We visited the moved-indoors Schenectady Greenmarket (winter market) this past weekend (after the Stockade runners had passed) for the following:
- Potatoes – successfully obtained from Barber’s Farm’s stall along with yet another nice cauliflower – we really like Barber’s (Middleburgh) and end up getting a lot of stuff from them over the summer. Especially love their cauliflower and peppers.
- Sesame Chicken (if available) – successfully obtained from Chick and Hen Baking Co. (Gloversville), often seems to go fast, glad we got some…always yummy and we keep meaning to try some of their other stuff. I think we’ve even bought eggs from them once when they had some extras they brought to market and I needed some for baking.
- Cranberry Jam – successfully obtained from Pixies Preserves (Waterford), haven’t tried it yet, but looking forward to it. We also have some of their cantaloupe jam from the summer we have yet to try. I thought they were supposed to have a cranberry-apple blend, but didn’t see it, at least this week. Apparently they’ll give you a small discount on your next purchase if you return the jar, too.
- Gingerbread Peanut Butter – I had seen in the ‘What’s Fresh’ page that The Peanut Principle (Cohoes) was going to have gingerbread peanut butter and really wanted to give that a try. It turned out that Saratoga Peanut Butter Company (Saratoga Springs) was also there and was also toting a gingerbread flavor. I tried each and came home with no peanut butter. There was a slight ginger-ish flavor to TPP’s version, sort of like regular ‘natural’ peanut butter (more on their peanut butter in a post to come) that hung around for a while with some ginger and sugar, maybe played on the same swing set for a while. I think my exact reaction was that it was like eating peanut butter a little while after having a gingersnap, something like that. I couldn’t see myself eating a jar of it. SPBC’s version, as nearly as I can tell, was smooth peanut butter. I really didn’t get any other flavor from the bit I tried. I think I’m not a fan of TPP’s peanut butter, but I much prefer it to SPBC’s. Perhaps these niche natural peanut butters are an acquired taste, but we’ve been eating store-bought natural peanut butter for a while now (Teddie), so it’s not like I’m going from Jif to this or something. It just doesn’t float my peanut butter barge.
In conclusion, Winter Greenmarket is also worth attending if you need certain things. Certainly plenty of greens and root veggies. Lots of gift-y items and interesting sweets if you can’t or don’t want to make them yourself – like marshmallows, fudge, etc. Also a lot of prepared food options for a Sunday lunch. Crowded and a bit hard to navigate, though. Seriously? You need to bring your double-wide stroller through the narrow and crowded Proctor’s arcade??
Eat Up Albany! 