Farmer's Market Haul, last week of July

I went in with 25 dollars, and that's all I had to spend, and I came out with the following:

A masssive mango

A bunch of celery

Three big carrots from the lady before who had the best carrots I've ever had

Three fat little prickly pears

A bunch of seedless red grapes

A pint of little concord grapes that really do taste like Welch's

A pint of red pear tomatoes

A pint of sugar snap peas

A pint of rainier cherries, even though I have red cherries still in the house, because I really love them

A pound to two of the tiniest little baby white potatoes ever

Eight oranges

Five sweet peppers

And four honey sticks

Not a bad haul, if I do say so myself. I'm loving that there's a honey stand there now, and I hope they're still there next time I go back. And the same lady with the prickly pears and the wonder-carrots had longans! I didn't have the money to spare to get them, but they were lovely-looking, and maybe they'll be there when we get back too!

Super-Veg Gratin

No pictures again, because it didn't last that long. I take it as a compliment, and as a need to take pictures before I tell people it's ready.

Anyway, here's what I did:

Butter a 13 x 9 in baking dish. Use a piece of bread and tear the buttered remains up to make breadcrumbs; mix it with five crumbled saltines.

Slice up four potatoes very thin-- if you have a mandolin or one of those box graters that can do narrow slices, definitely do that; I only have a moderately sharp knife, and that takes forever and left me with a blister where the edge of the handle hits my first finger. Keep the slices in water until you're ready so they won't go gross.

Slice up carrots the same way. I used one of those monster carrots, and it equaled about two or three good sized normal carrots.

Finely chop 1 red pepper, 1 stalk of celery and it's leaves, 1 onion, and 4 cloves of garlic.

Grate 1/3 of a block of sharp cheddar and mix it with an equal amount of parmesan-- shaky-cheese is fine.

Open a carton of potato-leek soup and one of veggie broth.

Heat the oven to 450 or 475 (mine runs cold, so I did 475).

Get layering! Like so:
- Layer of potatoes topped with salt and pepper
- Layer of carrots
- Layer of mixed veg and garlic
- Layer of cheese, topped with salt, pepper, thyme, rosemary
- Repeat. Mine repeated another whole time, and then a third layer of potatoes to cover the top.
- Mix half the broth with all the potato-leek soup and pour it over the layered veg.
- Top with the bread and more salt, pepper, thyme and rosemary. Butter if you want.

Cover with foil and cook on a cookie sheet to catch drippings for 45 to 50 minutes. Remove the foil and cook until the veggies are all uniformly soft. Let it sit for ten minutes until it stops boiling and sets up a little, then dig in! Even when lava-hot, it's really yummy and has a texture something like the inside of a pot pie.

St Augustine Pier Farmer's Market

Wednesday mornings are for the Farmer's Market. I don't get to go as much as I'd like because it's far enough from my house that I can't bike, but we're hoping to change that in the future. With food costing more all the time and us not getting any less poor, the market lets us get super-fresh veggies for way cheaper then we can at the supermarket.
Here's what thirteen and a half dollars gets you in the second-ish week of October: 3 huge red sweet peppers (2$ for one at Publix last I looked), an eggplant big as my face, three big vine-ripened tomatoes, two giant yams, two equally giant carrots, a pomegranate and a really fantastic-smelling apple, and a stalk of fresh lemongrass (which is sitting in water and I'm hoping will grow roots for me). And a mollasses cookie I already ate. Everything was huge. I mean, look at this carrot! --->


We're going vegetarian tonight because we're out of meat, but with veg like this, who needs meat?

In addition to this, H got three huge portebellos, a pound of green beans, three cloves of garlic, a shallot, a massive 1$ stalk of celery, sweet potato bread and a cookie, and C got an avocado as big as a grapefruit, three yellow tomatoes, a pound of grapes, a pint of strawberries, two pounds of apples, a pomagranate, a loaf of rye bread, sweetpotato bread, and another cookie, and neither spend more than 20$. We're eating well for the next few days.