I pulled myself away from my four-day Mission: Impossible marathon to swing by the farmer’s market at City Hall. I may not like hippies and they might not like me. Well they probably like me because they’re all Taoist. But I don’t like them because I’m small-minded and inflexible and my parents were hippies and my mother left when I was three and I have abandonment issues and… well, anyway, I’ll save it for my shrink. But apparently they grow healthy produce.

Foolishly I went during the lunch hour and found myself in a throng of Bay-streeters swarming over the produce stalls like carrion. The house band kept on rockin’ in the free world at a nerve-wracking level. The noise and crowds made it difficult for me to shop in my normal fashion (that’s when I’m shoving people, not the other way around).

I just wanted to pick up whatever looked best and make a simple lunch. It was tough passing on the berries, lined up in rows and towers. The sweetness of blueberries and strawberries really carried on the air and just for a moment cut through the fog of BBQ corn and Bay/Queen traffic exhaust. But the case of mangos in my fridge wouldn’t let me buy more fruit until I finished what was on my plate. What caught my eye was the produce from Willowtree Farms. The bright green peas and zucchini were tempting (particularly after three days of eating Chinese food, but that’s another story) but what really caught my eye were some vibrant campari tomatoes ($3/pint) and sugar plums ($3.50/pint). I kind of had this image of a folksy country-type who would be glad that I’d brought my own re-usable bag. Instead he tossed his bag of fruit into my bag with a surliness that could have been born right here in Toronto.

The tomatoes were so smoothly non-acidic and the plums were so sweet that I didn’t want to manhandle them too much. I remembered a combination of tomato, plum, and mushroom I’d seen in one of Charlie Trotter’s books. So I put together an antipasti plate that would take advantage of the fact that I’d already committed to having a Campari & soda. I know there’s no connection between the tomatoes and the liqueur. It was just a Pavlovian response. I tossed the tomatoes with some fried oyster mushrooms (made a little stop in the market on the way home), a little of the good olive oil and fleur de sel. Separately I mixed the plums (yellow and purple) with a splash of orange juice, lime, kosher salt, and chili powder. Then I mounted the salads on a bed of prosciutto and balanced some shards of pecorino crotanese on top. And then I watched more Mission: Impossible. The salty intensity of the cured meat and aged cheese mingled with the natural beauty of the fresh Ontario produce in a balance of simplicity not found in my favourite show. Barney trained a cat to retrieve a priceless jade treasure to secure America’s relations with the fictional nation of Kuala Rokat. A flawless Wednesday afternoon.