October: Unprocessed - Friday Farmer's Market

Since we're trying to eat local and organic when possible, on Fridays I love going downtown shopping at the Downtown Mesa Farmers Market This isn't one of the larger farmer's markets in the valley but it has everything I need. Naturally there are vegetable vendors and most sell other items as well. Herbs can be purchased fresh, dried or in pots ready to plant. You'll find cheese, bread, pasta and pasta sauce, and lately Dr. Hummus has been selling and giving samples of what I think is the best tasting hummus ever. (Oh, his pita chips are excellent too!) There's also tie-dye t-shirts and craft items. Today one of the ladies was selling lovely tote bags that she made.

As you can see above the heirloom tomatoes were fabulous today. I'll be saving the seeds to start over the winter for my spring crop. They did very well for us this year. I also bought some organic cucumbers and fresh corn.

I'll be making more mayo (aioli) this week so I actually went to the farmer's market today for some eggs. If you like fresh eggs this is the place to get them. They go quickly so get there early. Crack them open and you'll see how different they are from anything you can get in the store. The yolks are a deep yellow compared to the eggs I an used to seeing. Curious about where the eggs come from? One of the vendors has a photo album, so you can see the hens along with their hen house and their grazing area. You won't find that at Fry's.

October: Unprocessed - The First Weekend

October: Unprocessed is Andrew Wilder's challenege to give up processed food for an entire month. Read more about it or join the challenge at Andrew's blog Eating Rules. I'll be blogging about my experience during the challenge and hopefully sharing some recipes. Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients.

Day Three – I’m sort of shocked that I haven’t cheated even once. Temptations are everywhere. I leave the house later than usual so I have no time to cruise over to Starbucks and blow the challenge. The community candy jar at work is stationed right at my eye level and filled with Tootsie Rolls and Tootsie Pops. It’s taunting me. Thankfully the Costco keg of Red Vines that usually sits beside it has been emptied for the week.

No one I know is trying to change their eating habits so I am on my own. It's nothing new - I've been making lifestyle changes for a year while hubby lives on sausage and cheese. C'est la vie. I can't twist his arm.

Tonight was typical for me. For a half hour I listened to a coworker moan and groan about her “diet.” Translation – she hasn’t eaten fast food since her dinner break last night. She finally succumbed to the call of the vending machine and I thought that would be the end of it. But noooooo. She started rhapsodizing about her Baby Ruth bar as if it were the most expensive Swiss chocolate in the world. I fought the urge to throw something at her, and then I felt bad when she actually choked on the damn thing. Wow. Food karma is a b*tch.

Temptations and the lack of support are tough but when it comes to eating heart healthy, time management is probably the biggest hurdle for me. Odd hours at work leave little time to prepare meals so I handle most everything on my days off. For items that don't freeze well I fit in preparation when I can. It's not usual for me to be outside grilling chicken and vegetables at 8am or baking bread at midnight. Thanks to the challenge I can't be a slacker and stop for fast food on the way to work so I've got to find the time to prepare everything I need. It's going to be tough, but exciting too.

During my meal planning I started to make a mental list of the convenience foods I’ll need to replace in my diet, like bottled barbecue sauce. I cannot find a recipe for barbecue sauce (that I’d eat) which doesn’t include items like ketchup and soy sauce. It looks like I’ll be playing with tomatoes and spices on my day off.

For the last three days breakfast was oatmeal with fruit or an omelet made with local eggs from the Downtown Mesa Farmers Market . Lunch was a sandwich with chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber. The bread is on my own multi grain and I pack a tiny container of home made mayo with my little blue gel freezy thing. My lunch bag gets packed with plenty of fruit for snacking.

The goal for this week is to try some new recipes with honey since sugar is off my ingredient list until November. Wish me luck!

Starting Seeds

Since the laundry room gets the best dose of sunshine, we are starting our seeds on the window over the washer and dryer. So far we've sowed the heirloom tomato seeds, both the regular and cherry tomatoes that I bought on my visit to the downtown Mesa Farmer's Market. The dill seeds were harvested from our herb garden this year. After Christmas I'll be starting more herbs, the other varieties of tomatoes and hopefully some squash and peppers.

Downtown Mesa Farmer's Market

I love the Farmer's Market in downtown Mesa on Friday mornings (9am-Noon, on the east side of Center St just south of University Drive). The produce is great but there are many other vendors with booths to check out. Craft items, bread, tamales, tea, and beauty products were for sale today. The baby dwarf goats were on site too. . .for petting - not for sale. Aren't they are adorable?

Today I picked up organic apples and heirloom tomatoes. The heirloom tomatoes will do double duty - we will enjoy eating them and I will be saving the seeds to start plants for the veggie garden. Three of the sweet, burgundy colored cherry tomatoes yield the same amount of seeds you can purchase for $2.65-$2.99 at the garden center or online.

For more info on the Mesa Community Farmer's Market - including maps and photos - check out their webpage at Arizona Farmer's Markets. More photos here.

Ugly Chair Becomes A Swan

Time to talk about Ugly Chair. Ugly Chair has been a fixture at our house for years. We found it beside an empty lot in downtown Mesa more years ago than I care to remember. It was peeking out of a big pile of junk that someone illegally dumped. We were driving by in the truck and I instantly recognized the sound bone structure and limitless potential in Ugly Chair. Ok, really - we just needed a chair for the porch where HuzBen could sit smoke his ciggies away from my asthmatic lungs. It fit our main criteria of not costing anything. I wanted to do the "green" thing by recycling someone else's junk. We took it home.

Ugly Chair spent the last several years going back and forth between the yard and the porch, depending on the weather and the need for space. It got to be sort of a joke that I never seemed to get around to refurbishing Ugly Chair. As rough on the eyes as the chair was, my husband put cardboard and newspapers on the seat, covered it with an old blanket and spent many confortable hours in Ugly Chair while reading on the porch.

When my mother would visit from New Jersey I would tell her about my grand plans to re-do the chair and make it presentable. Bless her heart my mother never has a cross word to say about anything but her eyes were saying "Seriously? Hello! Put that thing out at the curb where it belongs!" In direct contrast, my father actually said on many occasions, "Seriously? Hello! Put that thing out at the curb where it belongs!" And at least once he tried to do just that when I wasn't looking. If it wasn't for our superb neighborhood block watch I'm sure he would have snuck it off to the dump while I was in NYC.

That's all behind us now because this week Ugly Chair had it's makeover. I took a Home Depot gift certificate I'd been saving and I purchased some almond colored spray paint. Joann's had leather beading cord that I used to replace the leather strips that had rotted away. The folks at Mesa Sales helped me pick out a foam cushion and some marine grade thread for the seat and the pillow. The vinyl was found at a steal for 80% off when Hancock's closed a few months ago.

Ugly Chair is now back on the porch and HuzBen and the kitties are thriled with the makeover. While no one is going to mistake it for being redone by a professional, I think Ugly Chair approves.

Jersey Girl Cafe

For lunch yesterday we stopped in downtown Mesa at the Jersey Girl Cafe. Friends have been telling me for months that I need to check the place out and they were right. The food is fresh, tasty and reasonably priced. Lunch for two was about $15.00 for 2 sandwiches with a side and and a pickle, a huge tropical fruit flavored iced tea with free refills and choice of a homemade cookie for dessert. The decor is adorable and there is a large map of New Jersey on the wall where you can put a push-pin in the city where you lived.

I ordered a tuna melt on sourdough with a side of potato salad. The sandwich was perfectly grilled and loaded with cheddar. The red potato salad was perfect, with crunchy bits of celery and onion and free of all the weird spices most restaurants throw in to disguise the fact that their product is usually several days old. It's probably the best potato salad I've had in a long time.

My friend Barb ordered the chicken salad sandwich and she was raving about it too. I'll have to try that next on our next visit.

Jersey Girl Cafe 218 West Main Street, Mesa, AZ (480) 924-7887

Teacup-a-Story

It is a tradition on my mother's side of the family for the ladies to be gifted with a tea set for their 21st birthday. My favorite teacup is a cup from that set. The teacups, teapot, saucers and cake plate are white with gold trim and painted with purple and blue flowers. The teapot to this set can be seen here.

Since we are of British descent, the tea sets in the family made their way to the U.S from the ancestral homeland across the pond. My mother traveled to London when I was a senior in high school purchased two identical tea services for eight, one set for me and one for my cousin Tiffi who is just a few years my junior. Tiffi and I both love purple and this set was the obvious color choice. No expense was spared to see that the delicate pieces arrived in the colonies without being damaged.

It wasn't until a few years later my mother and I discovered the very same tea sets could be purchased in the states. When my mother visits us in Arizona we often see this pattern among the antiques in the downtown Mesa shops. We have a good laugh. At least I know I can pick up the odd piece in the event of an accident.

Click here for more Teacup Stories at Gracious Hospital-I-tie's Blog-a-Thon!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!

After a few days of nice winter weather -baby it's cold outside! Oh to be sitting at Coffee Talk in March or October - sipping an iced tea and knitting. Today I think I'll settle for a hot chai from Starbucks.