Cebollas y choclo at the Pisac Sunday Market

Some people like to window shop on chic urban streets, imagining themselves rocking an outfit worn by a headless anorexic mannequin. Me, I prefer to un-window shop (hush, you try to figure out an antonym of “window”) out in the open at a local market.

Put me where I can get my hands on vegetables just pulled from the ground, smell fruit plucked that morning from a tree, and guess at the identity of freshly dead things, and I’m in shopping bliss.

Onion seller in leg warmers at the Pisac Sunday Market

The Pisac Sunday Market in Peru is loaded with seasonal produce, sold by women wearing thick hats, sweaters, and leg warmers on sweltering days. They balance the heat by constantly eating ice cream.

Centuries old pisonay tree in Pisac's main square, surrounded by the tarps of the Sunday Market

Lacking a kitchen, there wasn’t much for me to buy in the produce part of the Pisac Market. But, there was plenty to learn, For example, if you want to make chicha, be sure to buy sprouted corn kernels. This will curtail the time needed to ferment the corn into “beer,” and get you drinking the sweet brew sooner.

Sprouted corn for making chicha, a freshly fermented corn beer

Corn of many colors

And, in Peru, onions are always in season and plentiful, which is why salsa criolla comes as a side dish to every meal.

Onion seller organizes her wares

And, lest you think that the only things for sale at the Pisac Sunday Market were onions and corn, there was my favorite Peruvian fruit, aguaymanto, still in its papery skin.

Aguaymanto and flower seller at the Pisac Sunday Market

And fairly benign dead things.

Dried, tiny fish on sale at the Pisac Sunday Market

Where in the world is your favorite market?