Nature's Bounty

This morning we woke up at the crack of dawn - before, actually, as the Queen of the House was done sleeping rather before the crack of dawn - and headed out to the Farmer's Market. Since our local market ends with the month of November, this was one of our last trips of the season. It also happens to be C's nine-month birthday today. As you can see, she had a blast.

As soon as you look away, this hat is SO coming off my head.

It was a beautiful, crisp morning, and lots of vendors were out. It's fun going at different times of the year and seeing what different farmers are there and what they're selling. We did still find a few peppers, but this time of year they're selling more broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, squash, pumpkins, apples, and pears. There are also more non-farming vendors than during the summer, selling local honeys and syrups and jerky and breads and peanut brittle, and even some craftier items, like wreaths and ironworking (I don't know what that would be called, iron crafts...). For the first time today we saw an animal farmer there selling organic grass-fed beef and pork and taking orders for Thanksgiving turkeys. We ordered one! I'll be going out to the farm the Tuesday before Thanksgiving to pick it up. It'll have been freshly slaugtered, so won't need to be frozen at all! Pretty cool. One thing that was funny when we were talking to this guy is that he seemed to be trying to avoid saying things like, "slaugtered," "killed," and "we're cutting your turkey's fool head off." I suppose we don't really like to think about those aspects of of our food, but there's meat for you.

Ahhh... coffee! That's what I need... just a little more coffee!

And here is our bounty. We got loads of squash - I'm going to make a whole mess of butternut squash soup this week - apples, pears, cauliflower, peppers, and mushrooms. Oh, and the great find of the day was goma (sesame) dressing! That was my absolute favorite in Japan and I was SO excited to find it today.