saturday was a beautiful day, and the market was packed! my favorite variety of freestone peaches (windblo) was the feature of my favorite orchard (pee dee prchards), so i got some, of course. i also bought new red potatoes, butter beans, blackberries, silver queen corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, honey, and some flowers. just walking through the place makes me happy, even when it's utterly stuffed with people and everything takes forever. i just go slowly and take in all the sights and smells. i walk the whole length of the market before i buy anything, checking out the produce and searching out the folks to whom i am loyal. i saw my crazy honey people, my aforementioned orchard people, and my favorite: the flower lady (who i found approximately 5 seconds after giving up and buying flowers from--gasp!--someone else). the pepper guy wasn't there, nor was my little herb seller, but i made do!
i have long conversations with strangers while i buy things. this time, as i was buying butter beans, a random woman asked me how i was going to cook them, so i told her:
for a pint of fresh baby limas, cook one piece of bacon in the pot and remove it. add a little olive oil if you need to and sauté a little slivered purple onion in the fat. add the beans and about a cup of chicken broth, and bring it to a boil. throw in a few sprigs of thyme, put a lid on, and simmer for about 30 minutes. when it's done, crumble the bacon back in, and season the mix with salt and pepper. voilá.it's good the day you make it, but the leftovers are even better. the woman actually wrote all this down on a little notepad, which amused me. and as i was talking, the seller was listening intently--when i finished, she declared that my butterbeans called for a pork chop and some biscuits. and guess what i made for dinner last night? cumin crusted pork chops, boiled corn with butter and old bay, butter beans, sliced tomatoes, and biscuits with buckwheat honey (courtesy of my pseudo-mother-in-law).
for dessert, i made some pig pie. the great bill neal used to use a pig-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the sweet biscuit dough for his fruit cobbler topping, and his kids always called the cobbler "pig pie." i have a pig-shaped cookie cutter, too, so i have taken to using it for cobblers as well. last night's was a mix of peaches and blackberries, and man, it was GOOD! thank goodness i get to have some leftovers tonight!
sometimes i am so Southern, it scares me. but i digress...
4 comments:
Your farmer's market pictures look great! I wish I could go with you sometime. I hear that there is one around here, but I've never managed to hunt it down.
Mmm the farmers market...peach cobbler...mmm summer
I want to come to dinner at YOUR house! It's fried chicken night here and I do have some fresh artichokes and the last of the watermelon. I was thinking about cornbread before I read your blog but I don't think it will be cool enough to heat up the oven unless it rains, and the thing is, if I make cornbread, we will eat every crumb. We can't stop with just one slab....
Pretty pix from the Farmer's market, too!
Farmers markets are the best- those peach shots make me wanna go run and grab one. Mm.
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