I keep meaning to make a pie with the apples Ryan and I picked at Stone Ridge Orchard on Saturday. So today after work, I nipped up to Union Square to get some extra ingredients.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the Union Square Greenmarket sells fresh and local produce, baked goods and flowers until 6pm. I have lived just blocks from here for months now but I’ve never been – which is ridiculous because I love a good market.

And what a good market it is. When I arrived at about 5.30ish, I was happy to see that the stalls were still very well stocked. They were so colourful and rustic and made me want to buy everything.

I browsed stalls brimming with massive aubergines and lettuce leaves, turfed through wooden crates filled with tomatoes, and resisted the piles of crumbling cakes and loaves. Perhaps most interesting were the bottles of glistening honey that were made by bees kept on the roofs of city apartment blocks.

But one of my favourite stalls – and one I think I’ll unfortunately never use – was filled with flowers and potted plants. There were some interesting types I’d never seen before, like purple ornamental chillies. There was also a plant that when you touched the leaves, it closed up. So cute.

After browsing the length of the market – which was much larger than I’d anticipated – I opted for a box of raisins and a bag of plums to add to the pie. The plums were gorgeous and so ready to bite into. Somehow I managed to get a few home and get on to that pie.

(I actually opted for an apple and plum crumble – covered in a heart attack-inducing crust of oats, butter and brown sugar. The only problem is I can’t figure out how to turn on my oven. So it looks like I’ll be waiting even longer to take that first bite.)