Quick things:

1. No fresh bread this Thursday! Baker Shana of Talking Breads is getting married this weekend, and so is taking this week and next off from baking. We will have fresh breads from McGrath’s Bakehouse on Friday and Saturday as usual. (And we’ll have frozen breads from both bakers available on Thursday.)
2. Village Acres Farm is now accepting pre-orders for their Thanksgiving turkeys to be picked up at R&R the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
3. Three new cheeses from Lakeside Pastures in Newburg, PA make their debut this week. An aged sheep’s milk cheese, a goat cheddar, and a really amazing goat feta with orange peel & lemon. (We’ll prolly have to do a tasting next week.)
4. Fresh ginger is currently in stock, and will be for the next couple weeks. Since this is one of our most requested items, we thought you should know. 🙂
5. We’ve got a bread slicer! (It’s the best thing since……)

Scroll down for the list of what we’ll have this week!

 

Tuesday morning I woke up, rolled over, and checked my phone for the temperature. 36 degrees. I breathed a sigh of relief. We’d been under a frost advisory for the night, and I was just. not. ready.

Although we are already a few weeks into fall, and have many fall treats — broccoli, green beans, squash, and more — we are still hanging on to some of those summer items. When the frost hits, other than the frantically harvested last gasps of summer that ripen just in the nick of time, that will be it for the tomatoes and peppers, and the gradual slide into fall will make a sudden leap.

Fall is a spectacularly beautiful and abundant time here, and, as I’m sure I’ve said before, I find it particularly beautiful that the foods that are available to us as the nights (and days) turn cooler are so well-suited for our moods in this weather. Still, that first frost will signal a significant change, and when I woke up on Tuesday morning, I was grateful to delay any further changes — no matter how inevitable — for at least a few more days.

If you visited the stand last week, you may have noticed some changes there. If you didn’t make it, I’ll walk you through it:

The first thing you notice when you approach the stand is that the checkout counter has shifted closer to Elementary Coffee. Then you start wondering where the bread is. Then you realize that the bread case has moved to the other end of the counter, so that it now stands next to the cheese. And then you wonder what that enormous piece of machinery behind the counter is — and so you ask. That enormous piece of machinery is a bread slicer. “OH!” you say. “Wow, it’s big!” And I, standing behind the counter, just in front of that enormous piece of machinery, nod, and say, somewhat dryly, “Yep. And loud and kind of terrifying.”

Many months ago, after having to disappoint yet another customer who hoped to get their beautiful loaf of bread sliced, Dusty got it in his head that we would get a bread slicer. Have you ever priced bread slicers? They’re crazy expensive. No way that was going to happen. But Dusty persisted, and finally found one at auction for a very reasonable price. And then it sat in storage, because the one he found for a very reasonable price was enormous, and we just couldn’t figure out where to put it. But then, two weeks ago, after a very busy weekend, we were talking about the flow of traffic at the counter during peak times, and how we thought we might streamline it to make a quicker and more pleasant experience for everyone — and in the course of discussing changes we might make to the physical layout, arrived at a plan that would both provide better flow for the checkout process and allow room for the bread slicer. And so Dusty got to it.

The idea with the counter now is that all the traffic can move in one direction, even folks who are just getting bread or a pastry. We hope it will work out that when folks are done with their shopping, they’ll bring their baskets up and put them on the counter next to the scale, leaving the items in the basket. If you’ve got your own bags, you can go ahead and put them on the other side of the register. That way we can take items out one at a time as we ring them in, and put them directly into bags, again, moving everything in the same direction. I think in the long run it’s going to work really well, and maybe even alleviate some minor frustrations we’ve had that don’t seem to be directly related — but for now, as we get used to it, and work out any kinks that arise, I hope you’ll be patient with us.

As you may have gathered by now, I am not always the best at dealing with change. I will hem and haw and drag my feet, even when I know it’s for the best. Dusty, though, once convinced of something, will dive right in. In this case, he was especially able to do so because he had just finished his last major project — fixing up a house for us to move into, and getting us moved.

We were previously living in a house that Dusty was supposed to be fixing up — he’d done much of the demo work, like tearing out walls and pulling up carpet, but very little of the reconstruction. It’s hard to do that kind of thing while you’re also living in a place, and doubly hard when, right in the middle of the project, you assume ownership of a little market stand, and suddenly want to devote as much energy to it as you can. And so, when the opportunity came along to fix up a house that we weren’t living in, we took it. It still took a little while, but we are now, seemingly all of a sudden, living in a house with real walls, real floors, and, most importantly, a real kitchen. So if you’ve noticed that we’ve been posting a lot more Instagram and Facebook pics of the meals we’re cooking at home, that’s why — not only are we cooking more often and more elaborately, the lighting is a hundred times better. 🙂

So, all in all, even though I’ve been getting a little frustrated that I keep opening the wrong drawer to find the silverware at home and reaching to the wrong place to grab bags at the stand, I do have to admit that these are good changes.

But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for the first frost just yet.

-Julia

 

Produce

[one_third]

Beans & Peas

• Green Beans

Braising Greens

• Rainbow Chard
• Collard Greens
• Green Curly Kale

Fruit

• Gala Apples
• Honeycrisp Apples
• Bosc Pears

Herbs

• Chives
• Cilantro
• Parsley
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Thyme

Mushrooms

• Cremini Mushrooms
• White Mushrooms

[/one_third][one_third]Onions & Garlic

• Garlic
• Leeks
• Red Onions
• Sweet Yellow Onions
• White Onions
• Shallots

Other

• Broccoli
• Green Cabbage
• Red Cabbage
• Cauliflower

Peppers

• Red & Yellow Bell Peppers
• Carmen di Toro Sweet Peppers

Potatoes

• Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Purple Sweet Potatoes

[/one_third][one_third_last]Roots

• Red Beets
• Carrots
• Celeriac
• Easter Egg Radishes
• Hakurei Salad Turnips

Salad Greens

• Arugula
• Romaine Lettuce
• Lettuce Mix
• Baby Spinach
• Ruby Streaks Mustard Greens

Squash

• Pie Baby Pumpkins
• Acorn Squash
• Butternut Squash
• Delicata Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Sweet Dumpling Squash

Tomatoes

• Sungold Cherry Tomatoes
• Green Tomatoes
• Heirloom Tomatoes[/one_third_last]

Cheese

[one_fourth]
Keswick Creamery

• Brie
• Morbier
• Quark
• Ricotta
• Vermeer
• Wallaby
• Wine-Washed Tomme

[/one_fourth][one_fourth]Lykens Valley Creamery

• Baby Swiss
• Clothbound Cheddar
• Goat Gouda
• Cheddar
• Sharp Cheddar
• Smoked Cheddar
• Jalapeno Cheddar

[/one_fourth][one_fourth]Camelot Valley

• Chevre (asst varieties)
• Feta
• Moonlight Fog
• Starlight Crotin

[/one_fourth][one_fourth_last]Other

• Hope Springs Mild Cheddar
• Hope Springs Monterey Jack
• Hope Springs Mozzarella
• Lakeside Pastures Tuscarora
• Lakeside Pastures Goat Cheddar
• Lakeside Pastures Feta w/Orange Peel & Lemon
• Millwood Springs Blue Cheese

[/one_fourth_last]

Bread

[one_half]
McGrath’s Brick Oven Bakehouse
(fresh Friday & Saturday)

• McGrath’s Original
• Sesame Original
• Irish Oatmeal Pan Bread
• Dill Onion
• Sesame & Cheddar
• Cranberry Orange
• Baguettes (Saturday only)

[/one_half][one_half_last]Talking Breads
(frozen only this week and next)

• Batard
• Ciabatta
• Miche
• Seeded

[/one_half_last]