I ♥ the Purse Cam orI ♥ a break from the kitchen or I ♥ a trip to the Farmer’s Market

Today I needed to go to Raleigh to pick up some ballet tickets (the early bird was going to get the better tickets, and in fact ended up getting upgraded to better seats entirely) and so I decided that as long as I was in Raleigh I would go to the farmer’s market to get apples for all of the pie making that’s going to start soon.

Amy and Emmett decided to come along and so we headed off after Jared’s appointment with the oral surgeon. (Where we found out that he has some weird cyst thing going on around his adult canine tooth and will have to have the baby tooth pulled and some semi-surgical procedure on the other. Gross.) Anyway, back to my narrative. Amy & I drove to the nether regions of Raleigh and procured our tickets. Fortunately sharp eyed Amy noticed that the first set of tickets were for the entirely wrong day, as I would NOT have liked to have to go all the way back to get that fixed! I also had the opportunity of seeing three male dancers with their cool ballet shoes on, one of them practically in a speedo. Yay for that.

Then we were off to the farmers market. She was in search of chard (which wasn’t to be found) and spaghetti squash. I was in search of delicious apples and anything interesting looking. And the market did not disappoint. Right away I saw something that made me pull out the purse cam. Let me tell you how much I love the purse cam. I knew I wanted a small camera that I could keep in my purse, but I was not prepared for how happy it would make me. First of all, it takes terrific pictures. I really think it handles light better than my bigger camera. And then there’s the fact that it’s pink, which is pretty fabulous. And being able to whip it out to take a picture of whatever random thing catches my eye—well that is the definition of happiness. I just love this camera!

(don’t you think it’s about time the purse cam got it’s pic on the blog???)

I first took out the camera at the farmer’s market so that I could take a picture of a bunch of squash that looked positively dangerous. Don’t you agree? I’m not sure if you should eat this our hit someone over the head with it.

And it was all uphill from there. Fantastical advertising.

Curious claims and oddly shaped veggies with names that I couldn’t resist.

Decorative produce.

And produce that could, in a pinch, be used as a pillow on an airplane. (If you had enough foresight to bring it along…)

Please notice that the size of that thing—as wide as a whole apple box!

We indulged in a pumpkin cheesecake bar and sampled numerous varieties of apples—enough so that we completely forgot we should eat lunch. Here’s a hint from my apple sampling. If you see an apple variety called Sun Crisp, and someone tells you that it has almost no flavor, believe them. Don’t waste the saliva and digestive enzymes to try it out yourself…

I was happy to see that I am not the only one who thinks dried apples are a good idea. Maybe I should go into the dehydrating business.

And lastly, the vegetable not purchased. This veggie that Amy is modeling, in case you are a little rusty on your southern vegetable identification skills, is a collard plant. Or, in the southern vernacular, a mess of collards. The lucky collard buyers walked away with their purchase in bags the size of trash bags. They were just enormous.

I had such a lovely afternoon, far far away from the chaos that is my kitchen. Tomorrow I’ll go back to work but I’ll still be laughing at the sights I saw at the farmer’s market. Thanks Amy (and Emmett) for going with me, and thanks to my wonderful purse cam as well!