Category: Food & Recipes

I actually spent less than $30 dollars at the farmer’s market this week because the chick who sells me eggs wasn’t there. Egg chick, what happened? I missed ya!

• potatoes
• a yellow squash and a GIANT cucumber
• salad greens
• six ears of corn
• two kinds of plums (the smaller ones are Candy Plums and my kids do indeed pop them like candy)
• delicious looking blackberries- they must be tasty because as you can see here, the boys ate nearly half the box between the market and this photo being taken
• more “1st crop” apples- thinking of making a crisp!
• and again with the Smoked Cheddar. My husband loooves the Smoked Cheddar from Eve’s Cheese, I am going to have to stock up for the winter….You can freeze cheese, can’t you?

We went to my in-law’s for dinner, so I made myself a quick local lunch.

Open-faced grilled cheese (smoked cheddar on wheat bread from local bakery) with 1st pick tomato from the backyard!

Also some backyard green beans and sliced apples.

This was the laziest meal ever, just passed the sandwich and beans under the broiler.

Delicious! Although next tme I will be more careful to fully blanket the bread with the cheese.

Actually, now that I am thinking about it, I ate another local meal this week.

Just some cut-up peppers, tomato and cucumber from the farmer’s market, egg salad (local eggs and homemade mayo). I dipped the veggies into the egg salad, which really grossed out my husband. I don’t know, I really like egg salad. Is that a crime?

Today I am looking forward to some cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches.

Or, maybe some apple and cheddar sandwiches? Maybe another tea party is in order.

This week $35 dollars bought me:

• two baskets of candy plums
• one basket blueberries
• two green peppers (50 cents apiece!)
• yellow squash and a cucumber (also 50 cents!)
• onions
• six ears of corn
• potatoes
• salad greens
• dozen eggs
• smoked cheddar
• and APPLES! First apples of the season! The kids were so excited.

The farmer’s market was really crowded! I overheard someone talking about their green blog and I was dying to see who it was and talk to them, but didn’t want to lose my place in line. There were easily a dozen people ahead of me and a dozen behind- just to get to the tent! But the wait was totally worth it.

Our power was out all day, and we were out of gas for the grill. So my exciting local meal consisted of:

1. a salad with peppers and cucumber and hard-boiled egg (leftover from last week).
2. Plums (wow, those plums are good) and blueberries throughout the day.
3. Apples- plain for the kids, with smoked cheddar for the adults. The vendor who we bought the apples from cautioned us to eat them quickly, as early season apples get mealy quickly. No problems there, they were all gone two hours after I got home. We love apples.
4. Leftover potato salad from the potatoes and onions and egg from last week (but the mayo was storebought).

No pictures because it was so dark in the house.

But we were so thankful to have all this fresh food on hand, especially since I pack it all into a cooler when I leave the farmer’s market. We didn’t have to open our fridge (just once, to grab the potato salad and the jug of water) and I think that helped to save the rest of our food.

I need to come up with a better plan for when the power goes out- something that seems to be happening much more frequently these days. This business of buying large quantities when things go on sale doesn’t hold up when they are in danger of spoiling during an outtage.

Week 8! Where has the summer gone?

This week’s Farmer’s Market bounty:

Six ears of corn, peppers (green and purple), yellow squash, a cucumber, a tomato, an onion (obscured by the tomato), baskets of red potatoes, pie cherries, and plums; two kinds of colby cheese- jalapeno and Italian; and a dozen eggs.

$31- one dollar over budget. I could have bought the potatoes cheaper at a different table, but I really like this particular farm and wanted to buy something as a show of support.

Does anyone else do this- deliberately split up their shopping between vendors?

It was too bloody hot to cook anything. I did boil up those ears of corn, but aside from that, we grazed all day, cutting up the peppers and tomato and eating them raw, pulling chilled plums from the fridge, and serving cuts of cheese on slices of cucumber.

Philly Farmer Kristin was visiting with baby Michael Lee, and reminded me to mention that “cucumbers are nature’s crackers”.

Funny, how quickly local food became a fact of life. No longer a big production, really.

We eat locally because we buy locally. And it was no big deal. We just shifted our dollars to the local market, rather than the supermarket.

We buy locally for a number of reasons-

• We enjoy and look forward to going to the market, out in the open air. So much nicer than the stress of the supermarket, especially when you travel with three kids.
• We like having actual conversations with the vendors, and with other shoppers.
• We like the quality and variety of our produce and by extension, our diet.
• I particularly like that somehow, I am getting fresh, mostly organic, produce: for cheaper than I can find it at the supermarket.
• I like that my kids are more likely to try new foods if someone at the market recommends it to them. ( Last time it was dessert cucumbers, which appeared to be normal cucumbers, but in a kid-sized, to-go package.)
• The kids like that I am much more likely to bake and cook new things if I am excited about a market find. (Really, when was the last time you were excited over a grocery store find?)

I guess I’m saying we buy locally because we like buying locally- the excellence of the food is a nice bonus.

Eating local foods has become more than a Sunday evening affair. It’s what we have in the fridge, an everyday event. Not every meal, mind you, and not always every ingredient. But pretty darn close and getting closer.

I don’t doubt it will become more difficult as we move past the prolific fruits of the summer months. Frankly, I’m a little nervous about it, and beginning to consider what foods I can realistically put by.

But for now, eating locally is a given, the way things are around here. Rather than feeling challenged, we feel richer for it.

Local: the new normal.