Columbus Foodie

You know I’ve been feeling under the weather when I start missing farmers markets. So unfortunately, during July I missed like 2 weekend markets in a row. It really bummed me out because it’s something I look forward to all week. But it was made clear to me that I needed to not push myself and let myself heal. Thankfully, I’m back to almost 100% (or 100% of what I was before the shoulder injury – which means I have good days and bad days with my back). I’ve returned to my weekly trips, and hopefully can get caught up on my reports by next weekend. The good thing is, most of what was available in July is still available in August, so the information is still timely.

I think this was the only weekend I saw golden raspberries at the Rhoads farm stand at the North Market – they have plenty of red raspberries these days, though. I love the look of the golden raspberries, especially in salads.

I’ve been trying to acclimate myself to hotter peppers this year. Banana peppers are one of those ones that can be either hot or sweet. I need to dig up that recipe for pickled banana peppers that Mrs. Rhoads gave me last year, because I really want to make a batch before summer is over.

If there were tomatoes last month, we’re in tomato heaven this month. There weren’t that many varieties back then, but every single one I tried was delicious. The flavor of fresh tomatoes is one of the things I miss most in winter.

I have really come to love beets over the last couple of years. My favorite variety of beet is Chioggia, which are also called “candy cane” because they have alternating concentric circles of red and white and have quite a mild flavor to them. This is the variety I recommend that beet haters try first – it just may change your mind about beets like it did mine.

Blueberries were especially expensive this year, although I saw the prices go down in later weeks. I think it’s a matter of supply in demand, at least in the beginning of blueberry season.

Red and blue potatoes are just the right thing for a recipe of patriotic potato salad.

For me, early July is the turning point for farmers markets, where the stands just explode with multiple varieties. What part of the farmers market season is your favorite? If you had to narrow it down to one weekend that you could go to the markets, which would it be and why?

July has been flying by, hasn’t it? I’ve been under the weather for the past few weeks, so there hasn’t been much time for anything except keeping up with my classes and nursing my wounds, so to speak. Still, I did manage to go to the farmers markets on the 4th of July weekend, even though I regretted it immediately afterward.

Not because of what was available, mind you. Had I been feeling 100%, I would have been totally psyched about everything I found. Instead, I was just sorta stoked.

I always walk by Honeyrun’s stand at the North Market, but I think I need to start taking a closer look, especially at their selection of infused honeys.

I’ve been going nuts for the peaches from Rhoads again this year. I bought a huge box to eat throughout the week.

Down at Worthington, AJ of Sassafras Bakery was timely with her American flag sugar cookies.

And speaking of infusions, there’s another (new to me) farmer who has been infusing different vinegars. I especially loved the deep color of the Opal Basil vinegar, so I picked up a bottle.

Since I developed an appreciation for beets, not a week can go by without me picking up at least one bunch.

At Gillogly Orchards, they had these wineberries. It’s not a berry I’m familiar with, have any of you ever worked with it? They kind of remind me of raspberries in appearance.

And lots of sweet corn available at all the markets. Once sweet corn season starts around here, I can’t get enough. It doesn’t even need butter or salt.

The person in front of me got the rest of the sour cherries for the year. I’m bummed about how short the sour cherry season is here in Ohio.

So how did the rest of you spend your Independence Day weekend?

I still wasn’t feeling 100% this past weekend, but I couldn’t resist the ritual of my Saturday morning farmers market trips, especially now since so many things are available.

We started, as usual, bright and early at the North Market – Mrs. Rhoads had the first peaches of the year, and was also kind enough to gift me a few ears of sweet corn, also new this week. I’m looking forward to eating the peaches out of hand – last year, her peaches were the picture of perfection.

After buying a few more things at the North Market (blueberries, shoo fly pie, and some really nice hothouse tomatoes from Wish Well Farms), we headed over to Worthington, early enough to beat the crowds. I need to remember to pick up a few ears of popcorn the next time around.

I love sunflowers, and love taking pictures of them. Each photo is almost like a painting. I wish I had an artistic bone in my body – if I did, my first subject would be paining sunflowers.

This head of red cabbage from Two Crows Farms turned into a fabulous slaw with a buttermilk-based dressing. It was a great side to the fish boat – nice and cooling and perfect for a summer meal.

I love that no matter what staple item you need, someone inevitably has it – like these carrots – would love to try these glazed. Not pictured but something I got a lot of were sour cherries – their season is short, but they’re great for making pies.

A quick trip to Clintonville to get some zucchini and a few other items. I’m always tempted by the artisan bread there, but unfortunately it’s just a bit too dear for my budget right now.

So where are your Saturday morning haunts? What great market am I missing? Who is your favorite farmer and whichever market you love?

I don’t usually go to mid-week markets, but a couple weeks ago I found out that one of my favorite farmers (Denise of 2Silos) was only going to be selling her eggs at one farmers market this year – the one in Upper Arlington on Wednesday afternoons. Since I had to be at a meeting at Goodale Park anyway, I decided to stop by to check things out.

There were a lot of familiar (to me) farmers there – Honeyrun Farms, 2Silos, Toad Hill Organics, Folck Family Farms, just to name a few. And it’s a nice little market with 8-10 farmers that I could see. Definitely worth checking out, that’s for sure.

I’m so glad that I’m seeing green beans with regularity – they are a perfect accompaniment to any number of grilled foods. I see a nicoise salad in my future…

I saw the first sweet corn of the season – summer kicks into high gear for me when sweet corn becomes available – the high point of summer eating in my house is when both tomatoes and corn are in season at the same time. Nothing else quite like a tomato-sweet corn salad.

I’ve got a nice little herb garden going on here at home, but for those of you that don’t, now is the best time of year to cook with fresh herbs, with a wide variety available at just about every market.

Every year, the first apple to show up is the Lodi variety. I guess this means that Honeycrisp season is only a couple of months away now.

I got a major case of sticker shock on these blueberries. $7 for a pint of blueberries? For real? I’m loco for eating local, but that price tag sent my locavore ass scurrying in the other direction. I brought up this question on Twitter – for those of you who consider yourselves locavores, is there a certain threshold that makes you say “it’s just not worth it” – not surprisingly, from what I heard from another vendor, he didn’t make that many sales that afternoon.

Seeing the freshly harvested garlic from Honeyrun Farms made me remember that it was the right time to harvest the garlic I grew here at home. It’s out of the ground now and looks fabulous. Even though you can eat garlic in it’s fresh state like this, it’s best to let it cure in a well-ventilated area for a few weeks.

So, that was my Wednesday marketing – where are your favorite places to pick up local foods midweek?

If I’ve been noticeably absent the past couple of weeks, it’s been with good reason – I’ve been in agony. I’ve been having horrible pain in my shoulder for the past two or so weeks now, and I ended up in the emergency room a couple of Fridays ago – they initially thought it was a pulmonary embolism, but thankfully it wasn’t – I try to remember that as I continue dealing with subacromial bursitis, a pinched nerve in my neck, and costochondritis. I’ve mostly been living on pain killers and whatever food I can grab quickly or Paul is kind enough to make for me. What that meant as far as my blogging went is that I didn’t go to the farmers markets on the 12th – I did drag myself out this past weekend, though – I regretted it by the time I got home because my shoulder was as bad as ever.

Still, part of me can’t regret going this weekend – we’re finally starting to get into the time of year where veggies start coming in with ferocity, and it’s super simple to plan your meals around all the fabulous produce you see at the markets.

I saw the first (non-hothouse) squash this week – my own squash in my garden is starting to come in, but not quite there, so I made sure to pick a little bit up to grill with some steaks this week.

This weekend was also Pride weekend, with the big parade on Saturday. AJ had the most marvelous cookies to commemorate the event.

I was extremely taken by these Bull’s Blood beets, a variety that is entirely red from root to greens. Aren’t they beautiful?

Nice looking shiitakes at the Clintonville Farmers Market this week.

My backyard blueberries are starting to ripen, and it’s a great year for blueberries. So plump and juicy and sweet. For those of you who don’t have your own bushes, there were blueberries at the market. Be sure to pick some up while you still can, you won’t be sorry.

Ditto with garlic scapes – they’re great in stir fry.

Sorry for the abbreviated descriptions. I’m hoping that I’ll feel well enough by Wednesday that I’ll be able to hit the Dublin Farmers Market and give you a full review of what has turned out to be an excellent midweek market.

So what did you get this past weekend? What’s your favorite part of this time of year?

I’m a little bit late getting last weekend’s market report up – this week was finals week for me, with the first part of the week being consumed by finishing up my anatomy class, and the latter part with addressing issues that happened during my practical that really bothered me – I’m finally able to put the quarter behind me, though and have about 2-3 weeks to do some heavy duty catching up on blog entries.

Sometimes things just fall into place. I’ve finally found the perfect time to leave my house in order to get to the North Market when most of the farmers are set up, but before the crowds take over. When I got to the North Market at around 8am Saturday morning, I most most taken by the amount of fruit Mrs. Rhoads had this week – her requisite strawberries, beautiful sweet cherries, and my favorite (but very short season) serviceberries. These will taste wonderful in scones I’m planning on making this week.

When I saw all this beautiful local asparagus at the Wish Well Farms stand, I thought about Asparafest that would be held at Wild Goose Creative the next day, and wondered how many people would be buying it over the next few hours to make their creations? It’s one event that I regret missing.

I picked up about 3 quarts of sweet cherries at the North Market this weekend, to be used in a multitude of dishes I’ll be posting about soon….

And kohlrabi from Bridgman Farms, which was made into a nice dish with cream sauce and crisp bacon.

Impending doom in the form of thunderstorms started bearing down on us, and I got into my car to head to Worthington as the first raindrops fell. By the time I got to Worthington a few minutes later the rain was coming down pretty hard, but I just grabbed my umbrella and headed out. By the time I had walked from the parking lot to the sidewalk at High Street, the rain had pretty well stopped.

Still, I didn’t do too badly at Worthington. I got a few items from Snax, some cheese at Osage Lane Creamery, some jarred peaches at Two Crows Farms, and a few other items that are slipping my mind now.

Radishes are one of the few things that are almost always available throughout the whole growing season.

Along with potatoes, which I’m pretty sure are grown in a greenhouse during this point in the growing season.

So how about the rest of you? Which markets did you hit and what did you get?

I’m pretty good about getting up early on Saturdays – and am also pretty good about getting out of here early enough to get to the North Market before 8am – that is, unless P. is getting up and going with me. He’s the only person I know who can stretch out taking 2 pills in the morning to a 30 minute ordeal. What that meant for us was that we got out of here later than we usually do, and didn’t get to the North Market until about 8:15. The good thing about that was that all the farmers were set up already. The bad thing about that is that between his late start and my tendencies to be a motormouth, we didn’t get to Worthington until 9:15. But more about that later – for the time being, let me tell you about all the stuff available at the North Market this weekend.

As they do every week, Wishwell Farms had some stellar looking grape tomatoes – just the perfect thing to be paired with some fresh mozzarella and basil in a caprese salad.

Toad Hill Organics had lots of pretty looking lettuces and other greens.

And the flowers at Combs Herbs were just gorgeous this week. While I was here, I bought some arugula.

I got a pound of shiitakes at Toby Run (yay for mushrooms!) to make paprikash – yes, I know – unseasonably hearty, but damn I’m craving it.

And Rhoads had, in addition to the strawberries they’ve had every week, some sweet cherries – this is just one of the two varieties they had.

Off to Worthington – by the time I got there after 9:15am, parking was almost impossible and the place was a madhouse. The holiday weekend brought out the mean in people, though – with all the pushing and shoving and rudeness and impatience, I could only snap a few pictures, like this of some of Mockingbird Meadows’ honey. That was just nuts – I was definitely reminded of why I like getting there as close to 8:15-8:30 as possible. Many of the farmers there start selling at 8am – while you won’t have all of the same produce you can get when everyone is set up, it’s definitely a more relaxed vibe before 9am.

After dropping my stuff back off at home, it was back to the North Market for the Grillmaster’s Festival, where I, along with Miriam Bowers Abbott (reviewer for The Other Paper), G.A. Benton (reviewer for Columbus Alive), Tricia Wheeler (editor of Edible Columbus) and fellow food blogger Jim Ellison (CMH Gourmand) judged the Thrilla at the Grilla, which pitted 2 local chefs + a mini-Weber grill against each other for a showdown to crown one the Baron(ness) of the BBQ!

Janel Hedgepeth of Latitude 41 (and last year’s Baroness of BBQ) had an extremely strong showing with her grilled pork belly dish, which topped a super-tender but flavorful cheddar biscuit that I fell in love with. The slaw on top tied everything together, and her dish, at least for me, edged out the competition by a narrow margin. Of course, pork belly is one of my favorite things in the world so I may be a bit biased.

John Skaggs (of MyCateredTable.com, and formerly of Giorgio, R.J. Snappers, L’Antibes, and Northstar (to name a few)), who was also Baron of BBQ in 2007, picked up another win this year with his Seasonal Veggie Skewers with Marinated Grilled Bison, and what if I’m remembering correctly was a Blackberry BBQ sauce. I loved the presentation and use of seasonal ingredients in his dish, and thought his extremely tender bison was absolutely perfectly cooked to bring out the best in the meat.

I had a great time judging, and tasting the creativity of what some of our Columbus chefs have to offer up close and personal.

So how are the rest of you spending your Memorial Day weekend?

You know, I had it in the back of my mind that the Pearl Market had started again for the season, but it wasn’t until Paul mentioned yesterday that he was craving Nellie’s Samosas that it even occured to me that we had a few extra minutes to go before heading to class. Since it was a bit past the lunch rush, it wasn’t too difficulty finding a parking meter along Gay Street.

For those not familiar, Pearl Alley (at least the portion that the farmers market is held at) runs between Gay Street and Broad Street, a block or so east of High Street. While there are quite a few farmers there offering meat, cheese and produce, there are equally as many non-food vendors. It’s strength, I think, lies in the fact that it’s convenient to downtown workers, and that one of the vendors that is usually there has the best damn samosas in town. Unfortunately for me, Nellie’s wasn’t there yesterday.  I ran into Bethia there, who apparently had the same craving for samosas that we did.

Many of the farmers there are ones that I am familiar with from other markets, like Becky from Honeyrun Farms, who was there with some lovely radishes and a bunch of salad and other greens.

But then there are ones that I am just seeing for the first time, like this bread baker, whose name is escaping me at the moment. If I hadn’t been on my way to class, I definitely would have picked up a loaf to try.

And of course, it wouldn’t be May if there weren’t strawberries to be found everywhere…

And market staples like green onions are a popular choice at just about every market.

Wishwell Farms had greenhouse-grown tomatoes.

The vendors continue around the front of Broad Street toward High – that’s where you can find most of the produce like these green beans.

If you live or work near downtown, this is a great midweek market to check out – which other midweek markets do you frequent?

I thought the old saying was “April showers bring May flowers”? I think someone missed the memo, because this May has been crazy rainy. This past week has been so wet that every time I even thought about planting in my gardening, a couple minutes later the clouds rolled in and I never got the chance. Last night was no exception – it stormed for a good portion of the night, and it was still really wet out when I got up at the crack of dawn this morning. For a while there, I wasn’t even sure if it would dry up by the time I needed to leave for the market, but luckily by the time I left the house at 7:30, it had stopped raining and was just really overcast. So today’s pictures aren’t as bright as usual, because the sun didn’t even pretend to come out.

I made a whirlwind stop at the North Market, but didn’t end up getting anything there. Not for lack of there being anything to get, though – I’ve just been trying to limit my farmers market purchases this year because my food budget is much smaller than it was this time last year. I’ve been tending to buy things that I can get multiple meals from when I do make purchases. Either way, I still enjoy getting out and seeing and talking to my favorite farmers.

There’s a new vendor at the North Market farmer’s market this week – Folck Family Farm. They had some beautiful strawberries, and will also have a u-pick at their farm starting on Monday – I hope to check it out next week, and will report back about their farm then. In the meantime, they will be at the North Market on Saturdays during strawberry season, so be sure to check them out.

Combs Herbs had peonies today – they are one of my favorite flowers, and their season is so short, so I enjoy them while I can.

And my mushroom man is finally back! Yay! I got there a little too early to get my shiitakes (he was only partially set up, and nowhere to be found for the few minutes I was there), but glad to know that I can probably expect to see him next week. Here are some of his yellow oyster mushrooms.

I zipped off to Worthington, and got there around 8:30. The great thing about getting there early is that you miss almost all the crowds. The bad thing about getting there early is that many of the farmers are still setting up, so you end up missing out on a few things. Still, there were plenty of choices available when I got there.

Seeing these potatoes and green beans (greenhouse grown, I believe) reminds me of summers at my grandmother’s house when I was little – she made this one dish with green beans, potatoes, summer savory and a cream sauce that was just fantastic. I may have to try to recreate it one of these days.

And there’s a new baker in town, right near my favorite one, Sassafras Bakery. It’s called Snax! and he makes some fantastic pastries, lots with strawberries and chocolate ganache and apples. I really enjoy his pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants). It’s going to be hard to choose between the two – both do their own things really well. I guess it all depends what I’m in the mood for in any particular week.

After finishing at Worthington, I made a quick trip to Clintonville. Since I left P. at home to sleep in while I went out, I wasn’t sure if I would stop or not – I have a weird thing about parallel parking (i.e. I’m not very good at it), but luckily I found a space with tons of clearance that made parking a breeze. While I was there, I ended up picking up some spinach from Elizabeth Telling Farms, so it was worth the stop.

I was done by 10am – there’s something really great about getting all your chores out of the way early so you have time to relax later. So where did you all stop this morning and what did you get?

BTW, I’m going to be going strawberry picking tomorrow afternoon at Hann Farms. Anyone want to join me?

It’s hard to believe, after running around like a madwoman all day, that I had almost skipped going to the farmers markets all together today. This weekend was Komen’s Race for the Cure, and for the past 2 years I forgot all about it and ended up going to the North Market and getting stuck within the race perimeter until the race was over. So regardless, I skipped the North Market today. Between the road closures and the post-race crowds, it would have ended up being more trouble than it was worth.

So we got started a little later than usual (I got a whole 3 hours sleep, after forgetting until about midnight last night that I had a psychology paper due today), and we started at Worthington. It was unbelievably busy with almost no parking, and it wasn’t even the 9am opening yet!

After getting asparagus the past two weeks, I’m pretty much asparagus’d out for the time being, but oh my was I so very tempted by these perfect bunches. Haven’t seen asparagus this pretty all season….

Didn’t get any brittle, but again, was super tempted. I was a good girl, though – kept my carb consumption to a minimum today.

Green onions tempting me to make some more pa jun.

Over at Clintonville – super crowded at 9:30ish. Not sure what kind of Asian greens these are, but someone says they’re really good in stir fry – anyone know what this is? I’m guessing tat soi, but I’m probably way off.

I picked up a small block of Oakvale Aged Gouda – thinking this would be delicious on salad.

And lots of chives, but so few blossoms compared to last year. I’m dying to make some more chive blossom vinegar.

So which markets did you hit this morning, and what did you get? I’m super proud of myself for not spending more than $30, that’s a huge feat for me….