Saturday's finds....

It is Tuesday already and I have let three days slip by without a post. I have so much to share as our shopping on Saturday was highly productive. A 7:30 AM stop at the Pitt County Farmer's Market yielded fresh onions, zucchini, pattypan squash, and homemade strawberry jam made by a local vendor's mother, Mrs. Eloise. Jam was as close as we could get to fresh strawberries as our reliable source for these sweet, juicy jewels informed us that in order to buy the last berries of the season, we would have to drive out to the Reston Farm on Highway 903.

Last week when we visited the Pitt County Market, we bought luscious shiitake mushrooms from the Jessamine Shiitake Plantation owners. All good things must come to an end and thus is the availability of these delicious morels. Since this, too, was tobe the last week for shiitakes, I had planned to purchase some for a roasted veggie and pasta dish. However, upon perusing the Jessamine website on Friday night, the owners planned to sell mushrooms at the waterfront Farmer's Market in Little Washington...25 miles away. While we questioned driving that far, it seemed like a small sacrifice considering the shocking fact that the majority of food that we eat has traveled an average of 1,500 miles in order to make its appearance on the American table. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver's husband, Steven Hopp reports that "if every U.S. citizen ate ust one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels (p. 5). " So, off to the waterfront we drove and the payoff was HUGE!