I think this would work as a chandelier, no? Spotted at Caribbean Cuts in the Flower District. Something lovely to make up for the not-so-tidy bits that follow.

Wednesday morning rose bold and bright: perfect for a day at the market. I met up with photographer Judd Pilossof at the corner of Grand and Chrystie. We were going to walk around Chinatown and pick up a few things for a test shoot we’d planned.

Fish, shrimp, eels, crabs, clams, oysters, lobsters, frogs, turtles——if it once called a large (or glass-encased) body of water home, you’re likely to find it here. For the shoot: crabs and fish, and because the vegetables and dried herbs in that neighborhood can’t be ignored, bok choy bursting into tiny yellow blossoms and dried night-blooming cereus (a passer-by informed us it was good for the lungs when used to make tea).

The photos from the shoot are wonderful and I will share them in due time, but in the meanwhile, some curious parts spotted at one of the markets:

I was completely enchanted by these Concord grapes a few weeks ago when I visited the greenmarket by Lincoln Square. They were deep, midnight violet hiding under a gossamer bloom and intensely perfumed. The strong scent of sheer purple was discernible from a distance and provoked flashes of childhood’s gloppy grape jelly, drippy grape popsicles, and intoxicating grape juice.

The grapes’ velvety jackets are easily slipped off to reveal chubby, translucent green flesh with rather large, crunchy seeds. I usually chew right through these, but while testing this week’s Concord Grape Cake for Serious Sweets I found that they created too much of a distraction. In that recipe, they are removed, leaving you nothing but tender cake mottled with small explosions of grape and a thick topcoat of made-from-scratch jam.

I strolled around the very crowded Union Square Greenmarket last Saturday afternoon. Despite being jostled around and occasionally glared at for stopping to shoot this basket of red apples and that basket of brown pears, it is one of my favorite places to go in the fall in New York. It’s these jaunts that remind me how much I missed living here and how good it feels to melt into the bustle and grind and messiness of other people’s lives.