There is a certain comfort for the weary road warrior to know exactly what to expect: the branded soft bed with choice of pillows, big fluffy towels, a desk and huge-screen TV with an assortment of cable channels. Unfortunately, the food is nearly always equally as predictable: a breakfast bar of bagels, toast and pastries, with juice, cut fruit, coffee and tea. The fruit platter, regardless of the season, is a prime example of homogenized food: cantaloupe, honeydew, strawberries, watermelon and pineapple; only the garnish (raspberries and blackberries this week) changes.
Hotel lunches offers up a little more variety, but afternoon snacks are invariably a cookie and coffee. It's no wonder that business travelers stream out of hotels for dinner, seeking a hole in the wall that dares to serve something other than chicken Caesar salad or steak and potatoes.
It was in this context that a couple of us set out in the hour between the end of the meetings and needing to catch a flight home--anything to get some fresh air before heading back into a sealed box. So imagine our surprise and delight in turning the corner to be greeted by rows of easy-ups: a farmer's market. Tables groaning under baked goods, fruits, meats--real, seasonal food; the people lining up to buy the food outnumbered the sellers.
In that moment, the reminder that the seasons still exist not just as snowstorms to disturb flight plans and that the earth provides without shipping pineapples across the globe, I relaxed. Just the sight of frost-kissed greens, and the promise in that oasis of bounty in an icy concrete jungle, and I could feel the tension leave my body and my shoulders drop.
Turnips and kale, bread and eggs; not cantaloupe and strawberries. Farmers in the city, life in winter.
