It’s so hot, I can’t think anymore. Here’s what I do: fruit+ice+blender and salad. Richfield Farms has beautiful tender heads of green oak leaf and endive hidden at the back of the stand. Smallwood’s and Truck Patch have bags of pre-mix salad greens for even easier preparation. All the berries make great salad adds. Oh, how’s this for a happy accident: I bought a Silver from Cherry Glen Goat Cheese but ended up with a Chipotle, which I’d never tried. Great in salad with raspberries, not too spicy, but a little zing, wonderfully creamy, one crottin easily covers about 5 salads.
Events at market:
- Beep beep! Here comes the Compost Cab! We’re proud to partner with this new, local service — check it out and sign up at www.compostcab.com. This Saturday, Compost Cab will be holding its first Community Compost Day right here at the Mt. Pleasant Farmers Market. It’s only trash if you treat it like trash, folks. So bring your food scraps, coffee grounds, eggshells, tea bags — pretty much any organic material that’s not meat or dairy — and Compost Cab will collect it and take it down to our friends at the Common Good City Farm in Ledroit Park, where they’ll turn it into awesome, natural soil, which they’ll use to grow food for the community. Come be part of urban composting made easy!
- Keep your eye out this weekend at the market, local youth will be performing a short play about the Census on the bandstand!
- Rick and Mara are back for a lovely morning of accordion duet, followed by Annabeth and Friends.
- The Farmers’ Market Bike Clinic is always set up! Come have your neighbors help you get your bike back in trim, show you how to DIY, and offer advice on rides, parts, proms…that’s right, the WABA Bike Prom is coming up June 26th, you never saw a cuter and happier group than bicycle nerds in taffeta!
News:
- Like so many small family farmers and dairy farmers across the country, Keswick Creamery is on the verge of losing their farm. But it’s not that business has been slow– they’re actually growing and getting lots of great press– but Mel’s parents are divorcing, and her father is looking to quickly cash out his half of the farm. If Mel and Mark don’t raise $300,000 by September 1st to buy out their share, the cows, machinery, and land will be put up for auction! To raise money they offering a great deal on a cheese CSA with farmers’ market coupons or home delivery!
Local Foods:
The Adelante Co-op: Delicious Latino food and horchata.
Quaker Valley Orchards: Last week for pie cherries! Pink, red and white currants – lovely in salads. Red, golden and black raspberries. Transparent apples – very tart, the classic for applesauce. Blueberries. A few of the first yellow peaches, apricots. Red, gold, and blue potatoes and new this week Walla Walla onions! Applesauce, honey, jam, tomato sauce, novelty popping corn-on-the-cob, canned peaches. Pie fillings: cherry, blackberry, blueberry and apple.
Richfield Farm: Cherry tomatoes! Tons of summer squash, potatoes, kale, Tuscan kale, collards, chard, head lettuce, fennel, regular and pickling cucumbers. Green beans if it rains today. Blueberries. Sunflowers, cosmos, zinnias. Possibly some corn and fava beans if they can get out to harvest them.
Smallwood’s Veggieporium: Cabbage and bok choy. Purple and yellow spring onions, beets with greens. Spinach, salad mix and loose leaf lettuce, radishes, collards, kale, Swiss chard, cut herbs.
Truck Patch Farms: Hot house tomatoes and squash. Greens: lettuce, salad mix, stir fry mix, arugula, Swiss chard, curly kale, radishes, cut herbs. Eggs. Pork and beef. Chickens, if you pre-order at order@truckpatchfarms.com. Ground beef and patties, ground pork, loose sausage, and ground ham. Sausages: sage, celery, applewurst, country hot, mild and hot Italian, sweet Italian with fennel, kielbasa, bratwurst. Smoked kielbasa and andouille sausages. Steaks, chops and tenderloins, spare ribs, baby back ribs, pork shoulder. Breakfast sausage and bacon. Ask Bryan about goat meat.
Groff’s Content Farm: Family farm raises 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef on organic fields, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, both whole and cut up. Dog treats and nice big beef bones. Ground beef, nice big sausages, including spicy lamb merguez. Soap made from their own beef tallow.
Reid Orchard: Blueberries, red currants, red and black raspberries, red and green gooseberries. Dietrich apricots, yellow peaches and the very sweet subacid Sugar May. Sugar snap peas. Winter Fuji apples and new Lodi apples.
Cherry Glen Goat Cheese Company: Handmade, artisanal goat cheese. Fresh chevre and ricotta cheese and delicious crottins and brie-like wedges of creamy, soft-ripened cheese.
Atwater Bread: Organic sourdough and yeasted breads: Peasant Wheat, Caraway Rye, Cranberry Pecan, Kalamata Olive, traditional San Francisco Sourdough, Ciabatta, Country White, Chili Cheddar, Spelt, Sunflower Flax, and more. Brownies, cookies, scones, muffins, and several flavors of granola.
Panorama Bakery: Baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, mini ciabattas are great for sandwiches, sliced loaves, danishes, sticky buns, apple turnovers.
July 3 – Mount Pleasant Popsicles!
We have a new vendor joining us this Saturday with cold, sweet popsicles made from fresh, local ingredients! Promised flavors for this week are Toigo Orchard’s Strawberry Cream, Richfield Farms Rhubarb with Strawberry, and Cucumber Chile. Look for their vintage bicycle cart loaded with kid- and adult-friendly deliciousness on a stick! They are the ultimate in local, making their products just down the street from our market.
This is your last chance for the all too brief season of pie cherries. Don’t make pies, you say? Me neither! They are indeed a bit tart, but sweet enough to eat straight, and the flavor is amazing, like cherry pie on a stem. Hm, almost like nature meant for them to be put in pies. Metaphysical musings aside, tonight I’m going to try a sour cherry cocktail, either with sweet tea and rye whiskey, or as a Sour Cherry Gin Muddler, depending which liquor is safest for my pregnant sister visiting from Madison, WI.
For Independence Day BBQ, I’ll be making red white and blue potato salad, cuz it’s just too cute, Asian slaw, sirloin steaks, and grilled beets (wash, halve, grill face down ’til tender) with Cherry Glen Goat Cheese chevre and diced sweet white Walla Walla onion from Quaker Valley Orchard. The grilled squashes have been delicious this year too, just tossed in a little olive oil and salt, all the different shapes and sizes are fun! Dessert is piles and piles of Truck Patch Farms RED raspberries, Reid Orchard BLUEberries and WHITE currants.
Events at market:
Local Foods:
Adelante Co-op: Grilled chicken tacos, my favorite! Platos and the usual special rice dishes. This week they’ll have BOTH horchata and chicha morada.
Reid Orchard: Last week for pie cherries. Blueberries, red and black raspberries, red and black currants, red and green gooseberries. Harcot apricots. Yellow and white Spring Snow peaches. Sugar snap peas. Tart Lodi apples great for applesauce.
Quaker Valley Orchards: Pink, red and white currants. Red, golden and black raspberries. Transparent apples. Peaches, sugar plums, a few apricots. Red, gold, and blue potatoes, Walla Walla onions. Applesauce, honey, jam, tomato sauce, novelty popping corn-on-the-cob, canned peaches. Pie fillings: cherry, blackberry, blueberry and apple.
Richfield Farm: Cherry tomatoes, summer squash, potatoes, kale, Tuscan kale, collards, chard, head lettuce, fennel, regular and pickling cucumbers. Green beans. Blueberries. Cut flowers. The corn should be good and sweet by now, and the fava beans plentiful and fun to pick over with a beer and a friend by the grill.
Smallwood’s Veggieporium: Lettuce, Swiss chard, beets with greens, carrots, potatoes, squash and squash blossoms, slicing cucumbers, red and yellow onions, maybe a few tomatoes. Maybe some cabbage, but they got hit by a grasshopper invasion! Cut herbs: basil, mint, parsley, dill, cilantro.
Truck Patch Farms: Hot house tomatoes and a few more raspberries. Summer squash. Greens: lettuce, salad mix, arugula, spinach, Swiss chard. Radishes and beets and green beans. Cut herbs. Eggs. Pork and beef. Chickens, if you pre-order at order@truckpatchfarms.com. Ground beef and patties, ground pork, loose sausage, and ground ham. Sausages: sage, celery, applewurst, country hot, mild and hot Italian, sweet Italian with fennel, kielbasa, bratwurst. Smoked kielbasa and andouille sausages. Steaks, chops and tenderloins, spare ribs, baby back ribs, pork shoulder. Breakfast sausage and bacon. Ask Bryan about goat meat.
Groff’s Content Farm: Family farm raises 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef on organic fields, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, both whole and cut up. Dog treats and nice big beef bones. Ground beef, nice big sausages, including spicy lamb merguez. Soap made from their own beef tallow.
Cherry Glen Goat Cheese Company: Handmade, artisanal goat cheese. Fresh chevre and ricotta cheese and delicious crottins and brie-like wedges of creamy, soft-ripened cheese.
Atwater Bread: Organic sourdough and yeasted breads: Peasant Wheat, Caraway Rye, Cranberry Pecan, Kalamata Olive, traditional San Francisco Sourdough, Ciabatta, Country White, Chili Cheddar, Spelt, Sunflower Flax, and more. Brownies, cookies, scones, muffins, and several flavors of granola.
Panorama Bakery: Baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, mini ciabattas are great for sandwiches, sliced loaves, danishes, sticky buns, apple turnovers.