Little Italy Mercato

We finally made it to the Mercato! It was a great place to spend a Saturday morning (unless of course your other plans were to spend it sleeping, which is always good) especially since I was able to pick up some willing participants at the airport which is really just down the road from the market. It was a little smaller than I had anticipated, but there were lots of cool vendors and some amazing views of the San Diego Bay. The willing participants were my parents, which was fabulous to spend time with them fresh off the plane from AZ soaking up the San Diego air. It's a little hard to see in this picture, but that is the San Diego bay in the background...

And drooling over all of the gorgeous offerings! The produce was unbelievable, all organic and many interesting things that you don't see at the grocery store. These were purple and white onions with the greens still attached. I bought 'spicy' garlic from this stand and we had it crushed and smeared on roast chicken with rosemary last night. Persian cucumbers and nectarines in the background. I think the green fruit is apples. We had so much fun spending the weekend together and celebrating my parents' 35th wedding anniversary. We went to Del Mar for dinner on Saturday and ate at a great restaurant overlooking the ocean, we watched the sun set at the beach, Chris and my dad enjoyed the Padres vs. the Braves game on Sunday, and we introduced them to Phil's BBQ. The two days went really fast, but it was great to have some relaxing time together. This was by far our favorite vendor. Many places had strawberries. But these were so juicy and tasty- They weren't huge berries, not too small either, but juicy to the point of it running down your chin kind of juicy. They were fantastic with breakfast the next morning.
There were things other than food too, this vendor was selling all kinds of colorful tablecloths. They looked so pretty hanging there. There were also food vendors of all types, one was a creperie, which was making sweet and savory crepes. It was still time for a late breakfast, so people were having different kinds of eggs, bacon, and spinach in the crepes that we saw. I also saw bananas and nutella at the creperie, which sounded more like dessert than breakfast, but I liked the idea. They were also making and/or selling roastisserie chickens, hummus, quiches, fruit leather, specialized salts, homespun angora yarn, natural pet foods, pesto, all sorts of things! The lady spinning the angora yarn literally had the rabbit on her lap while she added the fur to her thread.
We spied these artichoke flowers from across the way, I can't say that I had ever seen an artichoke blossom, and I had been clearly missing out! We bought some bunches of asparagus from this vendor which we also enjoyed last night. It was great, and had so many different sizes in the bunch. Overall they were more thin and tender than the regular asparagus this time of year, but there were some strands that were barely thicker than a french green bean. Most were about the size around of a pencil.
On Saturday I my newest cookbook arrived. I know you are wondering why I need another, and where it is going to fit, but so far I love it. I posted about it a while ago, it's the Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. I am about 60 pages in and haven't read a recipe yet, but it is great. Lots of background and teaching so far in there. I am hoping I will get far enough to make something by the weekend. They mention King Arthur Flour in the book as well as the bakers catalouge as a resource. Good thing that the Mercato had a stand with bread from Bread and Cie, so we got a couple amazing loaves. Otherwise I would probably be speed reading to try to get to the part where we can start baking. It has been really nice to spend the time trying to understand the background so that I can utilize this knowledge as much as possible.

Hope your week is off to a good start and you have good weekend memories to share. I hope to hear about them if you have a chance!