To Market, To Market

Have you been to the Breezy Willow Farm Country Market? I finally got around to it this week. It's located in Ellicott City: 9090 Frederick Road. I think there used to be a second hand store in this space. It's across from Rita's and not too far from St. John's Episcopal church, if that helps you get your bearings.

To be completely honest, I stopped in because I hankering for a new flavor of Neat Nick Preserves, having plowed through the Hot Toddy Apple Butter and with the Lady Anne's Rum Punch soon to follow the same fate. And I wasn't disappointed. There were plenty of jars in the Pantry room and even a few displayed right by the checkout. My pick: Maple Cinnamon Blueberry Butter.

But there's more than jam on offer at this store. Look for local meat, cheeses, milk, eggs, bread, produce, and more. I picked up my favorite spread, baba ghanoush, made by Umami in Catonsville. It's a fun little store with just enough variety to make it worth a stop on a regular basis.

A few years ago my daughter and I split a CSA share from Breezy Willow. While we loved everything we got, it was just too much food for us. We were overwhelmed! When I shared this information while I was having my purchases rung up, the proprietor said they had started a new size of share in response to customer requests. In addition to Whole or Half you can get Medium. That's good to know, because we could probably handle that better between our two households.

Two more things before I sign off:

Howard County Summer Theatre is presenting Mary Poppins at Mount Hebron High School, click here for tickets. HoCoMoJo's own Dave Bittner plays Mr. Banks.

Today is the fiftieth birthday of a friend of this blog who also helps to keep me sane: my husband Richard. I could write an entire post about him--and I have--but today I want to celebrate his love of family and music, his joy in living, teaching, and sharing, his delight in laughing and seeing humor, and his helping nature for anyone he comes across in life.

That's truly a lot to celebrate. Happy Birthday, Richard!

Comments are welcome here:

https://www.facebook.com/VillageGreenTownSquared/?ref=bookmarks

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

Search This Blog