1st Trip to the food market

Our first produce finds....delish!

We explored the Garak Market (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garak_Market) today on a typical balmy day as it is monsoon season right now. All I have to say is wow! The pictures we took do not do it justice, it was HUGE! We hopped on the subway(an adventure of it's own) five stops and one train change later we where at the market. As lost Americans we went the wrong way and wandered around the block(which was two downtown Denver blocks put together) and in the gate for restaurants or grocery stores, bought a flat of grapes. We dodged big trucks and stumbled our way to the smaller stalls. As a chef in a new setting, seeing all of the produce was overwhelming! Items I knew and somethings I had no clue, but what really caught my eye, were all the different mushrooms. We'd look at one stall and there would be 5-7 different mushrooms the next stall would have 3-4 different kinds,some I worked with (thanks to the big budget at Vi and the chefs there!) and others no clue. Karen, was impressed and excited about the garlic. 6-7 20lb bags of pealed garlic. The smell was intoxicating! We bought a 1-1/2lb bag then the ladies ground it for you. The prices where  cheap! In the above picture 3kg(1kg=2.2lb) of potatoes 2 dollars, 2kg mushrooms 2 dollars the garlic was 5 dollars and is going to be worth every penny. We spent 25 dollars on everything on the table(Murphy told me not to forget about the carrots), they are the size of my wrist and about 6-8 inches long and again 2kg 2 dollars. I will be going back there at least once a week for all our produce and we didn't even find the meat section! Below is a slide show of our adventure!