Farmer's Market Dinner

My book signing tent at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago was positioned right next to the cooking demonstration tent. The cook was given a certain amount of money by the market coordinators with which to buy ingredients from the vendors around her. She then transformed those ingredients into one tasty dish after another for market patrons to sample. Everything she made was delicious (I sampled them all).

We had guests over for dinner last night, and while thinking of what to serve, I was inspired by the cook at the market. On Saturday, my daughter and I went to the local farmer's market and gathered the ingredients for the meal. What we ended up serving was:

• Chicken burgers made with herbed chicken patties from locally-raised, free-range chickens, garnished with tomatoes and lettuce.
• Green beans (half from our garden, half from the farmer's market), steamed and then sauteed briefly in butter.
• Handmade spinach linguine and mushroom linguine noodles mixed with zucchini, yellow squash, onions, and shitake mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and doused with cream and parmesian cheese.
• Fern cakes (little pastry tarts filled with apricot and almond goodness and topped with a frosting glaze), and gelato which I made with blueberries from the market.

Everything but the buns for the burgers, the shitake mushrooms, cheese, cream, lettuce, butter, and olive oil, was either from the farmer's market or from our garden. It was all delish!

Thank you farmer's market cook lady for inspiring me!