Downtown Zucchini

The city of Red Deer has a really cool thing happening at the moment, for the summer months a Wednesday market is held in the downtown area. They close off a couple of streets from 4pm to 7 pm and set up a market.

 I enjoy markets of any kind, and have visited markets in many different countries, but I think this one is particularly great as all the items have to be locally grown or locally made. This is such a great concept especially for those who believe in the 100 mile diet or believe in supporting local economies. The market has a mix of produce stands, preserve stands, meat producers, honey producers, a craft stand, food trucks and more. Today it was busy which is great to see, and people were buying (even better!).

One added bonus to the market is the Ross Street Patio. Each week new artists treat the public to live music. If you don’t make it to the Wednesday evening set, the same musicians often perform on Thursdays at lunchtime (noon to 1:30 pm-ish). We’ve popped by for a listen many times and the music has always been brilliant.

We walked down to market this evening. Downtown being walkable is one of the bonuses of living in a historic neighborhood just off the downtown core. We strolled through the market checking out the stalls and all their offerings. We couldn’t resist the honey stand and everyone just had to have a honey stick; they were very yummy, We then came across a vegetable stand that had the biggest (that should read BIGGEST) zucchini I have ever seen. The stand was run by a farm and U-pick in the Markerville area. Now we didn’t really need a zucchini, but the zucchini were so huge it just seemed like a fun thing to do to buy one of these super sized veggies. Admittedly, I secretly wanted to know just how many zucchini loaves I would get out of one…..I’m a bit of a geek!

Luckily we had a double stroller to transport our big purchase home.

Once we were home our youngest couldn’t resist checking out the huge squash. He thought it was pretty funny.

I guess tomorrow I will find out just how huge the zucchini is when I start shredding it for baking!