Farmer's Market and Weekly Prep - 100 Days of Recipes: Day 34

Not only did I come home from 90 degree Florida with a bit of a late Spring cold, I came home to true Spring weather - rainy, colder, and rainy. I hear lots of moans around me, but I LOVE it! I love all four seasons, but my favorites are those that really have a little of everything. Well maybe not everything, but the cool nights and early mornings and breezy, warm but not too warm days that come in early Spring and late Fall are my favorites.

Yesterday I bundled up to hit my favorite Tailgate Market, and it did not disappoint! My lingering cold slowed me down from getting there when they opened, and I thought the cold might slow others down, but it was packed when I arrived, and my favorite mushrooms were already sold out. I did, however, find lots of early spring greens, veggies, and ALL the strawberries! 

The salad greens came in my weekly Mudluscious Farms delivery, and I found baby beets
and turnips, garlic scapes, spring onions, kale, and strawberries at the North Asheville Tailgate
(along with a yummy vegan scone and coffee that didn't last to make the picture!)

There was no cooking yesterday - it was first day back in the studio, finishing up some packing from the last kiln, a bit of studio organization, and some warm up platters at the wheel before joining studio mates with a bit of gallery re-arranging. Taco Billy sustained me at the studio, and nibbling on my market finds with leftover mac & cashew cheese became dinner.

My fridge and pantry have been filled, from Mudluscious, the Tailgate, and a quick stop at Hopey & Co. for fill-ins, and I'll start prepping ingredients and planning meals today to take me through the week.

A side note on an unintentional, yet lately acknowledged, tradition of sorts. Every year at Christmas, good friends come to stay, and one of our regular traditions is to make pilgrimage to Mr. K's Bookstore. We have a leisurely visit, and I try to limit myself but always walk out with a small armload of books. These books, it seems, are what I go to when I travel. I don't have as many long, uninterrupted periods of time to read as I'd like, but between getting to the airport early enough to navigate a long tsa line to layovers and delays, traveling by air is a great time to read. I've traveled to Florida several times this year, and I noticed on this trip that I was going to my "Mr. K's" stack of books each time for my reading companion.

Current reading...

So when I was preparing to leave for the most recent trip, I grabbed the book at the top of the stack, and it was "The Pleasures of Cooking for One" by Judith Jones. Anyone who knows me knows that I love cooking for others, so the title wasn't the immediate draw! What caught my eye in the bookstore was the author, Judith Jones - a name I immediately recognized as the editor for many cookbooks I owned, by Julia Child, James Beard, and others. I knew immediately I'd love to read her perspective on cooking, and even though I love to cook for the leftovers, I figured it never hurts to have new tricks and tips for putting together quick meals for one.

I read the introduction waiting for my first flight out, and by the time I finished that one section, I knew I would savor every word on every page of this book - I'll be sharing some morsels with you in the coming posts to be sure, but for now I'm off to take inspiration from this passage from her introduction:

"...there is something about going home at the end of the day or giving over a quiet Sunday afternoon to cooking - smashing the garlic, chopping an onion, getting all those good cooking smells going, stirring, and tasting mindfully, and then adjusting the seasonings - that makes us feel creative." (The Pleasures of Cooking for One, Introduction, by Judith Jones)