Cesar Chavez Farmer's Market

This is one of my favorite places in Sacramento on a Wednesday afternoon. In high school, I would come here with my best friend during the summer. We'd go shopping at Downtown Plaza, then drift down K street, sipping iced coffee and craving something sweet.

Cesar Chavez Plaza is a park in the
middle of downtown Sacramento, on the corner of J and 10th streets. It is lively, crowded, and colorful; it's noisy and it smells like the muffins and loaves of bread sold by Grateful Bread and Sacramento Baking Co., hemorrhaging steam in the hot weather.

As you can see, there is a reason some people call Sacramento by another name: Sacra-tomato. (And by some people, I obviously mean people who are not from here, who are probably the same people not from New York who call it the "Big Apple," or who call San Francisco "Frisco.")

Yes, those zucchini squash and yams are actually bigger than the watermelons.

Today it was actually a pretty cool afternoon (about 95 degrees F, HA!) so I spent my lunch wandering around, trying to sneak pictures with my blackberry. I brought a lunch, of course, some squash and rice with BBQ sauce leftover from Sunday, but when I passed the Italian Ice truck, it was like I was back in high school with S. I almost wanted to buy some white peaches and stuff them into a Forever 21 bag--but of course I didn't have one, and my tastes have turned toward less sweet fruits.

So I settled for dairy-free chocolate Italian Ice. It was a good compromise.

I didn't get a good picture of them, but today they had a sick band playing. It had a different vibe from the group that's usually at my Carmichael market (they play a lot of Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel). These guys play guitar and trumpet a la Cake and they are so great. Also, their lead singer is a woman, which makes the lyrics pretty funny.

All in all, it was a good lunch. Just don't tell my mom I was there; she'll be mad I'm not bringing home any Satsuma plums.