Homegrown goodies

This morning I was in the mood to have breakfast at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market. This south Austin farmer's market is truly an Austin original. While most farmer's markets are filled to the bins with fresh fruits and vegetables, in this market you have to search to find the fresh tomatoes. Yes, there are vegetables, organic of course, but the stalls are more likely to be filled with jellies, sweets, spices, jewelry, soy candles, lavender patchouli soap and dog biscuits. You never know what you'll see at the farmer's market -- today Austin Powers was on hand.

Being Austin, there was a band playing and one stall was doing a dance demonstration. Local writer Jim Hightower was doing a book signing. While there we picked up some treats for the dogs and grabbed a couple of pesto foccacia rolls from Living Arts Bakery, which was our reason for heading to the market in the first place. There was both Greek and Turkish food to go, fresh cheeses and instead of peanut butter, we sampled pecan butter -- it was REALLY good. We sampled a chocolate brownie made with rose -- quite interesting. Doug talked to one guy who was selling nectar, thinking he might be able to utilize the nectar in either a batch of mead or beer, but since that vendor is there every week, Doug decided to hold off. While there were interesting things at most of the stalls, in the end the only thing we bought, other than breakfast, were some dog treats.

Of course, being a farmer's market, there were some farm animals. We got see some baby sheep and a longhorn, but we couldn't take either home. The only thing that would make going to the market better is if it wasn't so far away from where we live. Unfortunately the farmer's markets closer to our house tend to specialize in produce only.