Enjoying the Farmer's Market and Trader Joe's

The hub's mom is visiting us this week, and we took her to the farmer's market in Union Square today. Their farm sells at farmer's markets in their area in Upstate NY, so we thought it would be a nice idea to show them one down here. It was a beautiful 70 degree day today. Just spectacular. A nice day to be outdoors. The farmer's market was brimming with people.

I spied that they had a vendor selling orchids.  Oh wow!  The orchids were so pretty, but they seemed to only have phalaenopsis orchids.  I'm on the lookout for a cymbidium.

This one was stunning!  It had great coloring and spots.

Trader Joe's is 3 blocks from the farmer's market, so we decided to go in to pick up some groceries. Also, Emily over at Ultra Epicure told me that Trader Joe's sells cymbidium plants so I had to see for myself.  I've never seen them there before. As soon as I walked in, there it was.  They had 6 plants, one of my favorites was this beauty.  Isn't it just gorgeous?  And it was only $23!  I contemplated getting this plant, but then I decided to wait because this plant was quite large, and we took the ferry into the city instead of driving.  So It would be hard to bring this home via subway and ferry.   I would have to figure out a time when we could drive in to get it.  Now that I know they sell them, I am totally excited!

After Trader Joe's we headed straight home because we did a lot of walking and wanted to rest and have a snack.  At this point we were all tired and hungry.  My mother-in-law had bought a jar of pickled stuffed hot peppers at the farmer's market.  We decided to open the jar and have some as part of our appetizers.

These were delicious!  They were stuffed with minced cabbage and they were sweet from the pickling juice and spicy because of the hot pepper.  Absolutely delicious.  I'll have to re-create this when we can this year!

For appetizers, we ate the snacks that we bought at Trader Joe's.  They have an amazing Red Wine hard salami, honey goat cheese, mushroom pate, buttery crackers and aged cheddar cheese.  This is my favorite type of appetizer, so good!

Here's my plate, the hot stuffed peppers were amazing over the cracker!  A perfect snack!