Bust at the “Farmer’s Market”, Victory at the Grocery Outlet.

Saturday morning started early here, the first Waterfront Market of the fall AND a mimosa tent. Unfortunately, no promised mimosa tent to be found and someone needs to teach one of the two food vendors at the “farmer’s market” that produce there should not have PLU codes. Ended up with some mealy tomatoes and the one highlight of Dilly Pickled Carrots; sweet, spicy and best of all pickled baby carrots.

As I left the disappointing Market I remembered the Grocery Outlet was not too far away. And as it was still before 10 am, I thought that I could give some time to that cause. As reported on at thekitchn.com, I was expecting a more Costco-like atmosphere pallets upon pallets of items of one kind stacked upon themselves, waiting for someone to get down to the next pallet in two months. Instead, I found a small grocery store where I could purchase my favorite regional Michigan pop and an ounce of lemon extract for $0.67.

The best finds? Minus the outrageous amount of packaging are below:

Florida is one of the largest producers of fruits and vegetables in the country, but prices in this area on fresh produce are not reasonable. A quick stop by my local Publix this afternoon found Jalapeno’s for $3.99/lb and Tomatillos for $5.99/lb (though a pound was probably not available).

I took these finds home and with the addition of garlic made the quickest salsa I have ever put together. There is really no recipe. Broil for 6 minutes, about 4 inches away from the coils, almost a pound of tomatillos, a handful of jalapenos and 8 (ish) cloves of garlic. Wait until everything has just a little bit of char on it.

Pull the top off the jalapenos (I only used three in the salsa) and take the paper off of the garlic, dump everything into the food processor (or in my case three batches into the mini chopper) and let cool. My morning shopping excursion was not at all what I envisioned but ended up with a fantastic Roasted Tomatillo Salsa, perfect with the bag of white corn tortilla chips that I grabbed for $1.09!

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September 6, 2010

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What’s in a name?

Thanks to a great night in Lansing with some great friends (Hi, Ryan and Amanda!), my food blog is finally coming to fruition!

I  have been thinking about starting a food blog for years and religiously read all of the best ones out there. My hang up on starting one  was a lack of a good name. I wanted something that was creative, but it had to speak to me. It needed to represent a bit of the adventure that Brian and I have been on for the past eight months; packing up and leaving everything that we knew in Michigan and heading to a place where I only wore my wool coat once this winter. We are so lucky to be living in a climate that is  temperate. I never once had to scrape ice off the windshield or kick iced up chunks of snow and salt off the wheel wells of the car. The beach is beyond beautiful and the fresh seafood is so tempting, it is hard not to cook shrimp every night.

Thankfully, Ryan was able to come up with something that was everything that I was looking for, Thanks so much!

Mostly this will just be a place for me to document my cooking in Panama City, a place where grocery stores are open from only 7 am til 10 pm,  lacking good produce and any seemingly ethnic ingredients. I am constantly trying to cook and eat healthier for the both of us, but you will see a few baked goods sneak in for office or school treats.

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April 11, 2010

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