farmers' market!
It's a perfect April morning-chilly but not cold, bright sun in a blue sky-and I just got back from the first outdoor market of the season, where I did an unusually good job of not buying everything I wanted to (which would have been more food than I could eat in the next three weeks).
Came home with: watercress, sunchokes, wild mushrooms, hickory nuts, a mix of carola and huckleberry potatoes, and the world's best lemon-poppyseed muffin.
Saw, and reveled in, but did not buy: wintered (=extra-sweet) parsnips, carrots, turnips, and spinach; black radishes; scallions; ramps and red sunchokes (next week!); button, crimini, and oyster mushrooms; daffodils, calla lilies, tulips, pansies, pussywillow; tomato plants, basil plants, all sorts of garden-starters; cheese curds; goat chevre; smoked trout, grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, venison, bison, ostrich; dozens of kinds of jams, jellies, and preserves; popcorn (bagged and on-the-cob); breads, quickbreads, soda breads, muffins, pastries, pies, turnovers, cookies, doughnuts; maple syrup, maple candy, honeycomb, clover honey, red honey, wildflower honey; more potatoes-red norland, white norland, all-blue, german butterball; and much more that I'm not remembering now.
It was overwhelming, and wonderful. This is the kind of morning that makes me want to throw over my academic career and go beg a sous-chef apprenticeship at one of the many restaurants in town that does such things. It won't last, of course, but it's fun while it does last.
Excuse me, I'm going to go read cookbooks now.