Farmers Market 4-1

Today I am officially announcing the start of my cooking blog – this site!  Welcome! 

After weeks of work and dual posting, I am switching all cooking and cooking related post here!

In honor of that I spent the last week trying to figure out what my first official post should be. And then it occurred to me: start where it’s started. 

And it all started with a farmers market. More specifically, Pike Place Market. Last May. It started with the fact that the pictures I took on my vacation there were terrible. In order to improve, I started taking pictures of food. Food didn’t move and food didn’t care if it posed for an hour, nor did it complain of cramps from holding a pose too long.

This coincided with the start of my interest in local farmers markets, due in part to Barbara at Tigers and Strawberries who wrote in eloquent prose about eating locally. And thus my desire to improve my photography met with my deep-seated interest in food. 

It all comes back to the food.

It rained for most of the morning making me fear that I was not going to make it to the market at all. By the time I finally made it, the market was close to closing. I barely managed to hit all of my favorite stalls before we were summarily pushed out of the parking lot.

I did however manage to pick up two of those incredible grapefruits. Name “Cocktail Grapefruit” they are think skinned and juicy with a flavor somewhere between an orange and a grapefruit. Sweet enough to peel and eat like an orange they lack the characteristic bitterness of their kin. The kind of grapefruit that even grapefruit haters can love. At the same stall I picked up those lovely blood oranges. Not the typical dark red of most blood oranges the insides are a dark gold dappled with burgundy. A sweet-tart orange, it seems a shame to cook so I am considering them either as part of a dessert or a salad, something to really showcase the pretty colors and bright flavors. 

But those were just the side show. What I really wanted this weekend was the tuna. It is not often that while watching Food TV that I want to make that exact thing immediately. It happens even less frequently when I am watching Giada. But that is exactly what happened when I saw the recipe for a raw tuna appetizer. And I was determined that I was gonna make it this weekend no matter what. Of course I couldn’t get the pretty pretty tuna without also getting some of the awesome wild caught salmon. 

The salmon I will more than likely plank and serve with that dazzling white cauliflower roasted with garlic and hazelnut oil. A true feast fit for a queen. Not that my family appreciates it. Then again, I suppose that is the point of getting good at something, making it look effortless. 

The real stars of the basket though are the dried fruit. Dried plums and apricot so good they might as well be candy. They come from my favorite fruit vendor. The one that has fruit so good it almost makes me cry. It is this fruit then that he takes and carefully dries at the peak of ripeness into those plump morsels that speckle the tray. Dried naturally and without preservatives they preserve and intensify the fruits flavor. They are the best I have ever tasted bringing rays of summer with every bite. They also have the most incredible raisins, but those will have to wait for another post. 

The market was closing as I picked up the dried fruit and I had to run to get to the very last vendor so that I could pick up oranges for juicing. Still at the peak of their season, the entire 25 pound bag was only seven dollars though I had to have the farmer hand it down to me from their truck. 

Of course once I got it home, I had help unpacking everything. Shkoda has an unnatural fascination with citrus. Before trying to steal that bag that weighs more than 15 times what she does, she tries to nose the grapefruit out of the basket and hijack it for purposes unknown. I am lucky I got the shot as having been discovered she took off like a bullet and hid behind the fridge, only to sneak out later while I was of taking photos of my spoils on the grass.

Not to be outdone the cat wanted to join in on the fun, though he was far more interested in my hair than in the basket of food. Between the two of them, I spent most of the afternoon in stitches. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday, if I do say so myself.

Comments

[Lori Holuta]

Congratulations! The site looks wonderful! And I couldn't resist testing out if it'll let me post replies here, too.

[kitarra]

Thank you CJ! It does let you post comments but....it doesn't do nested comments like LJ!