Market Prep

So today begins the market, and yesterday was one of those days from hell when you're asking yourself, why exactly are we doing this? To make the big bucks to support our extravagant lifestyles? Yeah, sure, something like that.

We have had to hit the ground running from our vacation and prep for the market, and we literally had to start from ground zero. We landed on Saturday night knowing (dreading?) that we had the market to think of. Normally, by Monday, we are all prepared and ready to go, but this time around, we had nothing - no falafels, no supplies, no nothing. Talk about a bummer. All in line with the American way of life, right: go on vacation and come home to a pile of backed up work that you have to attend to from the get-go.

Okay, enough of my whining. The first order of business was to go downstairs and pull out and wash all of the gear, and there's quite bit of that. I had a hard time remembering all of the stuff that we needed, and by then, all I wanted to do was forget about it. There are boxes of stuff that doesn't even include the actual falafels, I'm amazed we fit it into our Fit, but then again, we're talking about our Mighty Fit, which can do just about anything.

We couldn't make falafels because we didn't have many of the ingredients, and the place where we get them was closed on Sunday, so we had to wait until Monday. Then I forgot to soak the chickpeas overnight, so I had to bump it all up a day and cook on Tue, which was going to the wire, though it wasn't all bad because cooking the day before eliminated the need to freeze them. Mom went around gathering things on her end, and I took care of mine, bearing in mind that we are still plugging along in our daily lives. The market represents just one more thing on top of everything else.

With this in mind, the past couple of days have been crazy. Since I missed all of last week, I had to do posters on Monday and Tuesday, which meant several hours doing that, then over to Sterns to get market supplies, then home to prepare. I soaked the beans on Monday night, then on Tuesday I had to prepare the ingredients for mom to grind the beans, then do posters, then come home and cook the falafels that mom had prepared. Cooking takes about 3 hours, with about 5-7 minutes per batch, during which time I go over and split wood. Believe it or not, it actually works out pretty well, and I managed to get a decent pile going. If I can get year 1 done, and I'm at about 75% I will be stoked.

It didn't help that yesterday was one of the hottest and most humid days of what has been a surprisingly cool summer, but who am I to complain? After the falafels were cooked, I left everything sitting there and took A over to WRJ to get some film editing done on a project that she was working on, then it was back home to clean up. Talk about running on empty, I was so tired because I hadn't had a break, but I wasn't done yet. There was still the issue of dinner to make, which I whipped together in time for mom's arrival.

After supper R and I were talking and wondering why the heck we are doing this, and honestly, I don't have a great answer, but check back with me later in the season.

Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to nancygreentweet for the pic.