j'aime les marrons grillés

My question today is:

Is Montreal a roasted-chestnuts-in-the-winter kind of city?

I wouldn't be a librarian if I couldn't find that out for myself.

Then again, I'm housewifey, I bet I could make them.

At the McGill farmer's market yesterday, I bought tomatoes, squash, and some tasty but mysterious fried ball of dough. I was told it was vegetarian; that's all I know about it. I don't know if this is just me, but in my experience, farmer's market stalls come in two varieties: hippie and yuppie. Hippie stalls sell things for so little that you're not sure the commune's going to earn enough money to make supper for everyone. Yuppie stalls accept both legal tender and limbs as currency. There were only two stalls at the time that I went, one run by student types and the other by less studenty types. Now, I am glad to patronize local business, but Madame et Monsieur were charging $12 for a cluster of seemingly ordinary garlic bulbs maybe the size of my forearm. As far as I could tell, they weren't special in any way, smoked or roasted or tipped with gold, so I'm guessing I could get what would be, to my tomato sauce, essentially the same thing, down at Marché Lobo for maybe two or three bucks. And that's $1.89 to $2.83 USD. Yeah, I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I understand that sometimes local and/or organic things might cost a bit more (though those tomatoes were only a dollar a pound, can I just say). But I'm a grad student. We're talking a few steps above ramen, here. I need produce, and I need it cheap. I can't save the planet if I get scurvy first.

Plus, your stall did not have anything fried, so points off for that, too.