To Market We Go

Illustration by Ann Evans and Georgeanne Brennan, courtesy of Elderflower Press

When I spied a batch of tender, farm-fresh Persian cucumbers alongside a clutch of sun-ripened, on-the-vine cherry tomatoes at the produce stand, I excitedly flipped through my advance copy of Ann Evans and Georgeanne Brennan’s Market Memories Cookbook, which is set to come out June 30 and commemorates this summer’s 50th anniversary of the Davis Farmers Market. I had downloaded the e-galley to my phone in hopeful anticipation of a fortuitous match, which I found on page 40 featuring a recipe for cold cucumber soup. Some cookbooks prompt you to make a shopping list, but this one moves the reader to embark on an open-ended quest in search of seasonal serendipity—much the way a real chef approaches a farmers’ market, armed only with expertise and an open mind.

On the drive home, my whole car smelled like earth and sun, and mere minutes after spilling my bountiful haul onto the kitchen counter, I was carrying delicate, foamy bowls of puréed cucumber soup garnished with jewellike bits of tomato out to the backyard picnic table. The dead-simple recipe, which also called for ingredients already in my fridge and pantry—plain yogurt, chicken broth, fresh garlic, champagne vinegar—took almost no time to prepare in the blender. The next day, the Spicy Smashed Cucumber Salad came together just as easily, the vibrant green flesh glistening with flecks of red pepper, ginger and sesame oil.

Brennan cautions against trying these recipes with the leather-skinned cukes you find in winter. “You walk through the market, and you find the peak season produce,” she says. “Then you can do simple. If you don’t have peak season, simple doesn’t work.”

And with a great farmers’ market at one’s doorstep and the right recipe, cooking can be tantamount to magic. “It’s art and a creative endeavor,” Brennan says, “and a celebration of being together over good food.”

The Market Memories Cookbook contains page after page of sweetly simple recipes that showcase farm-fresh ingredients like this one for grilled summer corn. (Ann Evans and Georgeanne Brennan, courtesy of Elderflower Press)

Brennan and Evans are longtime foodies, artists and best friends whose relationship with the Davis Farmers Market—which launched in August 1976—goes back to its earliest days. Evans co-founded the market (a year later, it became one of California’s first certified farmers’ markets and served as a model for the 700-plus markets thriving across the state today). She also helped establish the Davis Food Co-op, became the mayor of Davis in the mid-’80s and has penned a food and agriculture column in The Davis Enterprise  for many years. Meanwhile Brennan, a longtime Winters resident, is now a James Beard Award-winning writer who has authored some 30 cookbooks, but back when the Davis Farmers Market was still in its infancy, she was a schoolteacher who as a side hustle co-founded Le Marché Seeds—the first mail-order company in the country that imported seeds for heirloom European fruits and vegetables and garnered the attention of publications like Vogue  and The New York Times. “It was at a time when there was an emerging organic movement with these young pioneer farmers in places like the Capay Valley,” she says. “So there was a mood of curiosity and excitement.” The farmers grew the seeds Brennan imported and sold their produce—including some of the first arugula, radicchio and lacinato kale grown in America—at the Davis Farmers Market.

With this history, Evans and Brennan are perfectly positioned to create the definitive market cookbook. They co-wrote the 92 recipes and collaborated on the illustrations, Evans inking the line drawings and Brennan adding the watercolors. And interspersed throughout are a collection of nostalgic memories of the market from local leaders like former Yolo County Supervisor Don Saylor and Craig McNamara, founder of Sierra Orchards and the Center for Land-Based Learning.

READ MORE: A Winters Tale – Craig McNamara and shaping the future of California agriculture

The modern city of Davis grew up around its cherished farmers’ market, the beating heart of a community where ag and academia go hand in hand, so it makes sense that it’s the epicenter of a food movement whose reverberations have been felt around the world. The small family farms in the rich fields of Yolo County fed into the foodie scene growing in the Bay Area, where chef Alice Waters helped launch “California cuisine,” opening Chez Panisse in 1971 with an approach to food that would eventually go global as the farm-to-fork movement. The “extraordinary” Davis Farmers Market, Waters says in the book, “stands as a testament to the simple, radical idea of connecting people directly with local organic farmers and ranchers.”

Ann Evans stops by the Farmboy Organics booth at the Davis Farmers Market on April 11, 2026. (Courtesy of the Davis Farmers Market Alliance)

Simple and radical: two words that describe the recipes in Market Memories Cookbook, like a squash preparation with just two other ingredients—butter and miso—that’s a masterpiece of flavor. This book is like having a chef sitting on your shoulder as you peruse the market stands, whispering in your ear the simplest ingredients to tease out the potent, fragrant flavonoids without masking their intensity and complexity.

“There’s one recipe in there, maybe people will laugh when they see it—the steamed artichoke with lemon mayonnaise. It’s just one paragraph: Steam them and put some lemon juice and lemon zest in mayonnaise and serve.” Evans says. “But a lot of people didn’t grow up with artichoke and don’t know how to cook it.”

When a few days later I tackled a composed salad of roasted beets, heirloom navel oranges and shaved fennel, the recipe felt so simple I had to resist the devil sitting on my other shoulder—the one who likes to binge seasons of Top Chef—begging me to spice it up with, say, a dash of za’atar or drizzle of balsamic glaze. Instead, I dutifully layered the fruit and vegetables, shaved the fennel bulb over them with a mandoline slicer, then sprinkled liberally with olive oil and feta. Well, the composition was as pitch-perfect as a classic three-cord blues song, the rustic elements wanting no further embellishment. This is one cookbook I’ll be keeping in my car as well as my kitchen, because I never want to shop for dinner again without these hyperlocal foodie angels whispering inspiration in my ear.