Local tomatoes make this foodiegirl happy

Farmer’s Market day! After the gym today I wandered through the Annex, past Fringe Festival central and to the new farmer’s market, called My Market. The budget was $20. How did I do?

• 1 bag of mixed greens (a bigger bag than last week).
• A big broccoli.
• Grapes tomatoes, a pint that contained both red and orange (swoon).
• A pint of strawberries, which I’m told by a colleague have one week left in season. According to a list I picked up today (available online here), they’re in season through to the end of July.
• A pint (?) of Raspberries (swoon), in season through September.
• Peas

That took me to $20 exactly… until I decided to buy cherries ($4) and a cranberry walnut muffin from the sweet potato lady ($1.50).

It saddens me that asparagus season is only May – June and the markets only open in June. This means one month of asparagus, and I finally found uses for it other than roasting. I saw beets, carrots, cucumber and radishes today. There was a lady selling “farm fresh” eggs and I’d have bought some if I didn’t already have eggs.

Photos:

More photos on Flickr.

From the Toronto Star’s Food section:

Liquid Gold - the world of honey and beekeeping. And, I learned new words from the article.  “apiarist” and “apiary”, for example. I also learned that bees contribute more than $1 billion to Canadian agriculture every year. Be sure to check the side bar for other stories.  CBC (or should I say, “Cee Bee Cee”) ran a similar story today.
I’d like to do a proper honey tasting, but I’m not sure what I think of a flavour that morphs “into pineapple, wildflowers, raspberry, petrol and smoke”.

Cocktails in New Orleans. “Originally, the cocktail was considered a morning eye-opener.” For some, it still is.

A review of Brazilian restaurant Gaucho BBQ. Headline: Hospitality, Brazilian style.

Other links:

I wanted to go to this local Dinner in the Sky event (the concept’s Canadian premiere) but learned that it was for American Express cardholders only. I wish I’d remembered about it and taken my camera over. Spotlight Toronto covers it here.

Slashfood: How to eat like a geek, and asking geeks what they eat. Um, food? Lots of coffee too.

A helpful post: Quick and easy ways to soften butter.

This might be a repost but I’ve had it flagged for awhile: A good trick for saving summer herbs for future use.

Dinner tonight:

It was one of those “use what you have an stretch the grocery budget” meals. Vegetables (finished a bag of mixed frozen vegetables) stir fried with Thai Ginger instant rice soup, which wasn’t really “soupy”. It’s basically student food: cheap and not that good. It was an experiment and it fed me. I shall not repeat it.

End post.