To market, to market, to buy a fat pig

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jig," Erin and I sang as we skipped hand and hand to Eastern Market on our first weekend together in DC. Siiiiiiike! We took the metro there and tried to look cold and unapproachable so the homeless people would stop asking us for money. Mission accomplished. We made it in with the change in our pockets, and Erin experienced her first trip to one of the best outdoor markets around.

There's Erin, taking in the wonders of local produce, arts, and cheeeeeeeeese. Say that last part in a super high excited voice because that's how Erin says it every time we walk up to the cheese shop, and she is totally justified. The cheese shop in Eastern Market has an extensive variety of cheeses that I have never heard of and cannot not pronounce, and they are always giving out tons of free samples! (Not that I have learned anything from sampling all these cheeses week after week except I like cheese a great deal, a great deal indeed.... ok that's a lie. I learned that the best cheese is the double gloucester with chives and herbs. Oooo sooo yummy. We routinely make the trip down to EM just for this cheese, and sometimes we even use this cheese as our wager in bets. Like the time I bet Erin that our old cat's legs were only 2 inches long (it was a midget cat), and she said they were 4 inches. She won, but only because the cat had long hair making it hard for me to see that its legs extended further up. Anyways I had to buy her some double gloucester, even though I felt cheated.)

After gorging ourselves to the point of annoying the entire cheese staff, we went over to peruse the meat counters. Now I know this is going to sound like I am trying to slide some sexual humor into the blog, but in all seriousness Erin and I love sausage. Go ahead have your little 'that's-what-she-said' giggle. It's not going to diminish our adoration for those little links of meaty goodness, and if there's anywhere Erin and I can total indulge our obsession, have a sausagefest if you will, (Ok that was low brow. I'm sorry. Better you learn now that I have no shame.), it is at EM. The different meat purveyors have so many gourmet sausage options! We went through this huge faze where we would get 3 or 4 different kinds every weekend and then plan meals around them. One time Erin made us some delicious sausage sandwich samples.

Before: (The one of the left is a Greek sausage with spinach and feta and pinenuts, and the one on the right is a spicy sausage of some sort. I forget the exact details of it except for that it was tasty)

After:



There's much more that we love about EM, but sadly I have no pictures capturing the rest. Look for a follow up come spring when the produce is back! It will probably be titled: 'To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,' and I'll give you a dollar* if you can guess what the first line of the post will be.


*By dollar I mean high five.