Organic Market - Cheap Fruits and Veggies

I would like to try to keep you folks updated on our day to day (in addition to the awesome trips and sights and such).  I mentioned in an earlier post that fruits and veggies are particularly cheap here (very cool).  Cheap is one thing, but we've also been lucky enough to find a spot with really good fruits and veggies.  Our apartment is near a neighborhood called La Floresta (it has a lot of fun restaurants and was featured in Anthony Bourdain's episode on Ecuador as one of the best spots for street food in the world).  Some teachers at school told us that there was an organic market in the neighborhood that was open every Wednesday so we hopped off our bus one day and decided to check it out.  In addition to having amazing food, the little store is quite cute too...

It sits on the corner and has a large tree painted on the outside of the building.

The inside is painted with bright colors and more trees :) 

The shelves are always full of beautiful and colorful veggies.

In addition to fresh, organic produce, the store also has little marmalades and sauces that you can buy.  We've tried the pumpkin-chocolate spread - it was delicious!  They also have breads and sometimes cakes or pies, but we haven't tried any yet.  The store also includes homemade soap, yogurt, eggs and milk.

Sauces, marmalades, and honey.

Those are empanadas.  We've had some from another bakery, but we'll have to try them here soon.

We learned on our first visit that the market has an email list.  Now we get an email every Sunday and respond with our order.  Now when we walk in on Wednesday there is a 'Cabezas Basket' waiting for us.  Here is another teacher from our bus picking up her basket.

Fun tree and veggie art behind the counter.

Here are some examples of our hauls.  Everything has been delicious, but we have made some happy mistakes (our emails come in Spanish and the translations haven't always been perfect...)

In the top right you see the collard greens we got when we thought we had ordered kale. The greens ended up being delicious though :)

We get the strawberries every week - they're amazing!  And we've gotten pumpkin twice now!

We have been having a lot of fun experimenting with our veggies every week.  We got blue potatoes this week and made blue mashed potatoes :)  We pickled some cucumbers and tried a new fruit we really like called uvillas.  I made a cobbler with our strawberries and blackberries and several soups with whatever ends up being leftover at the end of the week.  Mostly, we love the eggs.  They are so fresh, and their yolks are so bright they're almost orange.