Rainy Day at the Farmers Market

We were intrepid gatherers yesterday. Earlier in the week, we'd arranged to go to the Farmers Market with Erik and Mae. It was the first time we'd seen them since we got home. Then, the rain went from good to bad...pretty typical for Oregon...and we gave them every opportunity to back out. They were steadfast, and so we donned our rain gear and off we went.

It was a nice day at the market. The rain kept the crowds down. We're still kind of in the season of greens, and we get plenty of that in our CSA. I was in search of were things to pickle. Also, I was hopeful of finding some tomatillos, but I'm afraid it's a little too early for that. Nevertheless, we came away with a pretty good haul. So, what did we see?

Oregon berries are in season. This is where our diet willpower had to hold fast. Mike can't have the strawberries because of the seeds. Nevertheless, I love them enough that I'll spend the time cutting the sides off of them and ridding them of their seeds so that I can make strawberry ice cream and strawberry shortcake. Alas...nothing I would make with these is going to be on our diet, and we are highly motivated. For now. It's good that it's early because it's really, really, really hard to let our annual Oregon strawberry season pass us by.

Of course, we saw lots of greens and lettuce. Also, these pretty red radishes.

My favorite short fat carrots. I like these because they are a good size for the Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears I like to make each year. They are positively addictive.

Also...lots of blooming things. This is where we lose Mae, the consummate gardener. She loves the plants and vegetable starts she finds at the Farmers Market.

Some of the flower arrangements contained some very unusual flowers. Check out the pod flower in the middle on the right of the image below. There are also some fuzzy ones there that look like something you might pet.

Here's another with some interesting pod flowers.

This one is called a Red Tiger Abutilon. Interesing, huh?

This next one is called a Brugmansia or an Angel's Trumpet Tree.

I liked how the raindrops looked on these big hosta leaves.

We were lucky to avoid any rain showers while we were there. Our visit lasted a little over an hour. I came home with some sweet cherries, radishes, and the carrots.

And now I have my day's work cut out for me. I'm making Pickled Radishes and the Spicy Dilled Carrot Spears. I've linked to the recipe above. Also, I'm going to try this recipe from Food in Jars for Sweet Cherry Barbecue Sauce. When we got home yesterday afternoon, I washed jars and lids and got things prepped for canning today. One thing I wanted to do was to get the cherries pitted. If you click on that link I gave you for the barbecue sauce, you can read Marisa McClellan's tip for pitting cherries when you're just going to cook them down. You remove their stems, dump them into the pot you're planning to use for cooking, add 1/2 cup of water, and them set them on the stove top to simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Then, let them cool, and you can easily pit them with your fingers.

That was a nifty trick. It was so little liquid, and the cherries made liquid of their own. Although it doesn't say what to do on the Food In Jars post, I decided to leave them in their liquid and refrigerate them over night. Now they're ready to go this morning. The carrots and radishes are both raw pack, and so I can get those ready while the barbecue sauce cooks down. It's multi-tasking at its most delicious.

Since I still had time in the day yesterday afternoon, I caught up with the rest of the world on the Spring Quilt Along on The Inbox Jaunt. You might recall that I made this little quilt top while we were in Pahrump.

Now it's ready for quilting. I'm using a pink thread in my bobbin and I'm starting with the pink on top. When we get to the aqua strips in the middle, I might switch off to the aqua thread on top, depending on my confidence level.

I was four motifs behind, and so I just went to work. The first was a "basic" motif for quilting half square triangles. Pretty simple, although mine weren't as consistent as I'd hoped. We're just practicing and learning here, so I'm not overly worried about these little imperfections. It's surprisingly hard to hit those corners just right.

The next was called "X Marks the Spot," and that was pretty simple too.

In fact, all of these were pretty simple. The next one was "Flowers."

And, finally, "Suns." Those were pretty much the same as the flowers, only with points instead of petals.

And now I'm caught up. Here's how it's looking from the back. I've messed with the color and contrast a little so that you can see it.

Part of the reason for putting this off as the last thing to catch up on was so that I could get my free motion quilting legs back under me. If I have time left in the day when the canning is done, I'm going to start quilting the Snips and Snails quilt, which is my goal for this month's OMG challenge.

This quilt is very special to me, and so I'm excited to finish it up.