Picture: A Fruitful Day

In Macedonia, most people buy their produce at the pazar (think bazaar), the local marketplace which usually has some sort of open-air structure with display booths. Most towns have an everyday small pazar with a few greengrocers. However, once a week is the big pazar. On big-pazar-day, you can find everything. The freshest seasonal fruit? Check. Imported fruit that tastes like cardboard? Check. Livestock? Check. Lacy lingerie? Check. Some-assembly-required moonshine distillery unit? Check. It’s like Wegman’s, but everything has a thin film of dust on it.
Big-pazar-day (Saturday, in Struga) is always chaotic, with all of the villagers coming out of the woodwork to find the perfect sofa slipcovers or the best deal on ten kilos of parsley. Many people who are normally absent during the week will set up shop on the streets around the main pazar structure, selling their garden surplus, home-woven handicrafts, or “medicinal” mountain herbs off of cardboard boxes-cum-tables.

I love going to the pazar. Whenever I need a mood-boost (or, y’know, food), I go chat up my favorite grocers. On Saturdays, though, I go with a specific mission in mind: broccoli. Of the hundreds of produce stands, maybe one, occasionally two will have broccoli. And the good stuff gets snatched up quickly. Well, my friends, this Saturday, I found not only beautiful broccoli, but a host of other treasures…

1. Chick peas – it’s hummus time! Like Hammer time, but with a longer shelf life.
2. I don’t know what these are called. I think they’re related to plums.
3. Tofu – a store near the pazar sometimes has tofu, but often they only have gross flavored kinds (tofu with caraway seeds?!). Fortunately, they had unflavored tofu this weekend, so I stocked up and bought their entire supply…which was only four.
4. Eggplant – finally making its debut.
5. Dill – first time I have EVER seen fresh dill here. I was so excited that I almost shoved it up my nose to confirm that it was in fact dill.
6. Broccoli – to quote Shayne (who was quoting Gilgamesh or whatever his name is in reference to HER broccoli), “my precious…”
7. T-shirt – for the low low price of two dollars, I became the coach of the local sport feeling team. Right now, they’re just a rag tag bunch of kids, but a few show real potential in the 200-meter despair dash and the 400-meter boredom backstroke. We’re still working on curling with contentment.
8. Zucchini – pale, yes. These are small ones, believe it or not. They get up to two-feet long here.
9. Peas – I have no idea how to cook these. I just got caught up in the moment. It was an impulse buy.
10. Bonus banana – below-mentioned man-grocer always gives me a free piece of fruit for my patronage.
11. Cherries – I bought these from my favorite middle-aged Albanian man-grocer (like a man-servant, but more entrepreneurial). He likes me because I’m a non-Albanian who speaks some Albanian.