• Shari Love brought gorgeous, Urban-crafted floral arrangements
• Friday of the Sellwood Garden Club, brought a bevy of varied produce as grown by the Agricultural Triumvirate of the SGC, Sunroot Gardens CSA (peas!) and Riverhouse CSA, on over 50 plots in SE
• Cully Farm, representin’ the Northern Territories, brought the prettiest head lettuces of the season, so far

We’ll be there, every Sunday, from 1-6pm, and hope to see you there soon.

Hawthorne Street Fair and the HUFM - all on Sunday, 16 August

We’re expecting a very big week, so you can imagine the vendors are going to be briging their very best for you!  Be sure to stop by if you’re doing the SE Portland Sunday Parkways loop.  Last year’s event drew over 20,000 people out of their cars for the day!

View the official map here: http://www.portlandonline.com/transportation/index.cfm?c=46103&a=234996

New Deal Vodka - Creators and Purveyors of Portland 88 Vodka

Who sez local food and getting your “green” on has to be a tree bark and granola-eatin’ drag?  Not Pekio, the communicaitons maven for New Deal Vodka and diminuitive queen of all things stylin’ in a SE way.  She was kind enough to write up a sassy and sweet review of the HUFM.  If you don’t smile, nod and guffaw right out loud when you read it, you’re either clinically dead or a banker.

And, the good folks at New Deal Distillery ought to know a thing or two about scrappy SE locals doing it for themselves and their good neighbours.  Matt and Tom started making their delightfully distilled products in an Active Space on 9th and Main before it was even cool and the notion of Portland’s Distillery Row was a booze-soaked cherry floating in their highball dream of making spirits for Cascadia.

So, what could be a more appropriate mix of our two very Southeasty ventures than some recipes for cooking w/ booze?  In honour of the onset of tomato season, I present New Deal’s Spirited Cherry Tomato recipe:

Courtesy of The Meadow in North Portland.

• 3 pints Firm, small red and yellow cherry or grape tomatoes
• ½ cup New Deal Vodka
• 3 T White Wine Vinegar
• 1 T Superfine granulated sugar
• 1 tsp Finely grated fresh lemon zest
• 1 ½ T Coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 ½ T Finishing salt, such as Fleur de Sel

• Cut a small X in skin of blossom end of each tomato.
• Blanch tomatoes, 5 at a time, in a saucepan of boiling water 3 seconds and immediately transfer with a slotted spoon to a bowl of ice and cold water to stop cooking.
• Drain and peel, transferring to a large shallow dish.
• Stir together New Deal Vodka, vinegar, sugar, and zest until sugar is dissolved, then pour over tomatoes, gently tossing to coat.
• Marinate, covered and chilled, at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.
• Stir together salt and pepper and serve with tomatoes for dipping.

I highly recommend checking out all the awesome recipes for cooking w/ booze over at their site.  Check it out!

In fact, several people have raved about the asparagus peas since we brought them in and turned them on to yet another “Future Food” for Cascadia.  Reports from our intrepid and most excellent customers note they taste like a cross between asparagus and artichoke.  I cooked mine up in a breakfast curry w/ shovel-cut potatoes and some okra, so mine tasted a bit like okra and fenugrek, but still quite yummy.  The Turtle Gal said they were best under about 2-3″, and I’d agree, which is why I know chuck the big ones into the compost.

You p’bly ought to check out Maeve C’s other reviews on Yelp! if you want the opinion of someone who clearly has good taste.  This is most especially true if you’re a vegan or vegetarian.

Produce From the Hawthorne Urban Farmers' Market by Jess of Get Sconed!

I noticed that Jess from the Get Sconed! blog wrote a wonderful post about us yesterday.  And, come to think of it, I remember her coming by the booth, not knowing that she is something of a virtual, local celeb.  Well, I remember everyone (not by name – my brain doesn’t work like that) who is as mental into fruits and veggies as I am.

And, in case it wasn’t obvious, we love vegans, too.  I’ve been a vegetarian for 18 years, myself — I can fully appreciate how much all those veggies are going to cost if you don’t grow ‘em yourself or find a good, local outlet to get your veggie on, barter action or not.  Even if we don’t take EBT, HUFM is here to help!  In fact, aside from what I was told this week were very reasonable prices, we’ll try to help anyone afford their healthy veggies — still cheaper than health insurance and probably more effective (certainly more proactive).  Kat sez it’s time for us to raise a barter army to help w/ labour to get our winter crops in.  Now, that’s an idea!

Not only did Jess pick up some darn good lookin’ produce from the vendors, but she was good enough to check out our other craft vendors, too.  The gal who runs the Portland Black Lipstick Company is just about one of the nicest darn people you’re ever going to meet — clever and cute, too!  She’s actually got me wearing lipstick for the first time since Hillary was First Lady – I’m quite fond of the Bug’s Blood.

With regards to Jess’ post, she most awesomely shared her experience with the world in both words and pictures.  You really ought to check it out.

And, I have to say, we do have some of the darn cutest eggplants around, yo!  Wait ’til we bring the orange globes this coming week for Hawthorne Street Fair.  I recommend them for Brother Tony’s Blister Hot Green Curry.

8-ball summer squash, armenian cucumbers and broccoli @ Portland's Hawthorne Urban Farmers' Market

There was a very nice article about the HUFM at someone’s blog called, My Pretty Little Head.

Plenty of good stuff for everyone's tastes at the HUFM

Jeffery Kingman, a local business owner and former chef, took some really great pics and wrote up a wonderful piece about the Hawthorne Urban Farmers’ Market on his blog, Kitchen Dances, after our second week.  You should totally check it out.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out what a wonderful thing the Common Grounds Coffeehouse and the Hawthorne Auto Clinic is doing, letting us lease this space for produce barter.  Were that all business-owners were so hip!  Of course, we always send as many people as we can over to the local shops when they’re looking for something we don’t have, as it’s just the neighbourly thing to do.

We’ve had so much help in putting this all together from the local media, friends, family, concerned citizens of Sunnyside and Richmond neighbourhoods…I don’t know how to thank everyone except to keep bringing better produce every darn week.

No one will have to want for Zucchini or the other summer squash this week at the Market - Check out the other great vendors we'll have on hand

We had such a great opening weekend this last week, complete with music from Demon Squirrel, Denali and the bluegrass sensation more often seen at the White Eagle, Student Loan, we’re totally stoked to be bringing even more new vendors this week. Some of the folks who’ve contacted us about joining for the 12 July Hawthorne Market include:

• Dan of City Garden Farms with plenty more exciting produce, some of it raised with the help of local kids on the Johnson Creek
• Chris and Sarah of Pacific Pie Company and their Aussie-style pies (and pasties!) – good neighbours just over on 37th!
• Josh and Sarah of Sacred Organics will be there with about a dozen different types of garlic and homemade skin-care products.
• A new (to the HUFM) acoustic duo called Rain or Shine, playing gypsy jazz, neo-klezmer and other things that make me dance. I, for one, can’t wait, and the music is always free.
• Some neighbourhood kids are going to show up with their hand-made crafts and maybe their friend the teenage juggler

As you can see, this market is all about the folks that live here — everyone and their dog is welcome. Come join us this Sunday, 12 July for our Even Grander Hawthorne Urban Faremers’ Market Grand Opening 2: Bigger, Bolder and more Hawthorny

As always, rockin’ the block in our little corner of Sunnyside, from 1-6pm. Take a walk down past 39th and come see some of this Ultra-local vibe that everyone is talking about.

Check out the upcoming crops list to see what’s going to be fresh this week.

Sellwood Garden Club Produce Bounty - just one of many produce vendors at the Hawthorne Urban Farmers' Market

Wow!

Despite this last Sunday being the tail-end of a holidy, we had lots of folks show up and lend their support to our little, fledgling farmers’ market.

Thanks so much to everyone who showed up and really made it a fun time for everyone.

We’re really looking forward to next week when we’ll have even more of SE Portland’s urban farmers in attendence as well as vendors selling home-made and useful things like soap and tables.  I’ve contacted a few folks about becoming food vendors at the Hawthorne Market, so you may very well get to snack on things other than berries, though there’s hardly anything wrong with that!

I, for one, can’t wait ’til next week for more fun, food and barter.  And, to the gal that traded me a couple of Blue Boar for carrots — you totally made my day, cuz it was hot!

Now, from 1-6pm, in the lot of the Hawthorne Auto Clinic, at 43rd and Hawthorne.

The ONLY place to get produce from SE Portland’s evolving and rebellious gang of Urban Farmers.