Farmer’s Market Sunday

I’m loving the farmer’s market this time of year, with each week bringing new produce that’s coming into season.  This week was the first of the apple’s for the year.  Yes, apples are NOT in season all year round.

This week we picked up:

• 1 half-gallon of reduced-fat milk and 1 pint chocolate milk from Battenkill Creamery
• 1 pint nectarines and 1 quart Lodi apples from Maynard Farm
• Approx. 3lbs Kansas City-style pork ribs from Sweet Tree Farm
• 1 bagel and one challah roll from Our Daily Bread
• 1 carrot cupcake and 1 blueberry muffin from Cream Cream Cakes

A few notes from this week:

* I’ve never had a nectarine.  How weird is that?  We went at the tail end of the market today and there were only 2 quarts left, so I thought I’d try some.  What was even funnier is that Farmer Maynard told me before he started growing them he’d never had one before either!

* The Lodi apple (pronounced Load-Eye and not Load-ee like I thought) is an early apple that doesn’t store very well (like most early apples). We’d never seen one before and thought we should give it a shot.  It’s supposed to be quite tart, so K is looking forward to it.

* I enjoyed my challah roll with loads of cream cheese and a big dollop of sugar-free cherry jam I made just last week on top.  A post on cherry picking is coming soon, but for Father’s Day, I made my dad 3 jars of sugar-free jam since he loves the stuff, and sugar-free because I love him and sugar is not great for him.  I used Xylitol instead, and I have to say, I can’t tell the difference between the sugar free and regular sugar jam.  I really must do this again, because normally I have to add 6 cups of sugar to my jam, and with this recipe, I only added 2.5 cups of xylitol.

*Tonight we ate the ribs (well, some of the ribs) with mashed potatoes with garlic scapes and shelled purple podded peas from our garden.  Not bad (the peas).  I picked a bunch more at the garden today and will try to dry them next.  It was fun to shell, but only because I had a limited amount from last week.  If I had bushels and bushels, not so much!