Week 27

The weather: We got rained on again (2nd week in a row), and once again Bob from Bull City Custom Trailers helped us out by providing shelter from the storm under his awning. The rain kept away a good number of customers, but we still managed to sell out our French bread and all but about 2 dozen cookies.

The product: Billy N. helped me out with the starter for the French Bread. It was developed over 3 days giving it a nice tart, sweet, milky flavor. I thought that for not being able to bake it off in a hearth oven (we did it in the bakery's large convection ovens; the hearth oven takes four hours to preheat), the product was great -- very good flavor. The whole wheat chocolate chip cookies were fun to eat, and marginally healthier than ordinary cookies, but nothing challenging culinarily speaking. I tried a new tea from Little India this week for our iced tea. Because this tea is brewed with grounds rather than leaves, the tea grounds are twice as potent as leaves per unit weight (as I learned). In the future, I would decrease the amount of grounds used so that the tea is less strong.

The customers: Big up to the Marvelle clan, Jonathan, Alex R., MPT, BS, and Adam S. for gracing us with a visit.

The crew: For two weeks in a row, SZ and RML have persisted in the rain. You guys really go beyond the proverbial call of duty, and I truly appreciate it!

Bartering: Thanks to: Mike and Becca from Piepushers; Don from Don's Italian Ice; Piedmont Biofarm; Brian from Castlemaine Farm; Kyle and Kaitlin from Sunset Farm; George from Lil Farm. I've been making some amazing pasta sauce with the bartered tomatoes. The relative drought we had for 2+ weeks seemed to concentrate the sweet and acid flavors of the tomato into these tiny rubies of flavor -- definitely my favorite time of the tomato season.

Deliveries: Our deliveries have really ramped up ever since I was able to pitch our services at the Oval Park Picnic two weeks ago. I delivered to twenty-four homes in Watts-Hillandale and Old West on Saturday, with a total of 39 items (more than 1.5 items ordered per household).

This week: Look for us this week at the Chocolate Festival at Casbah Friday night, and of course the Farmer's Market on Saturday.