Tuesday Farmers Market

 

It’s often the simplest foods that make me the happiest.  For breakfast this morning, I had oatmeal with strawberries, honey, and low fat organic milk.  This was so amazingly good.  I’ve been using a lot more honey since buying a jar of it at the farmers market.  Honey has much more flavor than sugar or agave, and I find that a little goes a long way for adding a little something extra to a dish.  I am happy to report that my strawberries have kept beautifully over the past few days.  I think its probably a good idea to buy my berries in smaller amounts and eat them within a few days, but the preservation tips that I got from the farmers market people worked out really well.

Speaking of the farmers market, the Lemonator and I headed to the Tuesday market today.

 

We stocked up on most major things over the weekend, but we supplemented with a piece of grass fed steak, blueberries, tomatoes, and zucchini.  We were also running low on onions and garlic, so we picked up some of those.  In keeping with my local challenge, I think that over the next month I will document my grocery trips to give an idea of what I’m buying.  I think that might be the most helpful way to look at my progress on that front.

The Lemonator and I also split a spinach and artichoke empanada.  These things are amazing…flaky pastry stuffed full of vegetables.  They are scrumptious and not the slightest bit greasy.  We both wanted more than a half, but we knew that dinner was coming soon.

Dinner was the rest of the Lemonator’s homemade whole wheat pasta.  I decided to make use of my basil and try my hand at some pesto.  I used this recipe, which worked well.  The recipe suggests mincing the garlic before adding it, which I did not have the patience for.  It’s true that garlic tends to not distribute evenly, but I remedied that by just adding the garlic first and giving it a few pulses in the food processor before adding the other ingredients.

 

Fresh pesto has a very potent taste…the Lemonator was convinced that I had put something spicy into the pesto and was very surprised when I told him that the spiciness was all from the basil.  A little goes a long way, so when you’re mixing the pesto and pasta together, I find it helpful to add a bit of pasta water to thin the pesto so that it distributes evenly across the noodles.

I ate my pasta with some of the farmers market grape tomatoes.  To me, a pesto-dressed dinner is not complete without some tomatoes.

I also had a delicious farmers market orange for dessert.  I got a big ten pound bag of local oranges at the farmers market on Sunday for $7, and they are some of the juiciest, most flavorful oranges I have eaten in a long time.  My budgetary strategy is to buy lots of cheap oranges and supplement with small amounts of berries and other “fun” fruit so that I get some variety without spending too much.