Blessings, Darlings!
My name is Fern, and I'm a farmer's market addict.
Today the Chubby Hubby and I went to the Bowie Farmers Market, a producer-only market. Oh, could we have bought!
Our favorite vendor there is Unger Farm. Their early and late season peaches are wonderful, but their midseason peaches are the most amazing peaches we have ever eaten. Bursting with flavor, often huge, always deeply colored, there are peaches you have to eat with a bib. You will eat them even without one, and the trails of peach juice they will leave on your shirt is a minor price to pay.
[Fern's hubby here: the thing that's really special about an Unger peach is that it has this deep flavor that is so far above any other peach we have ever eaten. The flavor doesn't just say "peach," it says "PEACH!!!" It's like the difference in sound between a cheap fiddle, vs a Stradivarius played by a master. The cheap fiddle sounds tinny and tentative, but a Strad has a rich full-throated sound that is as smooth as velvet. Yeah, Unger mid season peaches are THAT good. ]
Alas, it is too late in the year for ANY MORE peaches from their farm. We 'settled' for apples: a half-peck bag of Golden Delicious for both eating out of hand and for a pie I plan to make this week, and small box of Smokehouse, a heritage apple..
I've never run into anyone selling Smokehouse apples before. Firm but not rock hard, they have an intriguing sweet/tart/apple flavor. To me, they cry out to be eaten with slices of a sharp cheddar. No one else in the family feels they need to be paired with anything. Unfortunately, the Ungers have few boxes of them to sell, as they have had to remove many of their Smokehouse trees. The variety is not resistant to black spot. It's a shame, so, sadly, to allow more shoppers can enjoy the variety I limited myself to one box.
Our next spot is Barbie's Breads, who sells breads and pastries from Uptown Bakers http://www.uptownbakers.com/. Yes, long-time readers know that I bake most of my own bread, even grind much of my own grain for my own breads. However, Uptown Bakery makes better artisan bread than I do. Way better. Way, way better. So, for the 6 months or so that Barbie sells them at farmers markets, I buy one loaf a week. This week we bought a seeded rye. We somehow managed to resist the pastries ... this time. However, I can assure you that even their oatmeal cookies are special, their wonderbars ARE a wonder, and their unique tea cakes are the well-blessed result of a culinary ad lib.
There were no leeks to be had yet (I'm hoping that the drought hasn't toasted them, but booths were so busy I didn't have a chance to ask). We settled, after a survey of all stands, for adding beets, sweet potatoes, spinach, peaches from a different provider, and hard squash to our haul. CH and I had a spirited debate over getting some fresh unpasteurized cider, but ultimately had to admit we didn't have room in the fridge for the gallon jug. We also deferred buying asian pears, more peppers, hubbard squash (excellent for strudel!), and a whole host of other enticing produce.
And I do believe I'll also get some leeks at the grocer, as I feel a fall chicken pot pie coming on.
What's fresh and local and wonderful in your area now?
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label sweet peppers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sweet peppers. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Going-ons and On-Goings
Blessings, Fronds!
Sorry about the lack of posts - I may have to accept that over the summer I'll just be posting particularly sporatically. But let me tell you why ...
IN THE GARDEN
The spawn sort of hoed and weeded the older beds. I got the sweet peppers in (late) and started the first planting of beans (on time). The beans have not sprouted. At all. The exceptionally cute baby bunnies, who have worked hard at eating my parsley and salvia to the ground insist that they are NOT to blame for this (they say that they prefer them with the first tender real leaves before they eat them). So I should be planting more beans today. This planting was planned as the second bed. Oh well. The onions there are thriving, as are 4 of the 5 sweet peppers. I think my son mowed the 5th pepper, but I've not pressed him on that point.
The flowers by the front door are still not totally planted. Mostly because it has been too wet to plant them. We have had incredible rain this month! Oh - I have a new rain barrel, but haven't set it up with the downspouts yet.
Out in the back yard's new veggie bed I finally staked the tomatoes. They are coming along very nicely, especially the Roma's. The parsley is SLOWLY coming back - I have staked the 'body' of a milk jug around each of them to deter baby bunnies. I worry that I'm not harvesting the basil fast enough to stop it from bolting. Onions are lagging there.
I've harvested lambsquarters two times to serve as dinner veggies. The husband finds it a bit bitter, but LOVED it when I steamed it and added a cream sauce. Even if the 'cream sauce' was just a can of cream of mushroom soup!
FAMILY BUSINESS
Huband still working on getting new web site up. Main customer still down, no replacement. Should e-mail distributor today to see how month's product sales are going. Will eventually put a link to the NEW web site up here, but our current web site is so miserable I don't want to link it. I'm sure all of you want to buy USB HID and TCP programming products, but you'll just have to wait. Okay, if you insist on buying them, let me know. Or if you need Windows programming, or USB HID peripheral programming.
I'M STARTING A BUSINESS!!!!
I've been training to become a Mastermind group leader (Dr. Ben Mack's Carnegie Mastermind group construct). The first group starts tomorrow night, one hour weekly, by phone or computer. I'm looking to start groups on a whole variety of topics, including but probably not limited to: survival gardening, food storage, food storage cooking, divination/scrying, Wizard Tag, Intimacy with the Divine, Thaumaturgical magic, creating sacred space, and Business Skills for Pagans. All of this will be explained in more detail here and on .....
MY NEW WEB SITE
Far be it from me to let my husband have all the new web site fun. Yes, I'm finally building a full web site. I just installed Joomla on Sunday, and have been working on adding one article a day. I need to figure out buttons today, as well as adding a new article and getting a clue on how to do squeeze/registration pages.
THE REST OF LIFE
On top of all that, clothes still need to be washed, meals cooked and cleaned up after, the house needs cleaning, and the Solstice was this last weekend. Not that I made it to the ritual - the car died AGAIN, after $1K work of work on it. I spent the afternoon in a parking lot about 5 miles from the park we were meeting at, waiting for my husband's help.
So, that's what's up here. I'm not commenting on Iran, or the train crash here in DC yesterday, or any deep philosophical stuff at this point. But maybe someday I'll explain that in terms of Celtic Reconstructionism - in an odd way it makes sense.
Frondly, Fern
Sorry about the lack of posts - I may have to accept that over the summer I'll just be posting particularly sporatically. But let me tell you why ...
IN THE GARDEN
The spawn sort of hoed and weeded the older beds. I got the sweet peppers in (late) and started the first planting of beans (on time). The beans have not sprouted. At all. The exceptionally cute baby bunnies, who have worked hard at eating my parsley and salvia to the ground insist that they are NOT to blame for this (they say that they prefer them with the first tender real leaves before they eat them). So I should be planting more beans today. This planting was planned as the second bed. Oh well. The onions there are thriving, as are 4 of the 5 sweet peppers. I think my son mowed the 5th pepper, but I've not pressed him on that point.
The flowers by the front door are still not totally planted. Mostly because it has been too wet to plant them. We have had incredible rain this month! Oh - I have a new rain barrel, but haven't set it up with the downspouts yet.
Out in the back yard's new veggie bed I finally staked the tomatoes. They are coming along very nicely, especially the Roma's. The parsley is SLOWLY coming back - I have staked the 'body' of a milk jug around each of them to deter baby bunnies. I worry that I'm not harvesting the basil fast enough to stop it from bolting. Onions are lagging there.
I've harvested lambsquarters two times to serve as dinner veggies. The husband finds it a bit bitter, but LOVED it when I steamed it and added a cream sauce. Even if the 'cream sauce' was just a can of cream of mushroom soup!
FAMILY BUSINESS
Huband still working on getting new web site up. Main customer still down, no replacement. Should e-mail distributor today to see how month's product sales are going. Will eventually put a link to the NEW web site up here, but our current web site is so miserable I don't want to link it. I'm sure all of you want to buy USB HID and TCP programming products, but you'll just have to wait. Okay, if you insist on buying them, let me know. Or if you need Windows programming, or USB HID peripheral programming.
I'M STARTING A BUSINESS!!!!
I've been training to become a Mastermind group leader (Dr. Ben Mack's Carnegie Mastermind group construct). The first group starts tomorrow night, one hour weekly, by phone or computer. I'm looking to start groups on a whole variety of topics, including but probably not limited to: survival gardening, food storage, food storage cooking, divination/scrying, Wizard Tag, Intimacy with the Divine, Thaumaturgical magic, creating sacred space, and Business Skills for Pagans. All of this will be explained in more detail here and on .....
MY NEW WEB SITE
Far be it from me to let my husband have all the new web site fun. Yes, I'm finally building a full web site. I just installed Joomla on Sunday, and have been working on adding one article a day. I need to figure out buttons today, as well as adding a new article and getting a clue on how to do squeeze/registration pages.
THE REST OF LIFE
On top of all that, clothes still need to be washed, meals cooked and cleaned up after, the house needs cleaning, and the Solstice was this last weekend. Not that I made it to the ritual - the car died AGAIN, after $1K work of work on it. I spent the afternoon in a parking lot about 5 miles from the park we were meeting at, waiting for my husband's help.
So, that's what's up here. I'm not commenting on Iran, or the train crash here in DC yesterday, or any deep philosophical stuff at this point. But maybe someday I'll explain that in terms of Celtic Reconstructionism - in an odd way it makes sense.
Frondly, Fern
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