Canino's market: Katherine Hook photos
Weekend mornings all over America, truck farmers and gardeners rise early to load their homegrown produce for market. They rattle along in dusty old pickups, some with organic farm stickers adorning their bumper and some not, until they pull into some large retail outfit or maybe a vacant lot. As the different vendors arrive, they form makeshift stands flea market-style with a corridor running the length of the lot between them. Their exceptional quality local produce brings in droves of weekend shoppers. Tomatoes are always a big draw, but so are free-range eggs and value-added products like jams and baked goods. It’s always an adventure, meeting new folks and swapping stories. Sometimes they even sell out and go home with enough cash to have made it all worthwhile, but I’m not sure that is what keeps them coming back.

None of that scenario remotely describes Canino’s Produce Market on Airline, well almost none of it, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t merit your attention if you want first-class produce.

Most of my posts are about other folks fixing your food, but I like to do a bit of the chef thing myself (my other blog identity focuses on that, www.fortheloveofgarlic.com). One of the most difficult things to accomplish in Houston is finding a reliable source of top-notch produce. Local is the best option, since it doesn’t have to travel. That’s good for the produce quality and reducing your carbon footprint, if that sort of thing matters to you.

Local produce’s not-picked-until-ready quality is why farmer’s markets come into play, unfortunately ours don’t stack up too well against those around the country. We do have several CSA’s like Home Sweet Farm and some market farms like Froberg’s, Willmon Farms and Cooper Farms, but they’re mostly a summer-only operation and our supply of dedicated home gardeners is pretty weak.
Cactus
So what’s a home chef to do? That’s where Canino comes into the picture. They have much the same, if not exactly the same, produce that you’ll find in the neighborhood grocery although when you combine the numerous small vendors perched out the back door of Canino’s main store, your choices exponentially increase.

The swarm of little one- or two-man resale stalls out back carry all sorts of the same produce as up front, it’s just that you have several dozen different options on the same type of produce. They also carry some home-grown herbs, mostly as live plants, chilies, every edible cactus part know to man and stuff that I can’t identify. No, not even half of what they sell is local, but some of it is.

The best thing about Canino though, is that they are good to go every day even if they really aren’t a farmer’s market.