I mentioned on Tuesday (?  Wednesday?  One of the two…) that I’ve started hitting the Piedmont Triad Farmer’s Market on the weekends.  And since we were just about out of the produce from last week, I hiked on the sunshine panties and went out yesterday, despite the fact that it was about a billion degrees with ninety-some-odd percent humidity outside.  (No, really.  It was that kind of HOT where you feel just vaguely like your body’s been beset by malevolent hot washcloths when you step out the door.  People were randomly bursting into flames if they stood in the sun for too long.*1)

But once you set foot inside the vendor stalls and the smell of picked-this-morning, sun-warmed peaches hits you like a wall, and you forget the heat.  Seriously.

I also mentioned that this sucker is big.  Let me give you some perspective:

This, is ONE of the FOUR buildings that comprise the market.  It’s covered, with open sides, so that people can just back right up to an open stall to set up, and it keeps the air moving enough so it never smells like the downside of a farm.  (These people in front, by the way?  Totally looked at me like I had lobsters growing out of my ears for taking pictures.  I tried not to stare at her shorts.  Awesome color combo, no?)  This building usually has mostly plants and such, with a few exceptions (the soap lady, the place where I nabbed a gallon of strawberries for cheap…), but the other open-air building, just down the hill from this one, is almost always chock-full of local farms, selling actual pre-grown foodstuff.

(And one, permanent vendor building off to one side has some more commercial stuff, but I don’t go in there much unless I need spices.  There’s a lady that dries her own and makes blends and mixes, minus all the crazy additives, which is nice.  And there may be a separate garden center, and a restaurant called, I kid you not, the Moose Cafe.  You know how much I love Moose.  In general, not for eating.  Thought I should clarify.)

From the minute I walked in yesterday (and promptly bought about a zillion pounds of peaches with which to make strawberry-peach freezer jam today, incidentally), I was surrounded by color and people and the most amazing smells.  I’ve never been to the market on Saturday — it’s always been on Sunday mornings, when the vendors are there, but the crowds are thinner until mid-afternoon.  Saturdays, apparently, are much more marketlike, with people that run the whole range — from matrons with little folding carts doing some kind of powershopping to the guy next to me at the local cow farm (who sells hamburger and chicken breasts, and will make you think you’ve never eaten actual meat before, once you taste the difference.  I kid you not.  How the cows are raised makes a HUGE difference.) who had more piercings in his straggle-bearded face than I could count from a cursory glance.

I did an insane amount of shopping, really.  Both of my (hippielike hand-knit) market bags were full before I made it through the first building, and I decided I really need more bags.  (need. more. cotton.)  At one booth, a guy that looked so much like my grandfather that I had to double-take, literally, was holding two cantaloupes to his chest and calling them his double-Ds, and then turned all red-faced when he saw me behind him.  (Clearly, he does not know me.  The giggle, she was strong within me.)  I bought a cantaloupe.

One vendor, a young guy with amazingly tan legs, had a table full of plants.  It wasn’t until I got up close that I realized these weren’t just plants, they were all CARNIVOROUS PLANTS.  Pitcher plants and some kind of fern-looking thing, and tiny little flytraps smiling at me with fringed, pointy smiles.

I had to get one.  Meet Bill:

Bill wasn’t the biggest flytrap of the bunch, but he was the one looking like he was the hungriest.  One of his pointy smiles was closed around a fly (proving his resourcefulness) and the rest were waiting.  Mine.

The tan-legged guy looked at me a little strangely when I asked how much for Bill, and when I explained that I name EVERYTHING, he knocked a dollar off Bill’s price tag.  Told me how to care for him, and poured more water on him for the drive home.

Bill’s already caught another bug, from his perch in full-sun on the back porch.  He’s gonna do just fine.

Bill can’t eat this, but I’m making it anyway.  Freezer jam, for the uninitiated, is made pretty much like regular jam, but since you’re not cooking the fruit, it retains more of it’s original flavor (and nutrients, if you want to nitpick, though the amount of sugar in it doesn’t exactly qualify it for health food status).  Plus, it’s a heck of a lot easier for those of us who can burn boiling water.  Which I’ve done.  No.  Really.

You will need:

1 pound of peaches, pitted and chopped
1 pint of strawberries, stemmed and crushed
5 1/2 cups of sugar (toldja there was a lot)
2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice  (if you keep the peels, you can do thin little curls of lemon on the top for Pretty)
1 package of Shur-Jell Fruit Pectin

Stir the sugar into the crushed fruit.  Let it stand for 10 minutes.  Stir, to make sure the sugar’s dissolving.  Let stand a little longer, if necessary.

Combine the Shur-Jell with 3/4 cup of water, and bring to a boil  (saucepan — don’t try to chintz it with the microwave.  Trust me here.).  Stir constantly.  Boil for a minute or so, and remove from heat.

Stir the pectin into the fruit/sugar mix.  Keep stirring until all the sugar is dissolved.  If it’s still grainy, it’ll stay grainy, which, while not harmful to the jam, has a weird consistency and crunchiness that you don’t normally associate with jam.  Ask me how I know.

Pour into washed containers (I just used one of those faux-tupperware throwaway plastic ones, because I don’t have jars.) and let sit for up to 24 hours, or until set.  Just for the record, it look less than fifteen minutes for the blackberry jam from last week to set.

Store in the freezer for up to a year (!!!), and move to the fridge when you’re ready to eat it.  (Or…*ahem*… you can just take spoonfuls right from the freezer, and eat them like popsicles.  I’m just sayin’.)

:)

(*1 I may have made that part up.)