Definitely better than Starbucks: Bend Farmers Market

Not feeling so great but wanted to write about today

Font is mesed up!

Anyway miserable when I wopke up.... weather killing me...... so we planned to find some cookies as a pick me up..... I used to Yelp to research every bakery within Bend city limits while M looked up the map to see where they were... we concluded on what we thought were the best... Something called Le Cakery we should go to at some point .... and something that started with S looked the best.....but all closed by 5 or 6. Went to pharmacy and took a long time so even the one that closed at 6 was closed. It was hot as hell. I resigned myself to a crappy Starbucks cookie and maybe Cold stone ice cream. M went down the street where the good closed bakeries were located, and on the way we saw the farmer's market. D'oh! I wasn't going to go because of sun heat humidity etc but when we werer there I couldn't resist. Decided I'd brave the sun to check it out. I simply can't resist any kind of outdoor market. I love, love them.

I grabbed a paper bag to shield my eyes from the sun as it was the only thing I could find. I was being creative, and it actually worked realtivelty well.,

Well, I was amazed. I had read bad reviews of the market and was expecting very little. But it was far and beyond the best farmer's market I have ever been to.

Everything you could want....meat, fish, a large selection of fruit and veggies, pastries, mushrooms, coffee, various other things..... folk music being performed....I had been wanting fingerling potatoes and poof therre they were! Got a lot of potatoes and way too many really good cookies which I had also been craving. Elk, buffalo, pig's ears, tuna, lemonade, all kinds of things. Farmers mkts in Maine = 20 tables all selling the exact same uninteresting things. Not the case at all here.

Got some fingerling potatoes and purple ones, i had been craving them just last night and was amazed to find the one thing I had hoped to find .

And, my cookie cravings were more than satisfied as I found towards the end a stand with TEN DIFFERENT FLAVORS of really big, really good cookies. Oh my God. heaven. 5 for 5 dollars.... a dollar each....and thgey were huge anf good qualkity. I got lemon white chocolate - THAT was to die for - chocolate chip, peanut butter choco chip, and peanut butter.

Nothing like a sugar high to make you feel good - don't worry I didnt eat them all at once.

They were doing live music which wold normally kill me for sensory reasons but it was actually at a reasonable level - take THAT, missoula (could never play things at normal decibel levels) and was folk music and actually sounded really good! I have seldom ever enjoyed live music before but I enjoyed that. I swear he sounded exactly like Gordon Lightfoot. At one point I was so sure he was about to play a Gordon Lightfoot song I ran across the market to see and hear.... I don't know what it was.....but it sure sounded good.

It was at that point that I met L. The woman who I've known online for 2 yrs from Bend.... who also has MCS..... who I'd been waiting to meet.... it was so funny....she came up to me and said "Are you Kate?" and I said yeah, took me a minute to figure out who she was.... Ha! And I explained why I had the paper bag to shield the sun and she said "Yeah, that's kind of why I thought it might be you" LOL. She seems very nice and I liked her. I went off to buy some potatoes and then made sure I didnt miss anything and then I saw the very last stand I didnt see was the best, it was Sparrow Bakery, which was one of the bakeries we had looked at that looked really good but was closed - what synergy! We set out to look for bakeries that were closed but found them anyway.

And OH MY GOD. They had some kind of chocolate bundt cake type thing. It looked liket the chocolate corks I used to get that I loved at Standard Baking Company in Portland. I hoped it would be similar. And cookies. I got both. I was trying to fill cravings I've had for 2 months lol.

Oh and also the very nice woman who manned the booth had parents who lived in Missoula so we had a very nice conversation about the difference between Bend and Missoula which I very much enjoyed.

Anyway the chocolate cake, it was a mix between a cake and a brownie kind of:

One of the most amazing chocolate things I have ever had. It was a chocolate expresso bundt type cake. With some salt crystals on top I think.

So you took a bite and immediately you had the tastes of really good quality salt, chocolate, and expresso combining in your mouth - AMAZING! The texture was very dry (but not too dry), a really good texture, kind of crumbled and melted in your mouth, the flavor started out low and then built in intensity, it was sweet without being overly sweet, the salt and the chocolate and the expresso and the texture .... sweet, crumbly, can;t even describe it....was the mosrt amazing thing. Beat the one on Fore St I think for sure. It was sublime and heaven. Never had anything like it.

So that made me happy and gave me energy to shop at Whole Foods, which I HATE, because it really smells very bad here. And I spent an insane amount of money there and I really need to cut that down. Damn being tempted by everything. need to reduce impulse buying.

But how can you resist rosemary roasted garlic salad dressing? :)

So the first time I've actually enjoyed myself , which is good, but my teeth are killing me now, which is NOT good, and yes I know Is shouldnt eat sweets but I dont more thsan once a week and I need them to be happy.... and usually cookes dont bother my teeth much, musta been the cake.

So hopefully rhat will get better.

Mountains tomorrow exhausted so goin to sleep

Night
Kate