning how to shop for a week at a time.
It's quite an experience to shop here. A lot of the produce is excellent. Some is o.k., and some was on it's way out 2 weeks ago! LOL :D
The service is, well, Boston style! Nothing happened to me, people were quite nice, but I've seen them slap customers hands and "politely" remind them that
"it's not self-service, I'll help you with that!"
(Throw in the accent and you're set!)
To give you an idea of the size of this market: It starts around the corner of a building, spreads along an entire block, and wraps around the other corner. My engineering estimate is that it's about 3/16 of a mile! 
So, nearing the end of the market I noticed this . . . squint and you can see . . .
Hard Rock Cafe . . . Or Hay Market? Well, you guessed it, I opted for the Market and check out my loot!
All for only $22!
That's 8 heads of Romain lettuce back there! I'll give you a short list of just some of the prices I run across:
Lettuce: 3/$1
Strawberries: case/$2
Avacados: 6/$1
Tomatoes: big box/$5
Bananas: 4 lbs/$1
Peppers: 4-6/$1
Cucumbers: 6/$1
Zucchini: 3-4/$1
Pineapple: 1/$1-$1.50
Of course, this is a weekly market. Prices fluctuate from Friday to Saturday, and drop extremely low Saturday afternoon when they just want to get rid of it. This is when I hit the market!
So, I've given myself a budget of $40/week at this market. You can see how much $22 got me, just double that and we're set! I'm hoping that we can stay way below $400/mo. on our food budget, considering we have such great accomadations!
I have to throw this one in . . . All along this market are little step-down shops. This is a meat/sea food shop. Mind you it's well over 95 degrees outside and super humid. I just can't figure how this is fresh . . . people eat it and live to tell, though, so I guess it can't be too bad! It's all part of the Hay Market experience!
2 comments:
WOW!!! I can't believe you got all that food for only $22.00. I go to Farmer's markets all the time. I get good deals, but not THAT good. That's awesome. Now I just have one question, Can your family actually EAT that many bananas in one week? I thought we went through a lot. I guess I was wrong. Ha...
Amber, yes, we eat this many! Brian can't have them, he gets migrains. Lance doesn't really like to eat them right out of the peel, so we freeze them and put a couple in our green drink everyday! The kids love it!
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