Farmer's Market—Week 3, June 18, 2012

Preparing for the third farmer's market of the season was very time consuming. In addition to the market, I had a graduation party that I was making cookies for. In addition to making cookies, we had company all week, and I didn't want my baking to interfere with any of our plans, so I was up at 6:30 every morning baking for several hours to get it all done before we were ready to head out for the day. In addition, any downtime that we had from activities, I would squeeze in baking a few dozen cookies. Needless to say, by the time Sunday night came, I was pooped.


Joe, a customer that stopped by last week, challenged me to make a sugar-free cookie, and if you know me at all, you know that I take challenges very seriously and will do what I have to to meet that challenge. So I found a recipe for a lemon ricotta cookie, and I replaced the sugar with Splenda. It was hard deciding what flavor of cookie to make, as I was hesitant to duplicate, or make something similar to, a cookie I already make. But I don't make anything with lemon, so I thought that was a good option. The cookies turned out ok. I'm not crazy about the Splenda flavor, but my diabetic customers (or those wishing to limit their sugar intake) must not mind it because the cookies sold out long before the market ended. I had a few people, including Joe, buy one to try it, and then end up buying 8 more. But, of course, Joe is now looking forward to me making other sugar-free cookies, and I'm not sure I want to continue using Splenda for that. I'd love to find a recipe that doesn't need sugar... maybe it's a pie, or some kind of snack cake or breakfast bread or something. We'll see. I'm on a mission to make a spectacular sugar-free treat. It may not happen this week, but it will before the season is over.


Other than that, there's not much else too exciting to share. The weather was warm, and fortunately the rain held out. My booth was pretty steady with customers until around 4:45 or so, but then the whole crowd at the market slowed down, so my customers slowed down, too. It was pretty dead from 5:00 to 7:00, although once Jack arrived to relieve me at 6:00, he had a small burst of customers. Must have been some folks unable to resist his welcoming charm.


Overall, I think I did pretty well. I sold about the same amount this week as I did last week. Hopefully that's a trend I can count on. The fortune cookies didn't do well at all this week. Not sure what's up with that. I ended up with about 6 or 7 packs leftover of those. In addition, I had one pack of chocolate chip and one pack of lime, and three packs of flourless peanut butter cookies. That kills me because late on Sunday, I decided to make another batch just for the heck of it. I guess I didn't need to. Lastly, I made one pie that didn't sell. But that was OK. I owed a pie to a guy that did me a big favor, and he was very happy when I drove up to his house yesterday to drop it off.


So that's the long story of it all. Until next time, have a yummy day!