Last Saturday was the last day of the season for the outdoor Santa Fe Farmers Market, and I went. I try to go every week, like a good little foodie, but usually manage to haul my butt out of bed on a Saturday morning only about once a month.

I wanted some artisanal root vegetables. Upon the onset of the cold season, I gleefully get into "roasting" mode, when I coat calorie-laden starches with oil and butter and seasonings and cook them for hours with no guilt whatsoever.

I would like to tell you that a renewed commitment to health and vitamins was responsible for my new commitment to organic produce, but truthfully I think the satisfaction I've been getting out of root vegetables with dirt on them has to do with the movies I've been watching — specifically Lord of the Rings, the extended edition, and Soylent Green.

In the extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, there is a lengthy additional scene entitled "Concerning Hobbits," in which the simple agrarian lives of said Hobbits are discussed at length. In a nutshell, hobbits (which I think I am growing more and more to resemble) build their entire lives around eating. The footage of the furry-footed Hobbits filling up adorable wicker baskets with funny-looking produce inspired me to get some lumpy, misshapen, tiny, flavor-packed veggies of my own.

Soylent Green is a bizarre cautionary tale about a dystopic future in which the dwindling food supply has forced the human race to turn to multicolored soy chips that look like bathroom tile for sustenance. The characters fetishize real food, marveling over a black market stalk of celery or a morsel of "real meat." I found this astoundingly depressing. I had to get some fresh veggies as soon as possible, if only to reassure myself that the gastronomic world wasn't coming to an end.

Hence, the farmer's market. When you can look into the eyes of the person who, with her own hands, squeezed the teat of the goat that gave you the cheese, you know there is good left in the world.

I thought about bringing an adorable wicker basket to shop with, but felt a little self-conscious about how silly I'd look to other people, kind of like when I took to wearing an Indiana Jones outfit to high school.

The market itself was the perfect antidote to Soylent Green. Happy, smiling people wearing organic cotton and sunhats stand behind tables laden with piles of fresh greenery, ripe tomatoes, seasonal fruits of different sizes divided into baskets. Acoustic musicians play bluegrass for the shoppers, pleasant people offer to hold your dogs for you, and there is nary a self-check-out machine to be seen. They don't even take credit cards. I had to give someone actual money to get my food. I get teary-eyed just thinking about it.

The first thing I bought at the market was carrots. I am enamored of farmers market carrots. The ones you get in the store come stripped of their greenery and wrapped in plastic, emasculated. The ones I get at the market are real carrots — odd sizes, lumpy, and with lovely shafts of greenery at the top. I like to place the carrots in my bag just-so, so that the green parts stick up jauntily over the edge of my tote. This is how Farmers Market Barbie would roll, allowing the carrots to serve double-duty as both vitamin-rich food and fetching accessory.

Another big part of why I go to the Santa Fe Farmers Market is the free samples, which are abundant. I troll the aisles like a land shark, nibbling on a little goat cheese here, a morsel of roasted grass-fed beef there, elbowing children out of the way over the last mini cups of apple cider. As I shopped, I sampled goat cheese fudge, red-chile raspberry jam and artisanal sausages until I felt like a little stuffed sausage myself, toddling around with a belly full of cheese and meat and a bag full of vegetables.

At the end of the day, I came home with a bunch of carrots, a pound of lovely little beets so dirty they could grow their own beets, and some cute fingerling potatoes. I also bought myself a little jar of local honey, which I am told is both nature's perfect sweetener and a cure for seasonal allergies.

And because going to farmers market was the only form of marketing I had time to do this week, I turned all these ingredients into a dish.

MY HOBBIT-INSPIRED ROASTED ROOT VEGETABLES
(Serves 2-3 as a side dish)

1 pound artfully misshapen, dirt-covered little carrots
1 pound cute little organic beets
1 pound awesome, mutant-looking fingerling potatoes
3 tablespoons olive oil mixed with 2 tablespoons local honey
Crushed black pepper, to taste
Sea salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Clean the little vegetablettes. Toss them with the olive oil and honey, and season with crushed black pepper and salt.

Roast the vegetables for about 30 to 45 minutes, or until tender.

Serve warm.