We got to stop in at two local markets this weekend — our regular South of the James stop and we also checked out the Sunday Carytown Market for the first time. Both were filled with fresh, beautiful, seasonal produce and we ended up bringing back quite the haul of fresh veggies.
If you keep up with us on Facebook, you might also know that Alistar from Origins Farm sent us home with a flowering artichoke in addition to the batch we picked up to cook with at the market:
We'd never seen an artichoke in the flowering stage and can't believe how beautiful it is. Mary kept talking about how fun they'd be to use as bridal/bridesmaids bouquets and we've had ours hanging out in a vase on display in the house since bringing it home. Definitely one of life's little surprises — we love learning new things every day.
I've been waiting for pickling cucumbers to come back in full swing at the market, because I'm on a mission to perfect my Hungarian Grandmother's recipe for pickles:
I've been working to tweak the recipe since I tried it this time last year and updated the original recipe post with the new tweaks I made this year. We'll find out by the end of this week if this year's tweaks were a success or if Granny will be frowning down from above.
The artichokes from the market and local shrimp also made it into the kitchen this weekend — keep a lookout for some recipe posts for each of these coming soon:
While on the subject of food, we were excited to take a walk down to Grace Street park here in the fan for some cool refreshments that helped support an even cooler cause:
After a tall glass of lemonAID, we were ready to get back home and whip up a batch of dog cookies — we'd been itching to try out a new recipe calling for the spent beer grains we brought home from brew day last weekend:
They turned out great and were "Basil Approved," so we're sharing the full recipe here on the blog tomorrow!
In non-food related news, I was able to put the final coat of lacquer on our locker for the console project we've been working on:
I decided a 3rd and final layer was the way to go instead of leaving it with 2. The plan is to let it fully dry and seal over the next week before moving onto the next stages. We're pretty excited to start measuring and figuring out how this thing is going to take shape.
And....Basil and I will be holding down the fort as bachelors this week. Mary's headed up to Hudson for the week, so it's just me, Basil and Stephanie holding down the homestead while she's away:
This was our best attempt at taking a "Bachelorized" photo — us boys out in the man cave, with man things like beers, antlers, smokers (in the background) and industrial lockers surrounding us. I think we pulled it off well. And in reality, we're both going to miss "The Mother Ship" real bad this week.
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