Bright Meadow Farms

Instead of doing the farmer's market this morning we went to the West Side Market in Cleveland, one of the oldest, biggest, and busiest farmer's markets in Ohio. Quite a difference between this indoor market in a historic building (with marble floors and a brick ceiling, I might add) and our little farmer's market in Bellville.

All in all, I am glad that we don't have to fight the traffic and the crowds. Granted we do not have quite the variety, but I think with the internet we can probably deal with that as long as we're willing to pay the freight, and be patient, to buy those few special items we can't get locally. I bought some chorizo from Spain, some Manchego cheese, and a pound of lamb chops, as well as garam marsala, which I didn't know where to find around here. Now I have to find that recipe again that called for it! I saw a couple of the butcher's stands that had rabbit, for approximately $4.00 a pound, which I thought was quite a deal.

E and his brothers bought some pepperoni sticks and I don't know what all else! After the market we had lunch at the Great Lakes Brewery just across the street. Interesting menu, I had a Barcelona pizza (Serrano ham and manchego cheese along with cantelope, of all things!) and a sip or two of E's Edmund Fitzgerald port - a little bitter for my taste, but probably that's how it's supposed to be.

I got some ideas from the market I hope to use in my stand at our local market. Mostly for the signage, I noticed each stall had a cable across and they were using binder clips to hang their signs above the produce. I will have to think about how to replicate that with my folding table under my shade canopy. The signs were either laminated or just an 8.5 x 11" sheet of paper inside a page protector. Also the bins of produce mostly had a block of styrofoam or something inside them so that the fruit/produce could be displayed looking like a much larger display of fruit than was actually there.