Photography| Nature| Weekly prompt.

Fresh Vegetables Are The Star Of My Plate.

Nature Prompt — Vegetables bring joy to life.

Winter veggies = Happiness!! Don’t you think so?

The prompt from Dr. Preeti Singh sent my imagination running.

The best vegetable shopping experiences I have had are always during winter months. Winter vegetables bring joy to life.

I succumb to the colourful and fresh vegetables kept in heaps and buy more than I need. Sometimes I rely on the seller’s judgment to pick the excellent quality once’s for me.

‘OOh, those greens!! You get such lovely fresh greens during winter. This morning the greens were so fresh, I had to stop, take a picture and buy my favorite spinach, mint and coriander.

‘Popeye was right about spinach: dark green, leafy vegetables are the healthiest food on the planet. As whole foods go, they offer the most nutrition per calorie.’-Michael Greger.

Buying vegetables in the traditional way is always enjoyable and cannot be compared with online buying.

Buying vegetables at the market allows you to check the quality and buy what you need. Therefore, my first preference is always to head out to the vegetable market every weekend and buy what I need for the week.

The conversation with the lady selling vegetables is also exciting and lively. I remember once I was buying lemons and was trying to pick the best lemons from the heap. The lady selling the lemons asked me if I was buying them for making pickles. When I said, Yes, I want the juicy lemons for the pickle; she looked at me and said, ‘I would like to share a lemon pickle recipe with you’. She insisted I try her recipe. She told me how her mother taught her the art of making good pickles.

After the pandemic lockdown, some of these traditional habits had to be dropped. Ordering online has become safer. And once you get spoilt by the convenience of sitting in the luxury of your home and ordering online, you adopt it. We always tend to pick up bad habits faster.

During the pandemic lockdown, we missed some hidden gems in ordinary conversations with the vegetable vendors.

Be it just negotiating the prices, asking for some fresh produce, hearing from them about their hardships, learning from them about the different vegetables and how to make out the good and bad quality by just looking at the colour and appearance of a particular vegetable.

Once we were out of the woods and the lockdown was lifted, I started going to the market.

We are spoilt for choices. You don’t have to go to the vegetable market because vegetables and fruits are available now in supermarkets. But the fun of going to the vegetable market cannot be compared with retail outlets.

Negotiating prices, picking good quality stuff, and sometimes haggling with the vendors is fun.

Time is always a vital resource and in short supply. Therefore, everyone prefers to buy online. It saves time spent in traffic jams.

In a city like Bangalore, known for traffic congestion, it sometimes makes sense to buy online. Fortunately, I have a vegetable market close to my house, so visiting the market saves time than driving down and getting stuck in traffic.

India’s digital payment revolution is well known. Today, even small-time vegetable street vendors accept digital currency through payment apps and do not insist on cash. This is a huge plus point, as one does not have to carry cash.

Buying vegetables and fruits from street vendors has become simpler because of the ease of digital payments.

Vegetables are my therapy. How about you? I would love to hear about your experience of vegetable shopping.

Thankyou Dr. Preeti Singh for this inspiring prompt.

Love to share some of the other articles on the prompt, ‘Vegetables bring joy to life’.

Marta Henriques’s article on growing vegetables at home

Debika Kumari’s article on how to grow spinach in a pot is very useful. I am surely going to follow her process. Thankyou for sharing it Debika.