Market Update, Hot Peppers, and Another Cabinet

Good day, my beloved readers! We are half way through a long weekend, and I have been crazy busy. I have a market update for you plus some news on The Other Room. Let us begin.

Saturday's market was hoppin'! There was a 5K race scheduled, so we needed to be set up before 7:45 or after 10:00. This is an annual event, and I am one of the early people. Yawn, yes, I know. I got there early enough to observe Farmer Mike setting up, and that's early!

It was a very pleasant cool and sunny day! The veggie supply is dwindling, but we still have pretty colors.

Maters, all in a row.

Shrooms. I bought some of these to make Mushroom Barley soup. Mmmm.

Winter squash.

Sweet peppers. One of the other crafters commented on how much she likes seeing dirt on the veggies. Me, too!

Please take note of the green bins and how they are propped up in his display. We'll come back to these in a sec.

Jalepenos. Some of these came home with me, but more on that later.

Leeks over at Farmer Margie's stand. These are the Mother of all leeks. Big 'uns!

Then we have okra. I hate okra. Okay, 'hate' is a very strong word. I intensely dislike okra. I am a Yankee, and I just never understood why people like okra. It is slimy and I do not like slimy.

Farmer Mike takes all the veggies from the big bins and sorts them into these tidy rows of boxes.
While all this sorting was going on, Farmer Mike tried to get me to eat okra. Uh-uh. I did mention to him that Pioneer Woman said she ate it raw, and I wondered aloud if that might make it less slimy, so he said I should try it and report back.

With much trepidation, I selected these two. You can see how small they are. Mike thought they would be sweeter because they were younger.

I asked Farmer Mike why they were all fuzzy, and he said because they are FRESH! I learn a lot at these markets.

I bit into the smaller one, and it is NOT slimy. It actually had no taste at all! I tried to get one of MaryBeth's daughters to take a bite, but she told me she only likes cooked okra because it IS slimy. But she was a real trooper and tried it. She reported back that if you leave it in your mouth long enough, it mixes with your saliva and does get slimy. Oh, good.

So I am still not sold on this okra thing, and unless someone can tell me a single serving of okra holds the daily nutritional value of at least 5 servings of fruit and veggies, I will probably never eat it again.

Moving on, even though Farmer Mike made me eat okra, he is a real sweetheart. He set up his tables further back this week to give me room to set up next to him and not be so schmooshed. We are required to leave an aisle large enough for strollers and wheelchairs, so we tend to pull back and I was schmooshed the last time I set up next to his tables. It was so much nicer this week!

See? And notice those up-turned green veggie bins. They were to make me a nice backdrop, and to encourage shoppers to come around to the front of his tables. I told you he was a sweetheart!

MaryBeth had the cutest tutus for little babies! When I said "Huh?", she said "Photo ops". I think she sold them, too.

The satin ribbon unties for easy wrap-around, and it even has some stretchy-stretchy going on. Really cute. I am sooo glad I had boys.

She also has these adorable flannel bottoms. I want a pair for ME! (a lot larger than those ...) Maybe no elastic at the ankles for me, though.

One of our jewelers is a big-time supporter of one of our local animal rescue/sanctuaries, and she loves bugs. So does our little beverage vendor, so the two of them get along just fine. This week she had three of these woolly worms on her table.

She is also the one who made me a bracelet.

THIS bracelet. Is it not beautiful? I selected the stones based on their specific voo-doo-y, touchy-feely properties, and once I read up on them, I'll be more specific.

Didja notice the wee bat charm? Soooo cute!

And evidence of the 5K race: check out her number! Her Mom and Sister were numbers 665 and 667. I asked her if she was superstitious, and she said no. She actually thought it was great fun!

Now, about those jalepenos. Here they are in my sink, ready to be cleaned and prepped. Let me preface this by saying I have never worn gloves to clean jalepenos. Let me also say I have been very lucky so far in my life.

Last night I prepped all of these by cutting off the tops, cutting them in half, then with a teaspoon, I scraped out the seeds. I stuffed them with a mixture of cream cheese and crushed pineapple, then wrapped each one in a 1/2 piece of bacon and put them in the oven to bake.

I washed my hands with Dawn dish soap, figuring if it gets crude oil off of ducks and otters, it would get jalepeno oil off my hands. I was wrong.

About 10 minutes later, my hands started to burn. A lot. I washed them with Dawn again. No better. I scrubbed them with a brush + Dawn. Nope. Then they just burned from the oils AND the scrubbing.

Then the peppers were ready to come out of the oven, and they smelled sooooooo good. I popped one in my mouth. HOTHOTHOT, and not as in 'temperature' hot, but in Scoville units HOT! OMG, those babies were off the charts in the heat category.

I am not a milk-drinker, so I have none in the house. I tried over the course of the next two hours to lose the heat in both my mouth and on my hands, to no avail. I actually mixed up a batch of dry milk and stood over the sink with my hands soaking in the stuff. As long as my hands stayed under milk, I was okay.

Then BR#2 stopped by to show me some of her quilting, and she proceeded to laugh at me. Then she popped a popper and turned red, then ordered me to put them back into the oven to cook longer. We both hoped they'd sweeten up with more baking. Let me just say now they did not.

As I cried and whined on Twitter about all of this, I expressed great sorrow in the wonderful smell and my inability to eat any of them, and how Farmer Mike was in SO much trouble now, when someone suggested I freeze them and bring them with me next weekend and see how Farmer Mike likes them. Have I told you lately how much I love my Tweeple? Next to you guys, my beloved three (maybe four) readers, those Tweeps are the best!

I went to bed with still-stinging hands, but they are only a little tingly today.

So today I wanted to do something, anything, constructive. I decided to try and sand the rivulets of dried paint off the wall in The Other Room, but I failed. So I made an executive decision to leave it there and just assemble my remaining cabinets. I did! Lookie:

Ta-da! Okay, there's no doors yet, but I want to wait until I get the knobs before I finish that part of he assembly. It will be way easier to drill the holes for the knobs if the doors are lying flat than if they are hanging on the cabinets. I am going to IKEA on the 15th, so I'll take care of the knobs then.

On the top of this second cabinet are my Big Shot and my paper cutter. The first shelf holds my PTI papers and ink and ribbon. I had to separate the ink & ribbon into separate boxes, cuz I got more ribbon (surprise) and all the reinkers, so it was time.

To the left of the PTI stuff are two boxes with my Big Shot dies and embossing folders.

The bottom shelf will hold something very soon, but I still need to figure out what. Trust me, I have plenty of candidates.

That's all I have for now. I hope to actually stamp something today so I have a card or two to post. I will work on what's already laying out on my tables, as I have my Stamp Camps next weekend, and I need to think about the Clean Sweep and how much stuff I'll need to put away later.

Thanks for stopping by!