On what other day of the year do Roman gods, witches, angels, Christmas elves, hot-pink haired hunnies, bunny rabbits, and science fiction characters gather together for celebration? Our office Halloween festivities were a hit, I will say. I've accumulated some Kit Kats and Milk Duds and even a fake plastic slug! My costume of choice this year was a dark angel :)

This weekend was fatiguingly fun. On Saturday, I worked at the CUESA Harvest Festival. This year, Todd Champagne of Happy Girl Kitchens, along with his wife and son, taught a group of us how to preserve tomatoes and peppers. We tossed garlic and small tomatoes and basil into one Ball jar, and pepper strips, onion rounds and hot peppers into another..then we sealed the jars to let the veggies preserve themselves to deliciousness!

After that, three of us set up and ran an apple-tasting station where we cut up ten varieties of apples for market-goers to taste...there were Fuji, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Honeycrisp, and Arkansas Black apples...my favorite were the Wickson apples. They were so tiny that three could fit in my hand and they tasted perfectly tart!

There was also a butter churning station and an apple mill for making fresh pressed cider...if you have never had fresh-pressed cider, you best run out to your nearest apple orchard and try some!

*

On Sunday, I finally made my way over to the Temescal farmer's market. It is located in the parking lot of the Claremont DMV in Oakland. I can't believe I hadn't yet been there! It was smaller than both the Grand-Lake and the Ferry Building markets, but it was intimate and musical and it quickly became my new favorite. The prepared foods were delicious (Thai, Indian, Afghani, soy food, breads, baked goods, kettle corn, tamales)...and I drank the best cup of drip coffee I have had in my entire life...skillfully prepared by the talented folks at Blue Bottle Coffee.