Tortillas Can Be Heavy

Brought to you by the farmer's market.

Farmer's market season has begun on Nicollet Mall, the dozen-block-long pedestrian mall that is the central artery of downtown Minneapolis. Every Thursday from now into the fall will find the Mall lined with carts, kiosks, and stands offering everything from fresh produce and flowers to good old hot dogs. Yesterday the stalls were staffed by unfortunate vendors Goretexed to their eyebrows on an unseasonably cold first market day of the year.

I was wearing the wrong shoes for this event. Unware that there was anything happening on the sidewalk, I'd kept my loafers on at lunchtime, thinking I'd just step across the street, get lunch, and return. I hadn't counted on getting sidetracked up and down several blocks to admire and photograph the wares.

I ended up buying a dozen homemade tortillas and a jar of chipotle salsa from a young man just outside my building's front door. I never met a carb I didn't like, so it took little of his sales pitch to get my money. He talked me out of the jalapeno tortillas in favor of the garden veggie ones when he heard I wanted to use them for breakfast burritos. Garden veggie makes the best wraps, he said, and the chipotle salsa will supply all the spice I need.

So I was well supplied for future breakfasts, but I still needed lunch in the present. I continued across the mall to the Marshall Field's food court, the fresh, dense tortillas and jar of salsa dangling from my wrist in a plastic bag. I bought food — sushi! wasabi! — but could not find a place to sit even after 10 minutes of pacing around the seating area, so I headed back out through the department store, now carrying both tortilla bag and lunch. With my mineral water and some soy sauce and a fork in there, too, the bag was getting heavy.

Not unexpectedly, I got lost in the store, which covers an entire city block, but finally found my way out through the skyway and ended up back across the street in my home complex. Then I realized I needed to buy a quick gift at the bookstore downstairs, so tortillas, salsa, and sushi all accompanied me to Barnes & Noble. Mission accomplished, I at last found my elevator and ended up eating the sushi in my own company's lunch room. It took an hour for the bag handle marks to fade from my forearm.

Well, what can I say, I'm a farmer's market novice. Next Thursday I'll know better. I'll wear my walking shoes — and a warmer jacket if this cold spell keeps up — and save my market purchases for the end of the lunch hour. And I'll remember to bring the wheeled frame I recently bought to trundle my enormous duffle bag up and down the street on T'ai Chi-after-work days, because I just realized I still have to carry those tortillas to the studio and then home tonight, too. Oy! They'd better be good.

Today around the world: April 29 is Midori no Hi, or Greenery Day, in Japan. It's also Good Friday in the Greek Orthodox church.