Addicted?

I'm really enjoying my weekend excursions to the farmers' market. Seriously, as much as I loooooong to sleep in on a Saturday morning, I just can't. This morning, for instance, I had set the alarm for 8 a.m. and sort of half woke up ahead of time and turned the alarm off: I'd decided to sleep in and either skip the market or go a little later. The problem was, though, that I just couldn't go back to sleep again, because I was thinking about the market! So I finally rolled out of bed and got dressed.

It's funny, but as I'm writing about it, it seems like that happened DAYS ago, but it was only this morning. I guess that means I've had a fairly full day!

I didn't take photos at the market but I DID lay out the goodies when I got home to show Hubby what I'd found, and so I took a photo to share before I put everything away. Aren't those strawberries beauties? And they're just as tasty as they look; I know that because we had some for brunch.

I thought I'd check out the meat booths today too; I ended up bringing home some country sausage--also for our brunch. Along with the sausage and strawberries, I made something else we enjoy in summer: corn and basil cakes. They're a little like pancakes but they're full of corn and chopped basil and they're not a sweet dish. To top them off, I chopped tomatoes, garlic, basil, and a sweet corn relish. I've provided a link to the recipe for the corn and basil cakes but the tomato relish is something I just throw together.

Our three tomato plants are starting to really produce. We have a small yellow pear tomato, a large yellow tomato, and a large red tomato, so I suspect we'll be eating a lot of tomatoes. It's a funny thing, but the only tomatoes I like much are the homegrown kind.

At the market today, I also found a few other tasty goodies. I've never really cooked with unusual varieties of mushrooms, but I bought a package of four different types to try out. If you look back at the photo, the mushrooms are just above the strawberries, but the packaging looks a little foggy. I also talked with the goat cheese man and brought home a package of his garlic and herbs goat cheese. We had a little bit of it on our corn on the cobb at dinner--yum!

Besides going to the market and cooking, I got some of the housecleaning done, took a nice nap, and prepped blocks in the Sweat Shop. Oh, and I cooked some more.

Here's one of the blocks I prepped--the THIRD block of the Sew Spooky BOM:

For those of you who might have thought about doing this BOM but weren't sure about the applique, I can tell you that the applique is fairly minimal. Each of the blocks has a fence that needs to be appliqued but besides the fence, there are just a couple other applique elements in each block. Most of it is simply piecing.

There are some embroidery and buttons that need to be added to this one in the upper windows and at the tip of the witch's hat roof too. And those bottom windows? The Quilt Company, the designer of the pattern, offers pre-printed fabric sheets and button packs--the Jack O'Lanterns in the lower windows are from the printed sheet as are the cow in the open barn door in block 2 and the quilt hanging on the side of the house in block 1. Those little extras do a lot to enhance the quilt; I always purchase them with The Quilt Company patterns, even if I'm using my own fabrics.

Now it's time to get to bed, and in the morning, I'm surely going to sleep in and NOT get up to go to the market or anywhere else. I hope you're having an excellent weekend too!