Co-op vs. the farmers' market

Moving to a new city meant giving up my co-op in Virginia. I did some searching for CSAs here, but it was too late in the season to start one. I decided to make the best use of the farmers' market instead.

While the market is significantly smaller than the one I went to in Virginia, there's still everything I want and enough variety. I usually make it about every other week. I go in with a certain amount of cash to spend, and my goal is to spend all of it and get several small portions of things. It's amazing what all I can get for $8 to $10. And while I have less stuff going bad, I also finish stuff before I get tired of it.

In a lot of ways this is more practical and cost-efficient than the co-op. The downside is that I know what I like and tend to gravitate to the same things every week. The co-op forced me to try new things, and I often had an abundance of something so I ended up using it several different ways.

This week I created a rule for myself that I had to get one new thing every time I went to the market. I decided on spaghetti squash on Saturday.

I had heard about spaghetti squash before, and I'm sure plenty of people had told me about it, but I had never tried it. Last fall I kept expecting it to show up in my share, but it never did. I was so enamored with the other winter squashes I had never tried before that I didn't think I was missing anything.

I decided to go ahead and cook the squash on Saturday since I was at home and had some time. I quickly realized I had been missing out on something wonderful. All I did was cook it in the oven for an hour or so and then pull the strands out and heat them with butter on the stove. It was great just like that, but my mind started to churn with possibilities that I'll be experimenting with this week.

And I think spaghetti squash will be on my always get list at the market. What else have I missed that I should try next? I'm considering being brave and trying eggplant.

Herb garden

First of all, it is spring, and there are beautiful tulips all over town. I am loving seeing everything in bloom and the warm weather is amazing.

Back to the topic of this post. I’ve never had much of a green thumb or even really cared that much about keeping a plant alive to begin with. When I moved into my dorm room, my mom bought me a plant, apparently to make it seem a little less like a freshman dorm room. It was dead a week later, and I let it sit on a shelf for the rest of the year before throwing it out just before I moved out.

But one of my favorite recipes is my mom’s tomato basil soup (I’ll post the recipe soon), which of course requires basil. Buying basil at the grocery store is not cheap, and I never used it all before it went bad, you’ll notice that that is a theme for me. So when I was in Georgia, I decided to grow some basil on my small porch. And it was amazing. It actually grew, and even when it looked dead, I could water it and it would come back to life. Nothing I did or didn’t do killed it.

Not long after I moved I set up my pot with basil on my deck and expected immediate growth. Since it was actually outside I figured the rain would water it for me, and I wouldn’t have to think about it. But my placement was a bit off because I actually had the pot underneath the roof overhang and gutters, so it got little to no water. And it was pretty much in the shade 90% of the time, which didn’t help the situation either. After an incident with the leaf blower, there was no chance of bringing this basil back to life.

This spring I have decided to take a new approach and bought a planter that would hang over the railing of the deck in the sun and be free to get some rain. 

Saturday is market day in my town (add that to the list of reasons why I love living here), and I headed over this weekend to pick up some herbs. 

I expanded my selection from just basil and bought some rosemary, thyme and parsley. Assuming I can keep them alive, I will have a selection of fresh herbs to add to my dishes.

Do you have a herb garden? And is there anything I should know about growing the rosemary, parsley or thyme?