On Saturday, Anne & I dropped by the North Market to pick up a few items. We got there around 3:30, and only one of the farmer’s market vendors were still open outside. If you want the best selection you’ve got to get there between 8am and 10am. I was actually sort of surprised they were still there past noon.
Anyway, we walked over to see what they were offering, and the guy at the booth quickly sold us on what he called “gourmet sized” eggplants and potatoes. He rambled off a few recipe ideas and described a candlelit dinner for us. How can you turn down a salesman like that? The best part was the fact that a pound of eggplants and a pound of potatoes only ran us $2.75. Quite the steal for fresh locally grown products.
We wandered inside the market to pick up a few other things. I was in the mood for some Jeni’s (single scoop of Backyard Mint that I shared with Desi) while Anne got a Bubble Tea. We also picked up two ready-to-eat BBQ chicken breasts from the North Market Poultry & Game counter. They were $8 together, which is more expensive than if we were to buy them uncooked, but neither of us were really in the mood for cooking chicken. The guy also threw in several mini wings and drumsticks too, which made for a nice pre-dinner snack.
Lastly, we stopped by the Greener Grocer to pick up a few items. I grabbed some asparagus to make later this week and Anne got some locally grown cherries and a few other fruits.
Later in the evening, we decided to grill the eggplant and boil the potatoes to go with the re-heated chicken. I always love looking at the great professional food photography at ColumbusFoodie.com, Sopressata, RestaurantWidow.com, and all of the other wonderful local food blogs, so I decided to take some photos of what we made to post here. The results were a bit lackluster since our dining room lighting isn’t very bright, and our meal was actually somewhat colorless to begin with:
I will say that it turned out great though. We only used some of the veggies, so all in all this locally-grown dinner prepared from North Market ingredients only ran us $10 total. The North Market is more commonly known as a high-end specialty grocer, but it’s actually fairly easy to shop there cheaply too.
Bonus!
Anne decided to whip up a quick dessert of fresh local cherries from the market, Cool Whip, and a large chunk of Snickerdoodle from Pattycake that I purchased the day before. Delicious! And a little bit more photogenic too:
