@Raleigh 03/27/26

STATE FARMERS MARKET

The vendor was friendly and I wish him well, but his product was a little too pricey and it makes me wonder if he will succeed. He had a fantastic assortment of dried beans and they were in various sizes of Mason jars. After re-thinking that, my thought is that “lose the glass jars” and start packaging those beans in plastic baggies.

The price was $14 for a pint jar of dry beans. I’m thinking that is equivalent to about a pound (16 oz.) of beans. Most of the beans I buy are no more than $4 a pound and I would normally find that pushing the limit. $14? For a pint of beans that I might be able to make 10 servings, so that would be about $1.40 for just the bean side dish. $1.40 would probably be pushing it for the high end of my meat entre for a meal, so way too much for a side dish. Less than a buck for a side, is more reasonable.

A few years ago I found several varieties of dried beans at Cara’s in one corner of the Western Carolina State Farmers Market in Asheville, North Carolina. I bought them, brought them home and cooked them and the results were less than stellar. I realized that the more popular versions of these beans were more popular for a reason. The more flavorful or distinctive bean had “won out” and won the blue ribbon, deserving to be grown, sold, cooked and eaten by the general public. Check out that story at “Beans, Beans, Beans.“

I think his fate will be similar to a vendor that I found along the side of a road up toward Louisburg a few years back. I saw this large outdoor market area and turned around to come back to it. The one thing I recall was this vendor had bought these gigantic okra. You don’t want gigantic okra because BIGGER IS definitely NOT BETTER! You could feel that they were old and tough and no way cooking them any amount of time was going to make them edible. That told me that this vendor didn’t know what he was doing, and that whomever had sold him these large okra wasn’t doing him any favor. — The next time I rode past the location, nothing was left of that vendor’s facilities.

WHOLE FOODS