Twenty Dollar Thursdays, Week 2

Welcome to Week Two of my series "Twenty Dollar Thursdays"! Each week, I will spend a morning and $20 seeking out fresh, seasonal ingredients at one of my local farmer's markets. I will then incorporate these ingredients into my family's meal plan for that week. I hope to feature some of the growers and farms as the season goes on. I am lucky to live in an area that has a year-round growing season, and has Farmer's markets available year-round, rain or shine.

This week, we were blessed with a gorgeous summer spring day on market day. Last week, the rain was threatening to roll in, so there were less vendors and less people, so I picked up my produce and got out of there. This week it was nearly 80 out, so we shopped, strolled, and stopped to play at the playground. With my Peets iced coffee in hand, S-Bug had a blast running and playing with the other kids at the playground. We are entering into the "terrible twos" phase so it was good practice for him taking turns and sharing the playground equipment.

Week of April 10th:

There were a few new vendors at the market this week, with an abundance of spring produce. Green was all around, with beet and turnip greens, asparagus, artichokes, fava beans and spring snap peas! I started at the far end of the market and worked my way back to the front, chatting and buying along the way. First, I picked up a bag of baby artichokes and got a few new recipes from the vendor. I will be trying one of them out Friday when I have dinner at my parent's house. I then stopped to splurge on some local honey. By splurge I mean I spent $7 outside of my $20 budget. I then picked up more apples from Rainbow Orchards, this time I doubled what I bought last week so we could hopefully have enough apples for the week. I then stopped to pick up some local Brentwood produce, asparagus from Checchini & Checchini and beets and snap peas from Enos Family Farms.

The Breakdown:

Baby Artichokes $4 (bag of 10)

Apples $7.50 ($2/lb)

Asparagus $3.50

Golden Beets $1.50

Red Beets $1.50

2 extra bunches of beet greens FREE

Sugar Snap Peas $1.50 (1/2 pound bag)

*Local Wildflower Honey $7 (splurge item)

My Meal Plan for this week includes:

Egg Frittata with Beet Greens, Asparagus, Potatoes, and Feta Cheese

Burgers with Roasted Balsamic Asparagus

Beet Chips, Red and Golden

Spring Salad with sugar snap peas, apples, and walnuts with homemade honey-mustard vinaigrette

Fire-Roasted Artichokes with Sundried Tomato Aioli

I also hope to try my hand in fresh juicing

Apple-Yellow Beet

Greens-Cucumber-Mint-Ginger

My weekend is already proving to be busy and it's only Thursday!  My former Pony Club is in charge of running concessions at a local horse show, so I will be assisting them. I hope to visit a farmer's market Saturday morning and finish my Easter Egg Tree this weekend. Stay tuned for recipes and more!