Farmers Market Finds and the 4th of July

This blog entry is LONG over due. Of course it will contain many photographs.

I've been visiting the Evanston Farmer's Market again! These are from two weeks ago....

I bought a bunch of pink gladiolas for 5 bucks. I love having glads for the 4th. I know, I know! They are funeral flowers. But I don't care. I think they have a lovely shape and are a great focal point in any room. I wouldn't leave them on the table during a meal, though, or you wouldn't be able to see your guests!

Also picked up some fresh blueberries, basil, shiso, AND blue goat cheese...

I saw a booth with cheese in it, and being the turophile that I am I mosied on over. They had all sorts of goat cheese, including BLUE goat cheese. Since I love goat cheese AND blue cheese I thought, how can I go wrong? When I was in the vegetable booth and found shiso leaves (which I have eaten many times in sushi rolls) I was told that shiso was very good in scrambled eggs. Not quite remembering the exact flavor of shiso, I put it in my eggs with I got home along with the cheese - BAD IDEA. It wasn't very good. The flavors clashed so much I could hardly finish my meal. Shiso must be part of the mint family (I didn't check for square stems) because it has a very fresh, minty taste. However, it was a great addition to the cucumber salad I made on the 4th.

Here's the cheese! The next day I tried the cheese again with scrambled eggs this time with apple chicken sausage, and it was much better, but I think the cheese itself is a little too strong for eggs. Later on, we went to a birthday party for Rusty, Julie's boyf, in Pilsen and I took some cheese for my burger. Deeeee-licious! Of course, I'm a sucker for a burger with blue cheese. By the way, Julie made this AWESOME dessert - Chocolate Guinness cake with Guinness ice cream. Apparently you reduce the Guinness before adding it to the custard. It had a very dark, bitter flavor. I loved it. For those of you who enjoy dark chocolate or coffee ice cream - this is right up your alley.
We had a nice 4th. On the 3rd we had Latha and Craig over for dinner. I broiled some kebabs and we had potato green bean salad (vinegar based) and cucumber tomato salad (also vinegar based) and of course there was dessert - the annual 4th of July berry cobbler with the blueberries from the farmer's market. We walked to the pier to see if we could see fireworks, and we could, but they were less than spectacular because they were so far away. Also it's strange that everyone has their fireworks display on the 3rd instead of the 4th. But anyway...
on the 4th Steve had to work. I went walking with Kaitlyn then to the thrift store, Village Discount on Clark at Lawrence. It was packed with people. You could hardly move. Everything was half off! I got a couple of things and only spent $8, including this cute little dress that fits me PERFECTLY. I love it! It's the perfect summer cotton dress.

We hung out at Craig's show and then went to see Transformer's, which was actually pretty good. I was surprised.