Sunday, May 13, 2007

$6.00 Asparagus




Well, for a blogger who is supposed to write about cooking, I think I fell a little short today. I didn't cook a thing! Wait! I did toast a bagel and heat up some left over spaghetti sauce to make a sort of pizza bite w/ freshly shredded parmesan. Too make up for my lack of cooking, I did plenty of eating. Our morning started out at the Baltimore City Farmers Market which is a rather large Farmers Market with a variety of local farm stands, craft stands and prepared food booths. Today being Mothers Day, it was packed! I think I now know where the saying "Everyone and their Mother" came from because that was certainly the case today. While at the Farmers Market, we indulged in a fresh pumpkin nut muffin from "the muffin lady" and a vegetable samosa and Sante Fe patty from the "Curry Shack" stand. They were out the West Indian patty, my favorite.
While at the market, we picked up a few items to assist in our culinary pursuits over the summer, including $6.00 asparagus. We saw plenty of stands with $3.00 asparagus but Johnnycakes was drawn to the organic stand. The asparagus stalks were bright green and thick and definitely looked more appetizing than some of the splindly bunches at nearby stands. The sign read that the asparagus was $4.25 per lb. We tried to pick a smaller bunch but the total still came to $6.00! I told Johnnycakes that we better enjoy that asparagus.
We also visited Nick, the local barbecue guy, to pick up some of his special "rub". This being our first visit to the market this spring, we were all out of his special seasonings for our barbecue. This time we opted for traditional "Carolina" instead of the southwest blend we tried last summer. We can't wait to try it.
In addition to these tasty items, we picked up some herbs to flavor our dishes. Johnnycakes picked thyme, while I picked basil, mint and cilantro. I've tried several times in the past to grow cilantro and it always dies. I am determined to make it grow this year! Johnnycakes also waited through a minor altercation between a farmer and a clueless patron over pepper plants and marigolds to score him self a banana pepper plant and a jalepeno plant for $.50 each. We also looked for cut flowers for our Moms and sisters but they didn't have much of a selection. It's a little early in the season and many of the booths aren't set up yet.
That pretty much sums up our first trip of the season to the Baltimore City Farmers Market.

No comments: