Saturday, February 26, 2011

To Market to Market to Buy...Interesting Things!

Yes.....The world is going to end....I have started a blog! Not sure how often I will actually write in this thing, but we will see. Sometimes I just have interesting days like today that I want to share, but I have more to say than I can say within the parameters of Facebook, Plurk and Twitter. Therefore, I sucked it up today and started a new blog. Hopefully my day will be as interesting to you as it was to me!

So hubby and I decided that we need to stop sitting around the house and need to actually do something. We have been hearing about cool places in the Strip and last night I looked a few of them up and learned where they are. Apparently, there is an indoor market called the Pittsburgh Public Market that opened on Labor Day weekend 2010. As is typical for nerds like us, we just learned about it this weekend. While perusing the website, I saw many things that caught my eye: jams, jellies, herbs, homemade marshmallows, baked goods, produce, and even WINE and BEER! I could see no reason NOT to go! We used to walk through the strip (and bar hop in the strip) in our younger days, but have not been down there forever. Until today. Well, minus hubby's trip there during his FAIL concert this past week, but that is another story that can be read on his blog.


So, our trip did not start out so well. While we were super lucky and got a parking spot right across from the market, the meters need to be fed on Saturdays, and alas, I used my last quarters at work on Friday. Of course, neither of us had cash either. We planned on hitting up the PNC MAC when we got there. So hubby walked a few blocks to the PNC while I guarded the car in case the meter Nazis came around. Which they did. Luckily I found 25 cents and a nice lady who had a quarter. Meanwhile, hubs texted me to tell me that half the population of Pittsburgh was at the MAC machine. However, I did not know this because dumbass me left my phone AT HOME. Luckily, the market had a MAC machine (yea, I had to pay the stupid fee but better than a ticket) and we got some money. Now we were on a quest for quarters. Well, I saw the Pittsburgh Marshmallow Factory, and we had already decided on the way there that we were going to buy a Big Hop marshmallow (yes, a BEER flavored marshmallow) when we got there. So we walked on over and, as our new luck would have it, many people paid in quarters today (which apparently is a rare thing), and we got $4 worth! Of course after we bought our beermallow. Huzzah! I also got the first compliment of the day on my shirt (I was wearing my Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat shirt that says "Trust me I'm a Doctor" today). We promised to come back and buy more later and went out to give the meter its om nom noms. On the way to the car, we sampled our beermallow and it was.....interesting. You could smell the maltiness as you put it in your mouth. Both of us has just discarded a piece of cinnamon gum and had decided that we needed to give it another try later, when we had a clean palate.

So now for our trip through the market. First we visited the olive oil and vinegar booth, Cosimano e Ferrari. They had lots of samples to try and hubby and I had a good old time sampling and recommending things to each other. At one point I told the lady that I really liked the lime olive oil. She said, "oh yea, well try this" and mixed it with some of the lemon balsamic vinegar. It was like a nice, fresh, crisp, spring day in my mouth. Yep, we bought them both. Would make for a nice salad dressing I could imagine cooking chicken with the lime olive oil. YUM!


Hubby and I LOOOOVE tea so next we had a lovely conversation with the tea lady and smelled all of her fine fine teas at Tupelo Honey Teas. Here is where I got my second compliment on my t-shirt. LOL. We decided on 3 teas that we wanted to buy (well 4 really but they were out of one), and she gave us a cup of one of the teas for a extra 50 cents. Awesomesauce!!!


Next stop, the Berry Patch jelly, jam, and pie place. A no brainer! Here I got the THIRD compliment on my t-shirt. The guy then complimented hubby's too (He was wearing a Super Mario Bros "Know Your Mushrooms" shirt), but he said mine was better. Tee-hee! At this point, since hubby was carrying our bags, my job was to find jams and jellies for us to sample. After much sampling, our decisions were made! A Sweet heat sampler of 4 different berry jams with heat added. Spiced blueberry jam (like the inside of a blueberry pie with some cinnamon or something added). And then the kickers - blackberry wine jelly and chocolate cherry stout beer jelly!!! YUM-O! We also bought an apple empanada for good measure!


We wandered around and bit and decided to get some food to eat. There was a nice middle eastern place there, among other cool places that we need to try next time. They had good deals so we went there. I got a chicken shwarma wrap and you can put all kinds of different things on it. I told the lady that I like everything and to just surprise me. I know it had chicken, a garlic cheese spread, eggplant, feta, lettuce, and cilantro on it. OH YUM! Hubby got the vegetarian platter that had grape leaves, hummus, falafel, and a salad. We shared and nommed and, oh everything was sooo good!

Now it was time to go pick up everything else that we had eyed while walking around. First we picked up some pierogies at Gosia's Pierogies. Decided to be adventurous and chose the cottage cheese and chives ones.


Then we visited the baklava booth and sampled the best baklava I have EVER tasted (and I am NOT a fan of baklava). We proceeded to buy the apricot baklava and pistachio baklava.


Next we visited the East End Brewing company booth. We tried some samples but sadly they were out of the Blackstrap Stout. Boo! Oh well, maybe next time. We made our way back to the marshmallow place and bought some cherry, root beer, beer, coconut, and cinnamon homemade marshmallows. I also watched a 10 year old try a piece of the ghost pepper marshmallow (yea, ghost pepper - you know the one that when you see someone cooking with it on the food network, they are wearing a GAS MASK!). The guy who worked there jokingly asked if I was the kind of doctor that could revive the kid with my knowledge if passed out. We both laughed. The kid ate it, made no face at all, and was like, "That's not bad. I like spicy stuff." My inner spice lover so wanted to try it, but being that my stomach hurt for more hours than it didn't yesterday, I decided to put that off too.

Almost done at the market. We went back to an Indian food booth to buy some food for dinner tomorrow. Picked up some chutney (cilantro spread), naan, chickpea salad thing (not sure, hubby wanted it), and these ball-shaped things whose name escapes me. I was sad that the biryani was gone, but I think I will survive.

Our final stop at the market was this bakery stand. While I wanted to buy everything there, I settled in on the chocolate covered macaroons. There were originally 6 in the box but I shared some with my mom and brother when I stopped by their house to tell them about our trip. The picture also sucks, but our camera was being a bitch and I didn't feel like messing with it. Sue me :P


Even though we were done with the Market, we wanted to take a walk down Penn Avenue and see what else we could see. We visited the PNC MAC machine (this time with a much more reasonable line) to stock back up on cash, and then bought some interesting drinks at a Mexican grocer (papaya juice for me and tamarind juice for hubby). The papaya juice tasted like a mix of peach and pear to me and the tamarind juice tasted like...well...nasty...but hubby liked it. Next stop was this AWESOME chocolate store, Mon Aimee Chololat. There were so many fun things there including.....chocolate with BACON!!!! Of course, we had to buy it. I also found the Mozart Kugeln that I ate and enjoyed when I went to Austria in high school which made me squee out loud. Picked up some of those and some other random things (cola flavored mentos and dutch licorice) and then we were off.


We *thought* that Penn-mac was next, but my ADHD caught a sign for the Pittsburgh Popcorn Company where we sampled and picked up cajun and jalepeno popcorn. I wept inside when I noticed that I missed out on the buffalo wing popcorn.


Next was Penn-Mac. While I was super excited about going there, so was at least 300 other people so we decided to just pick up some chevre (to eat with our spicy jelly) and come back another day.


No trip to the strip would be complete without picking up some produce. Got some blueberries, cantaloupe, and bananas for a buck each. Wanted strawberries too but they looked a little extra fuzzy so we decided to pass.


We decided at this point that we were going to head back to the car and head home. However, we walked by the fresh bread stand and some hottie guys were selling their wares for only $2 a loaf. How could I say no? So we picked up a garlic baguette to have with our chevre and jelly.


And last but not least, we smelled the oh so wonderful smell of the chicken on a stick vendor and HAD to stop and get some. Ron has been wanting to for years, but has never stopped. So we *tried* to buy one to split, but the lady *insisted* that we get 2. I am not sure *what* she said exactly because I could not keep up with her quick and broken English, but I picked up the following in some order: in a disaster, got fired from my job, no worry it is not bad, it just not as pretty, just a bit burned, no worry it is fine....". Not sure what the hell we ate (sure hope it wasn't cat or pigeon) but it was damn fine. And it was not burnt. Hopefully we will both live.

And thus ends our trip to the strip. It was a lovely day. Nice to get out of the house, do something different, and tantalize our foodie taste buds. Hopefully you all enjoyed reading about this as much as I did enjoying it myself and writing about it.

3 comments:

  1. Wow. This is quite the impressive post! You (and hubby) did a great job. And all the delicious goodies you got!! I heard they are really bad with parking tickets in Philly. Reminds me of the show *Parking Wars*....I didn't know about Pittsburgh though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your trips to the Strip look like mine. Wasn't the marshmallow guy cool? We also got some of the "sweet heat" jelly. We didn't get the sampler, but we did get a jar of the habanero raspberry. Also, I just tried the drinking chocolate from Mon Aimee. It was soooooo good, so I recommend picking up a bag next time you're there if you're a hot chocolate fan.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Chris! We had a great time. I can't wait to eat everything. Yea, the parking police are pretty on top of things, especially when things are so busy. There were SO many people in the strip today!

    Jenn - We loved the marshmallow guy. My mom thinks that he used to work with her, so I need to ask him next time. I didn't even try the habanero raspberry jelly, but maybe I should next time. I LOVE hot chocolate so I will definitely check that out next time!

    ReplyDelete