A day at the market

Tucson has been trying to increase the Farmers' Markets scene. And this is something I support 100%! We have great farmers doing great things, and this should be celebrated. I think my appreciation is heightened, as I have had many-a-failures on "Tucson Gardens".

Stay tuned, however. I have been picking brains of every single gardener I meet, and I am heart-set on growing a tomato garden this year! Seed planting begins in January! (indoors)

Ryan and I have a great love for food, and good food. So after church on Sunday, we decided to check out a festival in town that celebrates local farmers, food, and entertainers: Viva la Local Tucson.

We had so much fun, and will definitely start attending this bi-annual festival!!

The 1st section of the festival is the farmers market portion. This had local farmers/vendors selling their produce, olive oil, teas, ranchers selling their meat, local bee-growers with their honey, tamales, and the list goes on.

We go to the local farmers market a few times a month, so didn't spend a lot of time at this (since we are quite familiar with the vendors). But we did stop at our favorite stand to get some heirloom tomatoes. Always a delight.

The farmer always jokes that his tomatoes are a fertility agent, just because they taste that good. He makes me laugh. I will say they are pretty dang good. We got some heirloom tomatoes, some local home-mode mozzarella. (For dinner Sunday night I made fresh & local caprese salad and butternut squash soup!)

We ate a light breakfast to get an appetite for lunch, because we knew there would be some good food. And indeed there was!

We decided to share 2 things. So we got a pulled pork sandwich, and split it. That came from Rod's KC BBQ. This is a well known BBQ company in Tucson that has been open for years. The pork was melt-in-your-mouth good.

Then we made a stop at "Mexico In Season" for tamales. We got 2 small tamales. 1 was a green chile and cheese. And the other was a pork and red sauce. We both decided the pork one was better.

I've decided I'm not a huge tamale fan. But it's such a big thing in Tucson this time of year! We couldn't pass it up.

We passed on the local beer & wine stands, since we decided to save our money for produce and food. But it all looked awesome.

Our lunch was enjoyed on the grass as we enjoyed the sounds of a local band called Reno del Mar. They were awesome! It was a trio of violin & guitar playing jazz, latin, and western swing. I definitely want to get their album!! It was so relaxing.

It was also entertaining watching some of the "baby boomers" (aka Tucson hippies) dance to it. (I think some of them went to Woodstock at a different time of their life. But that's just a guess). In fact, at one point the violinist said, "As I look out on the crowd, I'd call this a family friendly style Woodstock!"

Check them out!! They are awesome:
(this is them performing at one of our favorite places by the university)

 

Here is my plate of deliciousness. 

 

And here we are enjoying the beautiful afternoon! It was a perfect 73 degrees out that day. Thank God fall was arrived at last!!

 

It was a wonderful day, and made me appreciate where we live. Which is refreshing, since our hot summer makes that very difficult!!