MARKET pages

Not a huge market, and very much northern, with a shorter growing season, but warmer here in the 'banana belt' of the Hood Canal. We got here two hours after it started, and it seemed uncrowded. There's also a Saturday Market here, as well as a Sunday Market in Chimicum ... and there's Hamlet in the Park on weekends, a candlelight concert in the Methodist Church tomorrow night, and, our hostess informs, the loveliest old-fashioned movie theater imaginable downtown. Too many restaurant choices, too. 

So we made a big Farmers Market salad and drank a beautiful local cider, and stayed in. More adventures in Port Townsend tomorrow.

Saturday in Silverton, so there's a market. This compact little market has a lot of good food, but not much organic (maybe they haven't gotten that memo yet?) and lots of dogs: one woman with three nasty little mutts, a big backpack, a shopping bag, and zero sense of her footprint, knock tomatoes on the ground. "Oh, sorry," she said, unapologetically. 

This little person stoutly denied that her thumb was watermelon flavored.

Every Friday, April through October: Mendocino Farmers Market. Our friend Sakina is the market manager, and most of the farmer-vendors (after half a dozen years) are friends too. What a delight! to have food grown by people we know!

"You're getting all fired up for your trip," says Sienna, seeing me taking pictures of markets. I have been making market matricies for some time – the imagery in the market, all that glorious food! – is inspirational. We travel, now, from market to market. This began when we were in France, where we'd gone unapologetically on a "food trip." We found ourselves delighted to be staying in places (mostly) with kitchens, because the best food opportunities for us were associated with wonderful produce prepared our way.

I finally tumbled to the fact, on that trip, that the vendors were every bit as wonderful in photographs as what they were selling. Here, amongst their products, are some of our favorite Mendocino vendors. 

Quickly onto the freeway from Damiana's, and a bunch of crowded, fast, twisty miles to Tracy, where we got off the freeway and plunged into post-modern sanity: the Tracy Saturday Farmer's Market. Here in California's fruit basket, there was an unbelievable abundance of lovely fruit.