In which I write about our local farmers' market with perhaps too much enthusiasm, but it's my blog so I can do whatever I want

Once upon a time, like last Thursday, I decided that my deep need of fresh greens outweighed my profound dislike of crowds, and thus I found myself wandering around our local farmers' market, with Johanna in hand.

Side note, and we haven't even gotten that far yet, but I've been really bad about attending the market the past few years because it's Eric's racquetball night, it's a hassle to get down there after work and find a parking spot, and, as I think we've already established, I kind of hate crowds.

Whatever. I'm trying to expand my bubble this month, right?, so I picked up my baby from school and we immediately headed the seven miles back to town to see what we could find. Which, incidentally, was this:

In case it doesn't translate, that's a bag of salad mix, a bunch of spicy greens, two cucumbers, two sacks of mini tomatoes, salad turnips, radishes, early garlic, spinach, kale, cilantro, rhubarb and six ciabatta rolls.

Johanna is a fun one to shop with because she loves raw vegetables. She helped me pick out produce at every stand and got genuinely excited over the spinach and kale. She actually asked to go back for the kale with a polite, "Mom, I don't think you heard me: I want some kale."

Also: Cucumbers and tomatoes... in May. I did not expect that. Apparently there are greenhouses involved here, and yeah, you can tell the tomatoes were raised under tarps and not in the sun because they don't have the sweetness, but TOMATOES IN MAY. Who cares?!

Anyway, I was thinking of getting some pizza, also available at the market, and bringing that home for dinner, but with my bags o' awesome, we just headed home for salad and bread. You can tell we're all greens-deprived because no one complained about the lack of pizza.

Once home, I immediately made a salad (the mix with the turnips, radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes) and sliced the ciabatta rolls, and then after dinner, I made a rhubarb crumb cake and Johanna experimented with raw kale and then kale chips. She decided she liked the burnt ones the best because they didn't taste like a cooked vegetable. The ones she deemed "too cooked" were inhaled by the rest of us. We tossed back an entire bundle of kale in less than 10 minutes. It was awesome. And probably had nothing to do with the generous sprinkling of applewood smoked salt we used to season the things...

P.S. It was so much fun to actually be excited about food again. I haven't played so much in a long time.

Anyway, my plans for the remainder: A fritatta using the spicy greens and early garlic (I just got some fresh eggs from a coworker, so that's awesome); spinach salads now that we're at the end of the salad mix; another rhubarb crumble because I have some leftover stalks and the first one was inhaled (plus what else do you do with rhubarb?); and maybe some salsa with the cilantro.

I'm thinking that this market needs to be a Mom and Johanna date every Thursday because we haven't eaten this well in a long time, plus it was kind of fun to see some familiar faces in the crowd and talk to the farmers (I have my favorites). And it was all locally grown!

P.P.S. I saw the mayor at the aforementioned cucumber and tomato booth, and I was like, hey, Paul, and he was all, hi, Trisha, and I felt pretty good about myself because the mayor knows my name, and this one doesn't think I'm drunk.