Las Vegas Farmers Market Salad

Organic white peaches, tree-ripe apricots, cherry tomatoes, salty spinach, crisp romaine, Lebanese cucumbers, yellow peppers, hemp hearts and mustard and radish sprouts. I wouldn’t have thought I’d get all this from a farmers market in Las Vegas, what with the lack of lush farmland in the area…

Seriously, who can grow all this in a desert? The answer is nobody. Well, you could grow some of it in greenhouses but it’d be a huge water suck. Instead, most of the farm fresh ingredients came from elsewhere in the area: California, Utah and maybe other parts of Nevada. California, however, is in a drought, so all the water used to grow these vegetables is still less than ideal in terms of environmental and financial sustainability of the farms, but those peaches and apricots are super sweet when they’re thirsty.

There are a number of farmers markets in Las Vegas, it turns out. On a Saturday morning, you have your choice of honey, Hawaiian shaved ice and grilled chicken skewer vendors as well as everything above. A lot are prepared goods since, as mentioned, Vegas isn’t exactly rolling farmland. But there are great products available thanks to the very demanding Vegas strip, where you can get just about anything at any price and the best restaurants demand the best ingredients.

This came from the Downtown Summerlin Farmers Market, held outside in a giant mall way northwest of the Vegas strip on Saturday mornings. It rained the morning I went, which certainly made all those Vegas farmers happy (that’s a joke), but made the indoor local organic grocery and specialty shop at the tip of the market more of a draw than the outdoor vendors. I went past the jerky stall into the shop and sampled some amazing cashew nut vegan kefir and yogurt (the fat content was astronomical, making it incredibly creamy and delicious), raw sheep’s milk cheese, mulberries, wild strawberries and a variety of organic California dates harvested last fall.

The shop wasn’t cheap, but everything was high quality. And buying the vegetables for this salad was worth it. You can also make this salad with vegetables and fruit from your grocery store, but if you can find a farmers market where all these things are fresh, please do it. The lady I bought spinach from thanked me for shopping local as though no one in Vegas had ever bought anything from her. Or maybe they just don’t like spinach. Maybe they would if they tried hers.

Las Vegas Farmers Market Salad

1. Drive/bike/run to Summerlin Market (everyone drives. One step at a time for the environment, I guess).
2. Buy whatever fruit and vegetables look good
3. Cut them up.
4. Eat them.