I got thrown off my food blogging game by our two-day power outage followed by a weekend trip to NY. But we are back and slowly refilling the fridge, so it’s time to catch up!
I wrote previously about our June 1 Del Ray (VA) Farmers Market dinner for Week One of One Local Summer. The star of that dinner was the fresh WV morels. We were a little late to market that week, and as I got in line behind a couple at the Mushroom Lady’s stand, I noticed one last box of morels labeled “Sale! $15.” I waited anxiously as the couple in front of me debated which to pick, and remarked “$15??” when looking at the morels, clearly unaware that those same morels had been $20 the week before. After what seemed like an eternity, they settled on something else and I snatched up the box. Mushroom Lady kindly topped off my pint with a few last stray morels from the box. Per her instructions, I simply cleaned them and sauteed them in butter. They were without a doubt the most intensely flavored mushrooms I have ever eaten. The deep, earthy flavor is hard to describe … suffice it to say that I will not hold off until the end of morel season next spring to pick them up again!
The following weekend we checked out the Port Washington Farmers Market, on Long Island, NY. According to the Local Harvest listing, it is the only all organic market in NY. It was not, however, all local. There was a booth selling Croatian olive oil, and a failure to read the label carefully led to us later opening our “all local” lunch spread and discovering the goat cheese was in fact from Massachusetts. I believe the market was just getting going for the season though, as most of the NY seasonal markets don’t open till June. There was a great Nordic organic bread booth, where we got wonderful cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and the one true farmer had a basket full of beautiful garlic scapes. Here she’s trying to convince a hesitant customer to give them a try.
2 responses so far ↓
1 April // Jun 25, 2008 at 3:14 pm
MMMM. Morels. Does your kids eat them? I am struggling with this, but not crying over it, because there’s more for me.
2 foodietots
Twitter: foodietots
// Jun 27, 2008 at 9:02 am
@ April – We ate the morels after the kid had gone to bed. With the other mushroom dishes I’ve made recently, he’s mostly eaten around them. I did sneak a bite in the other day when I mixed them in his rice… but generally he’ll take them out and hand them to me. Like you said, more for me! I’m sure he’ll come around eventually.