Hip Tastes Blog

WOW: St. Helena Farmer's Market
filed under: Events, Regional Spotlight

A recent trip to the St. Helena Farmer's Market (located right smack in the heart of Napa Valley!) left a resounding "wow" on my lips for at least several days after. Everywhere I looked at the market - which runs every Friday morning from May through October - there was something to "wow" over - the impossibly bright freshly cut flowers, the unbelievably delicious artisanal cheeses from Raymond & Co. Cheesemongers, gorgeous veggies like this rainbow-stemmed organic swiss chard, and posh, leisurely-looking people strolling along, taking it all in.

Where do these people work, I thought? Knowing that the rest of my peers and, well, pretty much everybody I know who's not pregnant or retired was hard at work at that very moment made the impossible leisure-liness of the place that much more impressive. Clearly, Napa is the kind of community where you'll find hundreds of non-pregnant, non-retirement-aged folks spending several hours in the sun on a random Friday morning, free from the constraints of something so tedious as a job.

Bocce - Who Knew?
Plus, who needs work when you've got a killer game of bocce ball going? Bocce seems to me to be Napa's unofficial leisure sport, something I can attest to having now observed several courts in the backyards of posh local homes and wineries. According to The Napa Valley Register, Bocce is "enjoying a new renaissance in Napa," in good part because, as a source put it, "sipping wine and playing bocce seem to go together."

Bocce is an ancient game extremely similar to French petanque, a game I played a lot of last summer in the South of France. Essentially, teams compete to see who can toss a ball closest to a smaller target ball, called a pallino. It's super social, as you can see from these snaps of folks gathered around the bocce courts near the farmer's market. It's also a game I've rarely seen played outside of sun-splashed Provence, which probably shouldn't be such a surprise given Napa's penchant for - bingo! - sun and leisure.

Diet? What Diet?
Aside from the delicious cheeses and veggies, there was a fabulous Italian food purveyor called Mirella's where I fell prey to a tasty pastry concoction. It was a mini tart filled with dark berry fruits - a small pie, really - and I devoured it in record time. For a gal who's normally not partial to pastries, it ranked as one of the better things I've eaten in months. Apparently Mirella's panini are to-die-for too, but I drew the line after the tart. Carbs on top of pastry was just NOT happening, I resolved - not, at least, before noon.

I managed to get out of the St. Helena Farmer's Market without spending every last dollar in my wallet, but it was tough. Everything there is as expensive as it is impossibly beautiful: some of the better cheeses ran $35 a pound (I'm used to my "high-end" cheeses clocking in around $20) and the produce was, in my opinion, equally inflated in price. However, the quality of everything I sampled or saw seemed to be above and beyond what I'm accustomed to in most spots, so perhaps there's an argument there that it all makes sense.

Til Next Time
Or, maybe I was just out of my league! After all, this gal DOES have a job, and while I would have loved to hit up the bocce ball courts rather than head back to work, I opted for the latter. Gotta make some more dough so I can rationalize my next visit to the St. Helena Farmer's Market. Enjoy the pics!

For directions and more information, visit the market's site.

More Pics

Posted by Courtney on July 4, 2007 12:03 PM

Comments

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Posted by: Chris Bunting on July 4, 2007 08:04 PM
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