Pemberton The Great

Down the street from my apartment on Mass Ave in Cambridge is Pemberton Farms & Garden Center. When I first moved in I really wanted it to be an awesome little market with fresh, local foods and a variety of interesting foods, but it wasn't. It was a small market with random expensive foods and a garden center. Over the last couple of years they have expanded and improved their selection of foods to the point where you could do the majority of your regular shopping in there (though it's still mostly local purveyors and smaller producers of things so the options are limited of course), they have a full liquor section with a really great selection of wines and craft beers, and of course the garden center is still lively.

At the beginning of October they held a customer appreciation day where they had samples of many of their great local products. Everything from cheeses, gluten free snacks, chips & salsa, dips & spreads, tea, cereal, coconut water, desserts, beer, wine, mead. They also had a grill set up with hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausage. It was a really fun afternoon.

We left with some salsa (in our ever long quest to find good store bought salsa) and a couple bottles of wine, and my new favorite snack.

Falafel Chips.

They really do taste like falafel. They're just salty enough to satisfy my want of salty chips, they're flavorful on their own but great with hummus, and you only need a few chips to make you feel like you've had a decent snack. And though they're still chips, they're healthier than eating regular potato chips, and because they've got a good amount of fiber in them they're also more filling than regular chips so I don't feel the need to eat as many.

It's been great to watch Pemberton expand and really become what I've wanted them to be for the last 5 years. Both Jessica and I are frequent customers, sometimes going in multiple times a day (don't judge!). And I've added their new series of tasting events to my calendar (that I've been kept updated of via facebook) so that we can try more new things and support this great local market.

And tonight, I'll raise my glass of wine (that I bought at the customer appreciation event) to Pemberton Farms!