The Market? In Winter?

What can you do when you find yourself computerless on a Saturday morning? You could sleep in; ha! that was BC. Watch cartoons with the kids...good for awhile, but not all morning. Submit to the weekly dire need to tidy and clean the house? Not if I can help it. Accept a friend's invitation to stroll and shop the farmer's market? With only one child along? Too good to be true!

That is how I came to become a new regular of the indoor winter farmer's market. I thought there would be a lot of baked goods that I couldn't eat and not much else. Well, there is a whole lot of luscious, delicious looking bread, there's no doubt about that. There is also so much more...rows and rows of shimmering homemade jams shining in the sunlight streaming in through a window. Chocolates; Bob who makes sinful fudge and a lady who makes the most gorgeous, delicate homemade chocolates. (The box on the table was a gift for my parents.) Soap; at least three soap makers, the bar on a plate to the right is soap, all week we kept trying to use it as butter or cut it into cheese slices.

And there is cheese; lovely cheese, beautiful cheese, fabulous cheese. No need to eat the soap. It tastes awful anyway. There is honey, half a dozen producers of honey. There are even vegetables! A few locals have sold out their greens, but there is a brave lady selling sweet peas and tomatoes from California. (It's pretty hard to sell non-local items and keep one's head up around here.) I need to try five different vendors before I can find eggs, I buy six dozen, nice brown eggs with bits of feather and fresh hay still stuck on them.) I guess I really should have stayed home to clean...but I'm going back this week.