Farmer's Market Day

Today was Farmer's Market day, so I went into town to buy groceries. There are four farmer's markets in Missoula, of which, three are on Saturday. One market is a crafts market, but the other two are food related.  Here's what I bought:

• Salad mix (to go with the lettuce I'm getting from my garden)
• Heirloom cherry tomatoes (to go with the cherry tomatoes)
• Red potatoes
• Purple potatoes
• Fingerling Yukon Gold potatoes
• Broccoli
• Sugar snap peas
• Regular peas
• Carrots (both white and orange)
• Daikon
• Kale
• Basil (for pesto!)
• Onions (yeah, I said I wouldn't, but I did)
• Zucchini 
• Strawberries (dessert)
• Cucumbers
• Morel mushrooms
• Bok Choy
• Fennel
• Special made sweet tea (actually good -- not the sickening stuff)
• Cheese
• Butter
• Eggs
• Slab bacon
• 2 loaves of bread (French and Spinach/Feta)

Wow, that's a lot of food!  The good news is that it cost less than $80 and will make a lot of meals.  The most expensive stuff was the cheese, bacon, butter and bread.  The sweet tea was pricey too, but I liked the sample.  For dinner we had buffalo steaks with slab bacon, salad (made with the lettuce, tomatoes, sugar snap peas, cucumbers and carrots) and corn that I bought earlier.  We had strawberries and cream for dessert.

At this stage, you may be wondering where the cost cutting is going on.  Well, look at what I bought.  All of it  is local and most of it is organic.  The food will help feed two people over two weeks.  That's about $20 a person a week.  When you throw in the other foods, I'm probably feeding us for about $60 a week.  That's what I was spending when we were first married some 25 years ago.

Tomorrow, I'll be making chicken and dumplings with my own chicken and food from the market.  I'll also be making a yummy potato salad.  Can't beat that.