The little birdie and I had a blast at yesterday’s Traverse City farmer’s market, which is open on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. Although it’s smaller, I prefer the Wednesday market because it’s not as crowded. As you can see, we loaded up on mid-summer’s bounty.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a quart of local strawberries because that’s all Wren could talk about on the walk downtown and I didn’t want to disappoint her by telling her there wouldn’t be any so I just kept saying, “what about cherries? I bet we can find some delicious cherries…” But we DID find some strawberries (actually Wren saw them first!) and they’re the best we’ve had all summer. Like little candied jewels.

I was happy to find some pickling cukes because we just ran out of the huge batch we made last fall and it doesn’t seem right to have an outdoor summer meal without that pickled crunch.

And the blueberries! I’m not a huge fan of blueberries hidden in pies, but a fresh, flowery blueberry? Yes, please and thank you.

To round out our color palette and crisper drawer, we grabbed some of the season’s first apricots, a quart of beans and, of course, cherries. You can’t live through summer in northern Michigan and not have a constant supply of fresh cherries, right?

Speaking (err, writing) or summer in northern Michigan… have you seen the article in Bon Appetit about Mario Batali and his love affair with the food, people and land/waterscape of northern Michigan? “Traverse City is the antidote to New York City.” Woah. Click here to read it.