Surviving Winter at Brooklyn Greenmarkets

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Being a good Brooklyn locavore during the winter can be tough. Yes, we’re fortunate enough to live in a place where the farmers’ markets are open all year long, but how many potatoes and apples can one urbanite eat? Personally, strolling the greenmarkets on a winter Saturday usually leaves me depressed and longing for ramp-filled springtime. So I asked the folks at GrowNYC if there’s anything at the winter greenmarkets that we should be excited about. Turns out, February be damned, there’s a bunch of stuff just coming to market that is worth putting your coat on for.

Grand Army Plaza: Seatuck Fish Company has arrived from Suffolk County, Long Island for their winter stay at the market. Among their cold-weather catches: live flounder! Yes, you can take these babies home still flapping. Doesn’t get much fresher than that. (Saturdays, 8am-4pm; Prospect Park West & Flatbush Avenue)

Greenpoint / McCarren Park: The unseasonably warm winter has delivered a Valentine’s Day surprise from Dutchmill Garden, who is hawking tulips that popped up early this year. Sure, you can grouch about global warming gone wild, but they beat those artifically colored roses from the corner store. (Saturdays, 8am-3pm; Union Ave btwn Driggs & N 12th Street)

Fort Greene Park: Hot Bread Kitchen, a non-profit social enterprise bakery that helps low-income women build food businesses, is at the market all winter and still offering their popular focaccia. While tomato season is long gone, they’ve switched it up with seasonal flavors like winter squash focaccia and rosemary-potato focaccia with asiago cheese. (Saturdays, 8am – 5pm; Washington Park between DeKalb Avenue and Willoughby Avenue)

Brooklyn Borough Hall: Salento Farm’s organic garlic powder, ready now, should replace that cakey stuff that’s been sitting on your spice rack for years. Their powder starts as German red rocambole hardneck garlics, slow dried to concentrate the flavor, with none of the additives typically found in the store-bought stuff. (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, 8am-3pm; Court Street and Montague Street)

Carroll Gardens: Salad in winter? While there may not be an abundance of leafy greens at the markets right now, Rogowski Farm does have  microgreens — slightly spicy little leaves that are ready to eat when they are just tiny sprouted seedlings, which means now. (Sundays, 8am-4pm; Carroll Street and Smith Street)

(Photo: Ana Tudorof of Dutchmill Garden, by GrowNYC)

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