“Just a little slice of light”

I went to the Suffern farmer’s market yesterday. What a nice little market. I saw so many wonderful forms of produce I had never before seen. I am hoping to return next week with my camera, so I can share the wonderful array of crops for sale. All the vendors seemed to be the actual farmers or bakers. So much wonderful conversation and knowledge was exchanged. I did quite a bit of vegan campaigning. I only wish I had had some pamphlets to give out!
One conversation with the local baker from Valley Cottage quite surprised me. His bakery, The Little Bake Shop (there is little information on line so I can’t link it here) does indeed make vegan and/or gluten-free items. When I read the ingredients for the first item I came upon, a blueberry pie, it was totally vegan, which I joyfully exclaimed out loud. It seemed pretty clear to me that it had an egg wash on the crust, but the listed ingredients were vegan. We got talking about his baking and I asked why the pie wasn’t labeled “vegan”. He said, “Depends how you feel about eggs and preservatives.” Wow. He has no clue what the word vegan means. If you are vegan there is only one way you can feel about eggs! And while I do not believe preservatives to be a worthy ingredient for a vegan product, chemicals are vegan. I don’t eat them, but that’s not the point is it. I will visit this man again. He was very nice and seemed quite open. We talked a bit about gluten-free baking and flours. This is my favorite discussion topic these days, so I was quite happy. We discussed the difficulties of baking for a clientele with allergies and he seemed quite dedicated to the purity of his gluten-free production.
There was some truly awesome hot sauce for sale too. I love me some hot sauce, so this was a great find. No food coloring, no additives. Just real ingredients. They had a couple of other items as well, but none that spoke to me like the hot sauce! The product was called Emmaline’s Hot Sauce and I truly recommend it!
There was a frightful array of animal products for sale, so this was no pure vegan wonderland. I was still able to come away with a large bag of goodies, including a variety of mushrooms, amaranth greens, escarole, garlic, purple scallions, fruit, bread, PICKLES and hot sauce . One farmer was so taken by our conversation that she gave me some fresh savory as I left.

I hope to make it back to the market next week. I put all the produce together into a big brothy soup, which was amazing. I kind of wish I had sauteed the amaranth greens separately so I could taste them on their own. So hopefully next week……