Produce-arrific weekend
Saturday morning rolled around and, since I was up before 8, I decided to swing by the Farmer's market to see what there was to see. Upon arriving, I tripped and fell upon temptation, spent all of the money in my wallet and came home with the mother lode of autumnal produce!
Among my goodies were:
- A loaf of bread and two croissants from Zoss
- a head of butter lettuce
- three little bunches of Swiss chard
- ~3lbs of Stayman Winesap apples
- a club (or manouille) of Chesnok Red garlic - it's pink!
- 2lbs of heirloom tomatoes to make up for our garden giving up in August
- ~1.5lbs of Austrian Crescent fingerling potatoes
- a nice sized bag of basil leaves
- 4 extremely large purple and orange carrots
- a pint of ground cherries, a food I've never eaten before
The Haul
Ground Cherries! (In a hand-blown bowl)
So after getting home and finding myself eating ground cherries by the delicious handful, I turned around, headed back to the market (via the bank) and picked up some more ground cherries and - because they were there and I was weak - 5lbs of Idared apples and 3 Honey Crisps (for $1!!)
These babies are going into a pie, I think, or possibly a tart: Ground Cherry pie is supposed to be wonderful and that was entirely how I justified my return trip. ;-)
Speaking of pie, I used these lovely apples on the left (the Idareds, specifically) to make my very first pie ever! Some of you might not believe this, but I've never successfully made a pie crust before. (A pate sucre tart once, yes, but no pie.) It was new territory for me, and I think it came out well enough if a little tough. I've been eating it for breakfasts anyway. Clearly the only thing to do is try again.*darlox nods vigorously in the background*
And after all of this, what did we do on Sunday? I dragged poor, jetlagged darlox out raspberry picking for some end-of-season raspberries. I attempted to live out the plot of Blueberries for Sal (sans bears) by eating almost as many berries as I put in my basket - what? they were falling apart in my hands! they weren't going to make it home anyway... - but we ended up with two quarts of raspberries for our troubles. I froze most of them, ate a few with cream, and think I'll use some in my future pie-making efforts.
On Monday we dried or froze our thyme, oregano, chives and tarragon, and made two batches of pesto with the remnants of our basil and the farm market basil. Later this week, I'll be aiming for an heirloom tomato salad or two, a chard casserole and, eventually, some more apple baking. Autumn always makes me feel so domestic!