Farmer's Market, Schmarmer's Market

In my small town, there is not much in way of activities, so when I was invited to brunch and the farmer's market on Saturday with a couple of colleagues, I quickly accepted.

Brunch was fab. We went to our favorite local bakery, Sugar Magnolia (could it be more sweetly Southern?) and we had sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits. The biscuit they put that egg and sausage on... was wickedly buttery. I should have known that the bakery would really shine when it came to the biscuit. Unngh. I'm drooling.

Anyway... The farmer's market was cute... but very (almost disappointingly) small. I did, however, get my blood pressure checked by a nursing student. And I found a mother and son team selling fresh herbs with little recipe cards attached.

Note to farmer's market sellers: Attached recipes are a brilliant idea.

I picked up some basil and rosemary, and, a day or so later, I set out to make the recipes.

WARNING: This blogpost is not for the feint of heart. It almost ruined me. I'd call it a comedy of errors if I were stable enough to be laughing at it.


I started out by assembling the ingredients for the Garden Vegetable Pesto. I had to make a trip to the store for tomatoes... but it was going to be worth it for some delish garden pesto.

Or was it?


It wasn't.

I forgot that my food processor is too small to handle life. Let me rephrase that... it's too small to handle one tomato. And this recipe calls for two tomatoes, one zucchini, cheese, basil, oil, blah blah blah.

So I dumped the tomato. And pulled out the recipe and ingredients for Rosemary Pasta Sauce. I didn't take a picture of the ingredients or the recipe because... well... I don't remember what happened exactly... but I think you can consider this moment the beginning of the end.


By this point, I was crazy hungry. At 7:23pm, I busted out the pita chips and hummus.


And while I enjoyed my appetizer, I melted 1/4 cup of butter over low heat and added onion. Do you know what happens to onions in butter over low heat? I'll tell you... nothing.


So... at 7:52pm, warm onions still warming, I made coffee and this happened to my new creamer. Really? REALLY?!


Ugh... so... no... I didn't wait for the onions to get "dark brown" before I tossed in the garlic, rosemary, and water (didn't have chicken stock, of course).


The sauce smelled good... but looked small. I followed the rest of the directions though and tossed the lb. of spaghetti with another 2 tbsp of butter and 1/4 cup of parmesan.

It was... okay. The sauce is very light in flavor but heavy in greasy butter.

And... it was about 9pm by the time I got to eat it.

So... much like I am right now, I was tired of the whole thing. Perhaps I'll invest in a food processor equal to the task of a tomato-filled pesto. But until then, I'll just stroll the farmer's market with friends, hit the nurses tent, try the "best pound cake ever" (sorry, kids, but it wasn't), and leave the cooking to someone else.