Cooking Debauchery

Planked Salmon

Spending a week away at VMworld and eating mass produced food has made me sharply aware of my own food taboos.

I have lots of food taboos, most of which I am willing to break for the sake of politeness.  Unless of course those food rules coincide with one of the things I really can’t eat for practical reasons.

Chief among them is “thou shalt not consume cooked fish.”

I do however make an exception for salmon.  Planked or smoked preferably, though I suppose that they are not too far apart if I really think about it.

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There is simply no excuse for it.

I realized that I had not actually been to the market in over a month. Heck I hadn’t posted in over a month.

As I said there really isn’t an excuse for it….well except for all the traveling and then the nasty icky cold from hell that sapped all my energy and made me incapable of naught but staring blankly at the computer and then going to bed for the last two weeks or so.

And despite the fact that my ankle was complaining quite loudly that it was in fact not wishing to be walked on… I stuffed myself into my ankle brace and headed back to my favorite Saturday morning haunt.

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Hey a Saturday market post ON market day. What a concept!

I really thought I wasn’t going to make it to the market. Obviously I was wrong but I made it with just half hour to spare till closing. Which means I didn’t have enough time to peruse the stalls at my usually leasurly pace.

I don’t journal about it often because it is a staple of my table and it gets repetitive but the one thing at the market that is a “must have” is bread from The Bread Gallery. I cannot say enough about this bread. My usual purchase comes down to a bag of 8 rolls, then either their wonderful cheese bread or my favorite garlic spin.

The rolls are a perfect marriage of white bread and chewy crust. Just the right ratio to keep each bite interesting. Ever so slightly sweet they are the most perfect little sandwich rolls. Even better, I love them for breakfast, toasted then spread with a little bit or butter or jam.

Farmers Market 6-03

Well, one unexpected business trip, a blown knee, and a long weekend of assorted debauchery later and I realized I haven’t posted in two weeks.

I assure you that was not my intention.

Especially since I have a new camera to play with. It’s hard to see in the small pictures but I could instantly see the difference between the pictures that my old camera took to the new ones. The only down side is that the camera is FAR more complex and I am still reading the manuals.

However, as you can see from the picture above, I still managed to get off a few good shots.

After a two week absence the market literally exploded with fruit.

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I had actually meant to post this on Saturday but mothers day weekend was far busier than I would have liked. I barely got the opportunity to take the picture before I was off and running. In the end, I didn’t end up getting to bed until past 2:00am.

But that is another post all together and I will get there eventually!

And it has nothing to do with the market.

The first of the summer fruits is here and I couldn’t be happier!

Every other stand had cherries, peaches are beginning to show themselves, and a couple of places even had decent apricots.

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Ah! Back to the farmer’s market. I have missed it. Three weeks without and I was beginning to go into withdrawal!

The market is in transition. It’s everywhere. Citrus fruits are on their way out you can see it in the quality and quantity of the produce. Tables that have, for the last couple of months, been groaning with every variety of citrus you can images now have just a few meager samples, most of them heading towards over ripeness. The exceptions are those honey sweet Kamrat Tangerines, which while small were fairly plentiful.

I guess that is as close a change of seasons as we get around here.

The next series of crops has not come in yet. Wares are sparse as farmers await to harvest the new crops.

I am not certain what is next but I can’t wait!

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(click to enlagre)

And now for something completely different....

Ok not really!  Just a different photo format than my usual basket round up.  Just thought close up of my favorite finds were better than a huge group shot.

On the plus side:  The strawberries are here!  The strawberries are here!

They have been here for several weeks byt they have been rather uninteresting.  One farmer tipped me off to the reason.  California has been having quite a number of rainy, cold days.  And as it turns out, not heat no sweet.  As far as strawberries go anyway.  But this one particular stand lured me with the fresh, sweet scent of berries from three stalls away and boy did they live up to their promise!

These will, without a doubt, be eaten raw.  Generally right from the colander over the kitchen sink.  The novelty of fresh sweet berries has yet to wear off and it is inconceivable right now to *gasp* cook with them.  It will be a few frantic weeks of this kind of blatant gluttony, licking the sweet juices off crimson stained fingers before I can even think of doing anything else.  It was even hard to capture the image without first sneaking a berry or two on the side.

Who can resist?

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.

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What the heck is this?

A bad skin disease?

Some alien planet?

A bubbling mud flat?

The surface of a diseased organ?

A calcified brain?

Or simply the worlds uggliest...

Farmers Market 3-11

So I skipped a few week's posts. 

I have also missed a few markets.  Last week because I spent more than three hours with the tax guy.  And a couple of weeks before that because of my trip to Monterey & Carmel.  And in between then, the market has not been particularly interesting.  Oh there have been the usual purchases of dates and citrus and bread, but even I am tired of talking about those.

This week was different.  Spring has sprung; the market is in a new location which is more dynamic.  It seems to have re-energized the entire place.

So what, of note, did I find today?