The Market: 3pm Sunday

By that time on Sunday, I am usually eating lunch - the ingredients for which I will have bought earlier. But today, I arrived late and wondered what I would find. The state supermarkets were all closed around its edges, but inside - as betrayed by a woman who came out through the narrow alleys between the makeshift boardering shops with plastic bags full of green peppers and figs - there were still vendors at their stalls. My first stop was to buy a skirt for the grandma I adopted (yes, I say it half in jest), as I was told that today the seller would have size XXXX (4 XL). It is a funny size, because in fancier manufacture, that probably has an ordinary number, like 14. I love granny skirts! They have elastic, and the one I found had subtle gold threads in a pale brown plaid with tiny touches of pink. Yaay for granny. Who says that when you are old, you cannot enjoy a decent skirt. Though she rarely leaves her house. Yes, and when I arrived at that stall, the seller was trying to get some people to buy a hunk of cheese (can I even explain this) at her other stall right next to the clothing one. Food is expensive here, so the oddest things get imported from Hungary and sold at randomly interspersed stalls (among electric plugs, pyjamas and stationary, one can find imitation Thai chili sauce, Milka chocolate, and, cheese!).
The other vendors were beginning their social time. The street cleaners were already circling the place like vultures, but (since I recognise so many sellers) I noticed some of them were the customers buying beers from a tiny kiosk and hurrying back to their stalls, or dreamily smoking cigarettes. I bought quarter of a squash from one such vendor in her track suit - and while I was the reluctant customer, saying, oh, but this has been sitting out for some time, sigh, she volunteered to cut the vegetable into any number of ways, like a magician, so I finally accepted and we both ended up happy with the result. I got some cheese and cream from the kiosk that was closing up, but since I know those cute girls, we had a nice joke and I thanked them profusely (while another woman stormed up, demanding cheese - but she changed her tune; one must sing for one's supper, indeed, at 3pm!). I made the recipe "Gratineed Baked Squash Halves" from Martha Stuart. There was an almost festive atmosphere when I left the market - probably because of the nice weather, no one felt like rushing to close up so soon. And there is that patch of sky directly above the green market, which is a few blocks long and filled with pygmy stalls, so the blue sky crowds in over produce offered from the fields, and the only time the market is stern is when it is locked and all showered down but empty and impenetrable.