Saturday May 15^th in Provincetown, MA, the farmer’s market opened for another season.  Several years into this venture, townsfolk and tourists alike enjoy morning strolls along the harbor street near the town hall where fresh veggies are offered from farms such as Lucky Field Organics (Rochester, MA) and Silverbrook Farm (Dartmouth, MA).  Samples of sumptuous oils from Olio di Melli (Westport, MA) entice as do strawberry jams and chutney preserves from other stalls where chatty vendors detail their cultivating, pruning, and harvesting methods.  The scent of fresh herbs rise from an adorable stand with hand-decorated sign ‘Thyme After Thyme’, and once again I am reminded of the dedication and attention that keep the whole in whole foods, the quality in final products, and the fresh in items that are grown short distances away.  If you visit the Outer Cape this summer, don’t miss this seascape delight of hand-grown, home grown.

Kathy Comstock

photo by Becky Luigart-Stayner

Move over Ball and Kerr – there is something much more stylish (if you, like me, desire that kind of thing).  I am having a little obsession with Weck Canning jars.  The shapes and sizes of these German jars are so pretty and interesting.  And the lids are reusable – no rusting, no bending and no throwing away.  Unfortunately though, you can’t just run down to Ace Hardware and grab a few in a pinch – you have to buy them from the Weck website, but maybe you can do like me and slowly, with time, migrate over.

I offer you a little canning eye candy to inspire you to fill your pantry with the beautifully preserved bounty of the harvest season.

The photo is from Chez Pim of  Weck jars filled with her tomato confit.

image from Studio Clip.

Elderberry Syrup recipe and image by Chiot’s Run.

The market is opening soon and if you are around Harvard, MA you will soon start to see our posters around town.

But there is something special about these posters….(besides the fact that they are utterly awesome) – they will be for sale in limited quantities, signed and numbered by the artist, Leslie Bunnell. This is the first year of our collectible artist poster series, but we will be doing it again next year, and the year after, and the year after that, and… you get the idea.
So if you want to have a complete collection in years to come, make sure to visit the market to buy one, or if you are from further afield and just think our posters are so cool that you have to have one, email us and we will make sure you get yours.

I am so jealous of the lucky market managers (Knoxville, TN) that able able to hang these around their town.

Which is why I am so excited to share with you this book.  Living across the street from the biggest farm in New England (Carlson Orchards) and just down the road from the Very Fine plant, I can’t wait to learn which varieties are best for apple crisp, vs, apple pie, or applesauce, or juice or whatever else you can do with apples.

Click to buy the: The Apple Source Book: Particular Uses for Diverse Apples by Sue Clifford and Angela King with Philippa Davenport.

From the England in Particular:

The Apple Source Book is a celebration of nearly 3,000 varieties of apple we can grow in these islands, with their distinctive flavours, uses, places of origin, stories and associated customs.
Recipes from 52 chefs, food writers and gardeners are complemented by a wealth of useful information about apple identification, orchards, wild life, specialist nurseries, suppliers of fruit, blossom routes, Community Orchards as well as ideas for Apple Day, wassailing, juice pressing, cider making and a 40 page county by county gazetteer of where varieties originated.
Taking the apple as a symbol of the physical, cultural and genetic diversity that we should not let slip away, The Apple Source Book demonstrates how anyone can make a difference.