Wednesday, one of my favorite days of the week. It's market day in Uzès, but better than just a regular market. In order to participate in the Wednesday market you have to be a grower/producer. That means no re-sellers who simply go to the local wholesale vegetable market, buy produce from all over Europe and then sell it at the local market. For me, you might as well go to the grocery store if you are going to buy at stalls like this. So usually Wednesday morning is a morning off, no concrete, no digging, just French bliss. This time of year is such a great time to be in the south of France, the abundance of summer produce is staggering. Today I bought lots of tomatoes. I am a person that only eats tomatoes in the summer when they are ripe, juicy and oh so delicious. I have never understood eating those pale pink, grainy, tasteless tomatoes that you find at other times of the year. Right now there are tomatoes at every stand. The Noire de Crimée are my favorites, dark skinned, almost purple, I overheard someone in the market asking what they were and if they were any good. Well, of course I had to jump in and tell them that they were the best tomatoes they will ever taste! Maybe that was an exaggeration, but it still surprises me when people look at these plump, juicy, imperfect spheres of delight and question their quality only because they've been conditioned by the "perfect" color, shape and size of the average tasteless grocery store tomato. The farmer smiled at me and thanked me for my free advertising. The next week, I went back to the market just before noon, as I had a bunch of things I had to do that morning, and sadly all of his delicious Noire de Crimée were gone! Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut! Anyway I continued through the market and found more apricots than you can imagine. This year they've had a bumper crop of apricots, the prices are low and there are many varieties to choose from. The ones I bought today (I forgot the name) are tiny and have a red tinge around the top. I am going to make Alice Waters' apricot bread pudding, a recipe I found in the Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook. Another of my favorite things to buy at this time of year is Brousse or the Corsican version of ricotta.  No, my brousse is not coming from Corsica, but from a local cheese maker that is at the market every Wednesday and Saturday. He's famous all over the region, at a different market every day, he'll ask your name and then rhyme it with the name of one his delicious sheeps milk cheeses. On my way out of the market I stopped to have a coffee at my favorite cafe, and savored the best chausson aux pommes  I've had in many years. The pastry was flaky and melt in your mouth good, and believe it or not, in the middle was an apple! Not the usual pre-made tasteless apple sauce you normally find these days, but half an apple. Mmm what a treat. Enough to inspire me to head home, make dinner and then get back to work! So dinner tonight will be a zucchini frittata with ricotta (recipe from Deborah Madison), Gazpacho recipe from Señora Crende (the mother of my Spanish boyfriend from college who taught me how to make it during the summer I spent with her in Madrid) and apricot bread pudding. Yum! Some Swedish friends are coming over for dinner, why don't you join us?!        

       

      
     

   

                     

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