I spent most of the afternoon tucked away in a corner of the market, watching the bakers at Flying Monkey frost cupcakes with small, offset spatulas (I need to get one of those) and listening to the guys at the Shoe Doctor joke and laugh. Around 3:30 I was getting tired of sitting in one place, packed up my stuff and wandered through the Market.

My feet took me to the Fair Food Farmstand and I found myself standing in front of the display of Rainier cherries (they are the ones that are striated with streaks of yellow and red). I bought a pint for $4.75, because they remind me of my early teen years, when we lived in a house that had a Rainier cherry tree. The birds liked those cherries as much as we did and most years made off with more than half the fruit. Luckily for us, the tree hung over a second-story deck, which made the top branches accessible.  That cherry tree was, hands down, the best part of that house.

I collected a few other things and made my way up to the counter to pay.  I was given a friendly greeting and introduced to Emily, who told me that the new potatoes are in.  She said that the reason they are called new potatoes is because they are picked when the plants are still small and green, which is why the potatoes are thin-skinned and small.  She held out a small yukon gold for me to look at.  It was luminous and tender and made me fantasize about roasting them with whole cloves of garlic, kosher salt and several glugs of olive oil.

When I asked her what she had in mind for the box of baby reds she was buying, she told me that she was going to make a very simple vegan potato salad that Patience, the mother of a friend, had invented.  You quarter and boil the potatoes and then toss them with mashed avocado, chopped shallots, salt and pepper.  The avocado acts as a binding agent in place of mayonnaise or other dressing.  I think it sounds wonderful (although if you weren’t going to be able to eat it right away, you might want to give it a squeeze of lemon juice, to keep the avocado from browning too rapidly).

I grew up in Portland, OR which is about an hour from the Pacific Ocean.  Every summer my family would spend a couple of days at the coast (no one calls it the shore out there) and we’d go crabbing.  I got used to interacting with crabs and learned to keep my fingers well away from their powerful claws.  One year we managed to catch more than 30 crabs and had an enormous feast with a collection of friends and family.

But for all the crab I had in my life back then, I never encountered soft shell crab until I moved to the east coast (I’m not even sure if soft shell crab is available out west, anyone know?).  In the last five years, I’ve made up for lost time, eating it fried on top of salad or wrapped up in a sushi roll.  However, I’ve never tried preparing it at home, but seeing these little guys at the market has given me the inclination to try.

Does anyone out there have any tips or recipes they’d like to share for success with soft shell crabs?  I’d love to hear them.

Sitting in Center Court with Wendy yesterday afternoon, she confessed that she doesn’t get to the market to shop all that often. Living out in Mount Airy makes it hard, but she stops by when she can. Several weeks ago, she was passing through when she stumbled across baskets of ripe strawberries for $1 a basket. She picked up two, took them home and devoured them.  They were the first real summer fruit she had encountered this season and they made the hints of warm weather with which early May teased us feel real.

A few days later the strawberries were gone, but the tasty memory lingered (she admitted that even just talking about them made her mouth water). By then, she had forgotten where she had purchased the berries, and kept retracing her steps in her head, trying to remember where they had originated.  The next time she stopped into the market, it flooded back, and she raced over to the stall where she had found them.  Sadly, that day, there were no berries to be had (at least not for the low, low price of $1 a pint).  At least she’ll always have her memories.

This is prime time for strawberries, at Reading Terminal as well as the other produce markets around town.  It’s pretty easy to find excellent fruit right now that needs nothing more than a quick wash to be delicious.  However, if you find yourself running into fruit that is decidedly lackluster, you can toss those berries with some sugar and spices, wrap it all up in a crust and make yourself a tart.