As we continue to enjoy making and eating more gourmet meals, I had begun to feel on numerous occasions that it would be nice to go to the Farmer's market again and get some of the fresh ingredients there. It also works well with our green philosophy to support local farms and eat seasonally. We generally don't need a lot of produce because we get so much in our CSA box, but there usually are one or two items that we need that we don't get in the box.
One of the biggest ones is fresh, organic berries. Our normal store, Sprouts, does occasionally have organic berries, but not consistently, and we enjoy eating them weekly. Also, I happen to enjoy the ambiance of the farmer's market where you get to interact with the person who grew your food. My friend Emily talks about choosing what places you want to support with your dollar, and we feel like the farmer's market is one of those places. We want the local farms to stay in business, and we want to support the small farms that don't have enough produce to sell to the stores, so even though it has proved to be somewhat more expensive than our normal shopping trips, we decided that for now, we will continue to go.
Here is a picture from our most recent trip. As far as produce goes, we just got berries, loquats,tomatoes and onions. However, we also stopped by the hummus stand and sampled a variety of hummus (we were given three pieces of pita bread and told we could sample any flavor we wanted) and purchased a unique and tasty chipotle hummus, which we have been enjoying with chips this week. Last week we went to a bread stand, and we enjoyed her bread so much that this week we came back and got two loaves. The last item that we purchased this week was granola. This was on our list for our grocery store portion of the trip, but when we saw someone selling it on our way out we decided to try it. It was a few dollars more than we would normally pay for the same amount of granola, but the flavor is so much improved over our usual granola, that we think that it is worth buying it again next week as well. Apparently the granola is toasted with a hint of coconut, and it impacts the flavor in a strikingly good way.
Since part of our thought process of returning the farmer's market weekly is to choose with our dollars, we currently plan to vary which produce stand we buy from and support different local farms each week. The question remains if we will make the same choice where bread and granola is concerned, where they have earned our loyalty from their great flavors.
These are some of the meals that we have made recently:
This is cauliflower tossed with prosciutto, dates, red pepper flakes and oil. Then we roasted the mixture in the oven, and ate it with a caper aioli on the side. We were very pleased with the results, and even though I felt like the dates were somewhat of a strange ingredient in this recipe, their sweetness really balanced out the spicy red pepper flakes.
Grilled chicken with a fresh red pepper coulis with a side of braised celery
Grilled trout with tomatoes stuffed with rice, mozzarella and basil topped with breadcrumbs and then baked
Grilled bison topped with a red wine reduction served on top of mustard glazed parsnips.
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