Saturday - I went to the Moscow Farmer’s Market this morning on my bike, arriving just a few minutes after the opening bell at 8 a.m. I thought I would beat the crowds as in days of yore but wow, the crowds were out in full force, purposefully carrying away flats of blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, sweet corn, cumbersome melons, bags of green beans, new potatoes… just about anything you want vegetable wise is available on the Palouse in mid-August. It’s been hot this week so the tomatoes are finally ready, and we’re fortunate to have the Lewiston/Clarkston valley just an hour away, where the temperature along the Snake River is about 10 degrees warmer than the Palouse all year round. Also, Tonnemaker’s from further west in Washington have milder weather than us, giving them an advantage in the stone fruits and warm weather vegetables.
Way more people at the market than there were a year ago, before we left on our sabbatical. I thought maybe Moscow’s “groovy quotient” had risen but Walt and I both observed that people were really serious about the food – and so perhaps it’s less about what’s groovy and more about what’s economical and even better, what tastes good.
All I had room to carry on my bike were potatoes, onions, peaches, tomatoes, apples, eggs, basil, and blueberries, which I got from 3 different stands in order to spread the wealth around. Simple economics forced me to forgo the $15/qt. huckleberries, much as we love them.
When I got home I made a breakfast of blueberries and peaches with yogurt and granola; for lunch we made a tomato salad with finely diced fresh red onion, fresh basil, salt and pepper, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil; which we ate alongside homemade bread (made with Montana flour) spread with my son Reed’s special garlic/basil cream cheese, and some scrambled organic eggs from Avon Farm in Deary, Idaho, where the chickens are “living good like chickens should.”
We’re debating the location of our backyard chicken run, but we’ll have to decide soon, as we’re due to get our four hens from Zakarison’s outside Pullman WA in a few weeks.
Cherry Update: My fingers are still blackened from slicing and pitting 6 quarts of sweet cherries for my batch of cherry liqueur. I used almost the whole large bottle of 100 proof vodka for that many cherries, but there’s a little left over for vodka tonics. I didn’t use the Idaho vodka, though, since it was only 80 proof. Only!
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