Celebration!

Whew, think we're finally over the Nastiest. Bug. Ever. To celebrate, we went to a local farmers' market over the weekend. In keeping with our New Year's resolutions, we're trying to eat more locally grown food, so we were delighted to find local winter farmers' markets. We are regulars at the summer ones, but just found out about the winter offerings. This weekend the market was at a greenhouse and it was mobbed - police directing traffic, cars parked all up and down the road - crazy!

There isn't much for vegetables yet, of course, but I did snag some lovely little beet greens. There were fish vendors and several small farmers selling organic, humanely raised meat. We've cut way back on our carnivorous tendencies, so even though "happy" meat is more expensive, we're probably spending less than we were on the industrial stuff. The Captain found some huge pork chops and ground beef for his nights to cook.

These lovely duck eggs were our fun find. They are so amazing -- blue-green or brown speckled and BIG - how could we pass up these beauties? So this morning, I made scrambled duck eggs - a first for me. I couldn't bear to break the shells, so recruited The Captain's help in blowing out the eggs. A careful poke or two with a skewer, a bit of back and forth to break the yoke, some huffing and puffing and the eggs plopped out. ( Easy for me to say, The Captain did all the work). These eggs are really thick, almost the consistency of pudding. Tasty, tasty and so pretty - that's a lot of goodness from a little duck! We rounded out our feast with toast with maple butter from Dean's Sugar House in Charlemont, Mass - JD makes the best-ever maple butter!

The shells found a new home in a great little nest - I know ducks don't live in little nests in trees, but they look so darn cute! The nest is in my new studio -stay tuned for the final installment on the reno!On the way out, I bought a couple packets of seeds and some pussy willows - spring is here and we are over the plague - life is good!