Full disclosure: the Wednesday installment of the Portland Farmers Market at Shemanski Park is less than a block from my apartment. Nine flights of stairs and half of a Park Block are all that separate me from fresh Pearl Bakery baguettes, Gathering Together greens, Willamette Valley Havarti and Springwater Farms shrooms. I'm so spoiled.
It was POURING on Wednesday morning, so I put on a sweater and a hat (a full blown winter hat, on June 2nd... come on Portland, seriously?) and skipped up to the smiling and/or tired faces of the market staff and farmers. I picked up some garlic scapes, crazy delicious strawberries, breakfast radishes (which I'm enjoying right not on the aforementioned baguette with butter, salt, and pepper), new potatoes, and my first market tomato of the season. Then I suffered the long and tortuous trek back to my apartment, cradling that yellow tomato like a baby chicken, shielding it from the rough and tumble world of my market basket to keep it from bruising.
Less than five minutes later, I'm back in my kitchen, slicing her up for the first taste of Portland "summer", glancing out my window at the rainslick streets of downtown. You can't beat that first bite of a good tomato, especially when it was picked hours before by the smiling from man who sold it.
It's a rough life, this Portland living.
Always your best fan, I peek at photos of your neighborhood: beautiful sweet peas, fingerling potatoes, gorgeous strawberries, and rain, rain and more rain. Looking in the future of sharing the produce and flowers and rain, I am comforted by your ability to see and share Portland in its glory. Thanks.
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