Entertaining Saturday

Eight o’clock on Saturday morning. I’ve been up since before six (I don’t know why) and somehow I’m still late. The car wakes up easily, eager to go for a run. It seems to have extra enthusiasm, as though it knows that somehow I’m going to tear all the way across the city and back as quickly as I can, an adventure it is always willing to participate in. I’ve got a guest coming over for lunch at eleven and I think I’ll assemble a nice meal from scratch. I’ve made my mind up to go for ingredients to the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market instead of the more local, smaller one in Silver Lake. Although I’m more of a fan of shopping locally, my usual market run is on Sunday, in Hollywood, and the Silver Lake one does not have most of the vendors that I know well from the other two markets, and I want to take no chances with my menu today. So, the highway for me this time.

The plan is to wander the market in head chef mode, looking for which items look good, choosing some of them and planning something simple and tasty around them. At the back of my mind is a salad, and maybe asparagus or artichoke as a central feature. I’m open to ideas, however, but the watchwords are fresh and simple. But I’ve got to get there, find the ingredients, and get back and make it all before eleven.

farmer's market and saturday lunch menuI break some kind of record for getting over to Santa Monica. Road was pretty open, and while I’m not saying whether I violated any speed limits, you can be pretty sure I hurt their feelings a bit. The market is still pretty empty and I can wander through at a good pace with my basket and check out the whole scene, retracing my steps on a second pass in reverse, this time buying things as I go. Three different kinds of tiny potatoes to form the base of a salad (after roasting them) along with two colours of carrot from the same people. For dessert I pick up three types of delicious berries -blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries- making a mental note to get some whipping cream (for hand-whipping later) as a topping.

farmer's market and saturday lunch menu

I eye up some […] Click to continue reading this post