Good Food Hunting

It was a beautiful day to spend my lunch break outdoors. It was also quite a nice day for eating ice cream so I did that too.

Chris and I went over the the market about 11:30 yesterday. I remembered the lunch crowd from last time so I wanted to get there a little earlier this time. I was really hoping this market would be bigger than the one in July. After all, its September and everything should be coming in to harvest, right?
But, it was a bit smaller. The family that owns Fortune House restaurant in Owosso was not there this time, I don’t think. I bought a bunch of Asian vegetables from them before. A few of the stands were quite large though.

We bought some super-sweet red peppers, a couple of banana peppers, a pint of ginger gold apples (my favorite), a pint of plums, a pint of crimini mushrooms and some cheese from Grassfields Cheese of Coopersville.

While walking around, we sampled pickled vegetables from Safie Foods. I’m not sure how much I like dill-pickled green beans. The sweet and sour pickles were good though. We didn’t buy any as our fridge is ridiculous right now and I know where to get them in the future. We also had some sweet potato bread. It was decent but I think Chris was put-off by the vendor reprimanding him because he didn’t use the little tongs to pick up his sample. Okay… well he did take the last piece so its not like he touched anything else.

And we had ice cream from Mooville. Chris had strawberry and I went for mint chip, which didn’t actually have chips in it. I’m pretty sure that was just luck of the scopp though. The bowls with one large scoop were just a dollar each and made quite a nice lunch appetizer. Mooville milk is available at L&Ls and the City Market. I think they have ice cream at the market too.

I hope to see events like this continue to happen in Lansing and other places in Michigan. There are a lot of small food-related businesses in this state that deserve our support and the opportunity to develop a name beyond their little local shops. When I lived in Metro Detroit, I often saw things on the grocery shelves that were locally produced. Go 60 miles and no one had any idea what you were talking about. Garden Fresh salsa was just a Ferndale company selling salsa in local Meijers. A quick glance at their website shows you how big they’ve gotten.