Winter Market this Saturday! On 8th St at Main, Oregon City.

From Oregon City Farmers’ Market — Blog by Oregon City Farmers' Market

February 18, 2011

Nice weather, great food, see you this Saturday!
Posted on February 17, 2011 by Oregon City Farmers Market

Boy , are we lucky with the weather for Oregon City’s first winter market season!…and another good day this Saturday:)

We have a terrific line-up of vendors, with a full cast of players this week. You name it we will have it!…I was even hoping for some Salmon, but the weather has been rough at the Coast and the boats couldn’t get out…looking at March now.

BigFoot Bread WILL be there…yeah! Greg has found a new licensed kitchen :) Kasey’s Kreations is back and will be bringing lots of pies, including caramel apple, pecan, apple, forest berry, chocolate cream and rhubarb.

Christensen farm is bringing lots of duck eggs, along with some chicken and goose eggs. Cindy will have more pictures of her ducklings, bantam chicks, and young pullets–2 to 3 months old. More chicken eggs are in the incubator and they will be followed by a batch of goslings. This week she will have a few winter squash and some fresh herbs, garlic and shallots, plus an assortment of feathers and bird skins, along with Shetland fleece and fiber for spinning.

Gram’s Caramels are inviting you to stop by and sample their wonderful Coffee Caramels along with the original flavor and several assorted caramel flavors and their new ‘Caramel Cups’. Also, sign up to win a 16 oz. bag of original caramels this weekend. You don’t have to be present to win, but you do need to sign up!
Exciting news is that they now have an e-commerce site www.gramscaramels.com
where you can order caramels on-line. If you have a loved one who needs a sweet gift, let them know and they will mail them for you!

Back in the Market after several months off is He Sells These Shells! David will have sacks of the amazing hazelnut shell mulch and slug repellent, just in time for the beginning of the spring planting season.

So bring a friend or a neighbor this Saturday, make it a fun morning of shopping at your local farmers market! Come for lunch …check our Savory et Sweet’s menu below and their “story” …thanks to Barbara Fleming, our self-appointed market reporter!
See our web site for a full list of the 25 vendors:)
http://orcityfarmersmarket.com/

See you there!

Savory et Sweet: The special crepe this week is Rueben! Thinly sliced pastrami, swiss cheese, wine kraut, Chris’ 1000 dressing and spinach. Another new crepe from the Super Bowl remains on the menu for awhile, renamed “Figgy” ~ brie cheese, mission fig jam with rosemary notes, procuitto, caramelized onions & arugla. Saturday’s soup is Tortilla: with chicken, green chilies, fresh corn, onions, beans, tomatoes, salsa verde, black olives, lime. Served with green onions & sharp cheddar cheese and bread. And Wild Bill’s Oregon Huckleberries with Diana’s Lemon Curd ~ a winter favorite until fresh fruit season returns. And have you noticed the petite crepes? Ready to go, filled with whipped cream for $2! Full menu is posted friday evenings crepenews.tumblr.com
Please contribute to the tip jar ~ all proceeds feed our awesome teen market volunteers!

Savory et Sweet

“Market culture is like a family. It has a good vibe about it and I love it,” shared Chris Douglas, owner of Savory et Sweet crepes. ‘Market culture’ is the feeling she uses to describe her experiences first as a shopper, then market volunteer and working for various vendors before finally becoming a vendor herself. Chris and her husband Gary started making their delicious, unique crepes at our Oregon City Farmers Market in May of 2010 and soon had many regulars. Those devoted customers who stop by each week to treat themselves to the weekly savory special or their favorite sweet crepe. Chris makes weekly changes to her menu and follows the fresh local fruit and vegetable seasons, so one can always find something new for tasting. In the four-plus years she has been cooking at Farmers Markets, Chris has learned what customers like.

Chris had been making crepes at home for years, a protein dense way to get eggs into her son Max’s diet, before she decided to become a crepe vendor in 2006. She learned she loved cooking and feeding people several years ago while volunteering for her son’s grade school hot lunch program. Chris loves to experiment with different combinations of ingredients to find those that not only taste great but are healthy alternatives to processed, fast foods. Chris is always looking for new recipes; her inspirations come from a love of reading recipes, cookbooks and magazines and watching cooking shows. What started as a fun hobby one day a week has developed into a full time venture; making and selling crepes at 3 Farmers Markets bi-weekly throughout the winter season. In the summer Chris and Gary attend four Markets each week. During the 2010 calendar year they cracked over 3000 eggs, that’s a lot of eggs. At approximately two crepes per egg, that’s a lot of crepes!

Savory et Sweet is licensed as a Temporary Restaurant, which involves being inspected at each market site, each and every month. Chris enjoys the logistical puzzle of not only complying with, but exceeding, the required standards and providing a high quality product for her customers. Each market day Chris and Gary leave their house by 7 am, in order to be at the market site, set up and starting to prepare ingredients by 9 am. If Chris features roasted peppers or scrambled eggs in one of her crepes they have to be prepared onsite, not at home the day before. During the winter season Savory et Sweet offers a different hot soup each week. All preparation has to be done and the soup hot and ready, all eight quarts of it, by 10am as customers begin arriving eager for the weeks’ selection. And nearly each week the soup sells out before 1pm, so get there early.

Pioneering cross-promotion with other Farmers Market vendors Chris utilizes their products; such as eggs, bread, cheese, wine, fruits and vegetables, among others, in her imaginative menu offerings. Chris always gives these vendors credit, at all three of the markets she attends. She has worked with some vendors for several years and relies on them to provide her with the freshest products available; which she turns into creative, flavorful crepes and soups. While the savory crepes are always popular, sweet crepes rise in popularity during fresh berry season. Chris has found that her buckwheat batter crepes are now more popular than the original batter. She loves special requests and customers can ‘build their own’ crepe by mixing and matching ingredients she has on hand, within reason of course.

Chris feels being at the market keeps her at the edge of our food revolution; she has noticed “a dramatic increase in customer awareness about what they eat and the quality of their food”. She loves being at Farmers Markets, finds it energizes her and she feels disconnected if she has to miss a day. Chris is not only dedicated to her customers, but to giving back to the local communities as well. Each week Savory et Sweet helps feed the young volunteers at the market, those that help with setting up and tearing down, leaving a tip in the jar on the counter helps Chris and Gary fund this important service. HOPE (Help Other People Eat) is another recipient of Chris’s generosity. The silent auction of her carved and decorated pumpkin turkey centerpiece raised over $125 for the group in November.

Chris feels very fortunate to be doing what she loves, cooking, creating and feeding hungry appreciative people. Stop by the Savory et Sweet crepe booth this Saturday to try something new, and don’t forget to leave a little something in the jar for our great teen helpers!