Kauai Farmers Market

I love visiting farmers markets when I travel. Scoping out all the locally grown fruits and vegetables is like getting a preview of the delicious foods you’ll soon eat in restaurants around town. Last week, on the island of Kauai, I saw fresh coconuts, piles of sunrise papayas, pineapples stacked in the backs of pickup trucks, and seedless Tahitian limes. There were baskets full of intensely fragrant gardenias and buckets of waxy-looking tropical flowers (ornamental ginger and heliconia in a range of vibrant orange, pink, and red hues). We tasted pitaya, açai, and turmeric juices, plus bananas the size of fat thumbs and too many sweet mangoes to count.