Gricignano Market

Since I have been in Italy I have heard many people talk about the Market. I wasn’t real sure what exactly they were talking about, was it like a Farmer’s Market or something completely different. On New Year’s Eve when I was at the Coleman’s house they had been to the Market that morning and she was telling me about it. I find out that it is similar to a Farmer’s Market, but a little different and bigger. They do have fresh fruits and vegetables. Along with that though they also have many other things such as clothes, shoes, meat, cheeses, pots and pans and even house hold goods.

So John and I did a little looking around and realized that there was a Market in Gricignano, which is right down the street from where we live. This Market is on Thursday mornings and he had this morning off so we decided to go check it out. As we were walking around there were people everywhere and vendors set up all over the place. One of the vendors had cheese and meats and this one kind of grossed me out a little bit. When you watch tv shows or movies and they have the huge rolls or blocks of cheese that look like they weight about 50 lbs, yea this vendor had about 5 different types of cheese like that. They also had their meat hanging from their ceiling. There were also seafood vendors with their fresh fish and seafood just out in the open on ice, smelled kind of bad.

As we continued walking around we finally got to the fruits and vegetables. This was the main reason I wanted to go, I really wanted some fresh fruit, and FRESH fruit is what we got. I wanted some of the little oranges and when we walked up they were all sitting on the table. They only thing that was different about this is that the oranges still had the tree branches and leaves attached to them. All the fruits from trees were like this; they pick them off the tree and take them straight to the Markets to sell them. As we were looking at the fruit trying to decide what all we wanted the man in charge of the vendor grabbed an orange ripped it open and handed it to us to try. (Man was it one of the best oranges I have ever had.) Needless to say we walked away with a bag full, along with some bananas. I am also a huge fresh tomato lover; I eat my granddads home grown tomatoes like crazy in the late summer. One of the vendors had fresh baby tomatoes so I got some of them as well. These were the same way, they pick them wash them off and sell them, they are still on the vines, leaves gone but there are about 15 baby tomatoes all still connected together.

After we got home John and I decided that this would have to be a weekly happening as long as he isn’t working. We have already ate about half of the oranges and I ate quite a few of the tomatoes, so next time I think we are going to have to get at least 2 big bags of oranges. At the price they sell them you really cannot beat getting as much as you would like.

The little oranges with leaves and branches still attached

Bananas and Oranges

The Tomatoes ~ there are about 40 tomatoes here and only 3 main vines