yolo fruit stand and Oto's japanese market

mini cucumbers (called parisian cucumbers... they're not like pickling cukes, more like really tiny things that look like crooked-neck squash), papaya, daikon sprouts, dried shiitake mushrooms, green onions, and a custard cake for the gentleman

romanesco cauliflower

it's bright little jewels like this that make waking up early on a dreary, overcast, foreboding saturday to drag myself to the farmer's market such a good idea.

isn't this cauliflower gorgeous? it's a cross between broccoli and cauliflower and is so tender and lovely that all you need to do is just steam it and toss in some olive oil and lemon juice. some romanesco cauliflower is just varying shades of green, some has some burgundy tinges, and this one is green/yellow and purple. all have geometrically-designed florets that come to a point and it sat in my fridge for a few days because i just wanted to look at it for a while before eating it.

Saturday:

Farmer's Market, various snackings

I was actually really surprised. Dee woke up after staying up with andy (i went to bed at a very reasonable hour, thankyouverymuch) really late and came with me to the farmer's market. we ran into matt and genna and their kiddos abby and noah. we tasted a lot, we poked and prodded a lot, and we brought home armfuls of awesome ingredients.

we spend the rest of the day snacking, we sat outside as andy washed the car, then we hit the pool. Big Time.

Later on that night we went to BJs with Mike for some beer swigging and food. What a great day!

July 2007

Farmer's Market, Transformers

Woke up at 7 on a saturday and couldn’t fall back asleep. i swear to god, who needs an alarm clock to wake you up when you have untreated allergies that make you sneeze 35 times in a row as soon as your sleeping body even thinks of waking.

Decided to make some good use of it, and went to the davis farmer’s market. I had to make a couple of stops to pull out some benjamins, et cetera. It was awesome. It really is a feast for the eyes. The thing that was kind of irk-y is that some of the people there (only, like, 4, but i’m cynical) were, like, hanging around. like this was a middle aged hipster party or something, at eight in the morning no less. Seriously, they were walking up and down with coffees in their hands, not even looking at the goods. it was really weird, almost like they sort of wanted to be seen there, but didn’t actually want to buy anything. so bizarre.

anyway, i made off with some great stuff. In addition to the lovelies in the picture (they were even better than they look, except for the fresh peas, which were so tiny when you opened them it wasn’t even worth it, but the strawberries tasted overwhelmingly like strawberry... just a small basket of the most delicious looking and tasting beauties), i got some gouda curds. i asked this cheese lady if she happened to know where i could find cottage cheese curds, like dry cottage cheese to make nanyslyky (ukranian stuffed crepes) and holypsy (little baby buns stuffed with cottage cheese and dill). I’m not about to make either of them until at least thanksgiving (canadian or american) or christmas, but it’s nice to be on the lookout for hard-to-find items, and that stuff freezes well. Anyway, i’m pretty excited for these gouda curds. i think it would be a great taste combination to pair it with the dill that you regularly put in.

So that afternoon we decided to see Transformers before Mike had to go to work that evening. It was AWESOME. The three of us loved it, especially Andy. Mike made me sneak in a Big Bear can of Coors Light. i felt very guilty, especially considering a family with two small children were behind us. oh well, they were annoying and screamy anyway.