Summer's Bounties from the PGM Farmers' Market

I had a lunch date at Duffy's in Boalsburg with dear friends on this day. My husband dropped me off, and while I caught up my friends on my recent crazy/weird/sad/amazing life events, he shopped and ran errands, and picked up a bucket of KFC for the upcoming weekend.

I have to admit that at lunch, I was talking so loud and so fast that when our food came, I forgot to take a picture! Not even one! Yes, I sang like a canary. I told my friends all about the recent family dramas, and I even threw in a few bad words (you might too, if you'd had the same past few months that I've had).

And our waitress was great! She looked like a young Sandra Bullock, and she was fun and funny and friendly, with just the right amount of attentiveness that never felt fake or forced. I told her I liked her silver filigree leaf earrings (they were a gift from her daughter). She told me my blue shirt really drew out the blue of my eyes. 

When I whipped out my own containers for leftovers at the end (including one TINY container for the leftover au jus from my absolutely marvelous french dip/roast beef sandwich), she nearly swooned with envy at my planning abilities. People, this is SELDOM the reaction I get for that, and yes, I tipped accordingly!   ;-)

After lunch, I walked over to the church by the Little Free Library and enjoyed the flowers and checked out the books. I didn't have time for any pictures in the huge graveyard that I adore; my husband's car was already sitting waiting there for me, and he had other plans in mind.

He wanted to go swimming! Yes, swimming. Unexpectedly, I might add. I did have one suit with me, and a towel, but none of the rest of my stuff. But a cold swim at Greenwood Furnace sounded just grand, and so that's what we did. 

We've swum in other places, but it was our first swim of the year there. Wow, what a great swim for the lovers of cold water! When I showered, out of desperation, I used the hand soap in the bathroom on my hair. I swear, I'll never leave home without shampoo and my own soap ever again!

On the way past Doan's Bones, we stopped and I picked up half a rack of ribs. No sides, just ribs for later. So we had the very unusual experience of coming home with two kinds of meat: both Kentucky Fried Chicken, courtesy of my husband, and ribs, courtesy of ME!

There is also a farmers' market in Pine Grove Mills (PGM), on the way home, that operates from 3 to 7 on Thursdays in a church parking lot there. It was well past toasty o'clock when we got there, and I bought two bags of veggies and hopped back in the car. 

Linda, an old friend and co-worker of mine, is one of the vendors at the market; those gorgeous tomatoes are hers. She runs a century farm in Huntingdon County. The scene you are looking at is T. Tiger and The Moose taking inventory of all of those veggies when I got home!

Now, it is time to sing the praises of summer's red-ripe tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, and carrots. We cut a tomato and a pepper with our supper, and both were amazing. I am a girl who can sit down and slice a tomato and eat the whole thing with just a bit of salt. And at 10 p.m., when I was feeling a bit peckish, I cut up a cucumber and ate part of it with ranch dip. Oh my, was that good. It tasted like pure summertime!

My soundtrack song is Gordon Lightfoot, with Summer Side of Life.