2/13/2011 - A Typical Day at the Farmers' Market

I thought it would be interesting to bring you along with me, dear readers, on a typical Farmers' Market excursion. DBF & I have our routine down solid at this point :) Though we could get all of our food delivered to us via our CSA, we just love the market so much that we make a point to go every week. Picture above: the entrance to the Ballard Farmers' Market, out of all of the Farmers' Markets in Seattle (and there are a LOT of them), this one is our favorite.

First stop at the market: Fresh Flours Bakery.It's not technically part of the Farmers' Market, but it's on the same street & it's too delicious to pass-up!

We usually wake up on Sunday (late-ish) morning & go straight to the market, so picking up breakfast is a must! Here I'm eating a swiss cheese & onion savory croissant (which I've already eaten the crispy brown top off of) & DBF has some sort of savory sausage pastry. Plus hot chocolate for me & drip coffee for him.

Once we're fed, we make a circuit of the market before purchasing anything to see what the different vendors are offering & at what prices. We love seeing what's freshest & sampling what the vendors have to offer: smoked salmon, apple slices, dried apricots, & goat cheese samples are pretty typical of the goodies handed-out as we mosey around.

Usually the first thing we buy with our limited budget is meat, because 1) it's the most expensive & 2) we tend to base our meals around what meat we have on hand. Our favorite place to buy our meat is Skagit River Ranch. We actually visited the farm last summer and got to see with our own eyes how well the animals are treated. They were totally open & welcomed us to explore the farm, pet the animals, & play with the dog. When they say the chickens are free-range, they mean it! There were chickens strutting all over the property, completely free to sit on your car, chase the dog around, or pick bugs from the grass. And let me tell you, their chickens are BEAUTIFUL! Not like those sickly albino chickens that industrial agriculture breeds. We also saw lambs, sheep, & baby chicks while we were on the farm, as well as a troupe of horses. We didn't have time to visit the cow & pig habitat while there, but I'm sure they're just as happy as all of the animals we encountered on the farm. And let me tell you, happy animals TASTE GOOD!!!! ;)

On this trip we bought 2 boneless pork chops & 2 NY strip steaks (Valentine's Day Special). We plan to cook the chops up with the surplus of apples in our crisper drawer & to grill one of the steaks for Valentine's Day.

Next, we visited the adorable & amusing Italian pasta vendor at Pasteria Lucchese. I don't know what the guy's name is, but he's always there & always exclaims how beautiful you are in his wonderful Italian way when you visit his booth :) (Shop keepers take note: Cute men who give you compliments do good business!) We've tried the Venison Ravioli & the Duck Ravioli before & decided to try the Boar this time. The frozen pasta comes in a container that contains about 2 servings (when served as a side dish) & cooks up in less than 10 minutes. Easy AND delicious! (Though it's a bit pricey at about $13 a container. It's a special treat for us!)

DBF as cheese-model. So cute!

To round-out our meal plan for the week we stopped by our favorite cheese booth, Mt. Townsend Creamery. We had planned on making a truffle cream sauce to go with our Boar ravioli, but the mushroom booth was out of truffles. Instead we purchased Trufflestack cheese from Mt. Townsend & will make the sauce from that instead. We also bought a harder, aged cheese (Trailhead) for grating over salads.

So there you have it! A day at the Farmers' Market! We'll use these few extra ingredients plus the milk & cream we get from Twin Brook Creamery via our local grocery store to create sumptuous meals from our CSA produce. Happy eating! :)