Music and Cats

Seattle’s University District Farmers’ Market is 15 years old this summer! Sure, it’s a youngster compared to Pike Place, the Seattle market that everyone knows, but the U-District market is much more a true local food scene than the decidedly touristy, and much more famous, downtown market. Today the U-District market held its official 15th anniversary birthday party, a Berry Spectacular. It’s that time of year, after all — nothing says Seattle summer quite like fresh local berries. Volunteers passed out free strawberry shortcake, and shoppers tasted samples of a variety of berries (like the fuzzy, tart gooseberries above).

Most Saturdays, I wander around this market picking up whatever appeals most at the moment. I rarely think much about how much I spend, until I run out of the cash in my pocket and decide it’s time to go home. This morning, however, I was on a mission. A couple of weeks ago, Vicki, a delightful writer/photographer/blogger whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person, issued a Saturday Shopping Challenge: Take one $20 bill to your local farmers’ market. What can you buy with it?

Since our CSA share has started, I’ve been shopping differently, buying ingredients to combine with produce from the share to make meals, rather than creating meals entirely from market purchases. Today I bought tomatoes and sugar snaps to add to salad greens, sweet onions for starting just about any savory dish I might cook, tangy quark (similar to Greek yogurt) as a dip for cherries from my favorite farm, and apple blueberry cider to mix with our homemade fizzy water. The pluots were the first I’d seen this summer, and the sample I tasted was luscious, so I picked out three, just for eating. (Two are already gone.) And, when I saw a sign that read Sweet Peas - Last of the Season, and spotted this little bouquet with one perfect peony at its center, I had to have that lovely fragrance and color in our kitchen. We are nourished by more than food.

Here’s the expenditure breakdown:
Tomatoes (from the seconds boxes at Billy’s Organics), $2.49/lb — $2.75
Pint of quark (a tangy fresh cheese from Appel Farms) — $2.75
Sugar snap peas (Rent’s Due Ranch), $3.50/lb — $2.50
Pluots (Tiny’s Organics), $3.99/lb — $2.00
Walla Walla sweet onions (Willie Green’s)– $2.50
Apple Blueberry Cider (Rockridge Orchards) — $2.95
Flowers (the last sweet peas and one perfect peony) — $5.00
Total spent: $20.45 (oops!)

After I’d spent my — ahem — $20 and a little more, I remembered that we were almost out of hazelnut oil. Hazelnuts are the only oil-producing plants that I know are grown around here, and they make a deliciously sweet, nutty oil. It’s not what you’d want to use for cooking, but mixed with local cider vinegar and honey, some herbs from beside the back door and perhaps a bit of mustard, hazelnut oil makes a glorious salad dressing. Because our CSA box always contains some sort of salad greens, I’m dressing a lot of salads these days. I wouldn’t want them to go without hazelnut oil, so I stopped by the Holmquist Orchards stall and dropped $11.00 on a 12-ounce bottle.

OK, revised total spent: $31.45. Yeesh, over by $11.45. And I didn’t buy any meat or fish, or any berries. (I’ll do that at the Ballard market tomorrow.)

On my way out of the market, I stopped to watch chef Seth Caswell cooking up a menu featuring berries in all courses. Until a couple of weeks ago, Caswell was chef at Stumbling Goat Bistro, where Paul and I had a fabulous dinner for our 10th anniversary in May. I wish I’d had time to stay and watch Seth cook today, but I had other plans shortly after noon. However, I scored a copy of the recipes: mesclun salad with blueberries, roasted sockeye salmon with blackberry sauce, sauteed strawberries with balsamic vinegar. Sounds good, no? I wonder whether I could buy all of the fresh, local ingredients for that menu for $20…

Tags: 3 Comments