Weekend Foodie Warriors – Take 62! Mother’s Day Edition

Hello again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you’ve had a great week so far! For this Mother’s Day edition of Foodie Adventures, we’re taking you on a tour of the Dekalb Farmers Market, where we got ingredients to make Jamie’s mom an early Mother’s Day dinner, and check out the new Rhubarb coffee cake recipe we made too! 🙌

---

This is going to be a little different this week because the first place we’re reviewing did not allow us to take any pictures. There are really only two, the one from outside the building above and one I was able to snag in the produce section below to show you just a tiny tiny taste as to what this massive building had to offer.

That doesn’t mean I can’t describe it to you in as many descriptive details as possible though!! 😁🙌 The short video (below) and one inside picture I was able to sneak in were taken quite discreetly, as there are multiple signs posted in the building not to take pictures (for whatever reason). However, when my friend Melanie from Kidding Around Greenville told me about how amazing this farmer’s market was and how we had to go, I was super excited when I realized that Jamie’s aunt and uncle live super close (and they go all the time)!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Pimento & Prose (@pimentoandprose)

So they invited us to come with them one Sunday, and we spent the morning hanging out at the farmer’s market for about two hours. This building is absolutely massive! From international foods of all shapes, colors, and smells, to a massive wall of spices and seasonings, these are just some of the great things to delight your senses as you walk into this farmer’s market. I would actually call this more of an international grocery store than anything else, as much as some of these individual items you could probably find in smaller quantities at your local farmer’s market.

We absolutely loved roaming down the aisles filled with cool sauces and dry goods. We took in the sights of people carving pineapples and the immensity of how big a jackfruit actually was in person, along with checking out their huge fish market and butcher counters. They also had a cafe inside, a bakery, their own coffee (tastings for that too), a good size cheese market, and a freshly prepared foods section as well.

I absolutely could have spent $100 plus, and still want to buy more to experiment with, some items that I had only seen on TV before now. They had some of the most exotic and fun fruits and vegetables I’ve seen anywhere!

While we didn’t get to take a whole lot of pictures inside the Dekalb Farmer’s Market itself, I did make sure to take pictures of the ingredients that we did purchase once we got home. We made sure to grab a good amount of spices, including some whole vanilla bean pods, which in the future I’m going to turn into our own homemade vanilla extract. We bought whole nutmeg, which you can grind into coffee, baked dishes, and sauces as well. Jamie also got chili powder and hot paprika. Two of our favorites were the really nice container of chamomile tea, which we’ve already used about a quarter of since we bought it, and the Mexican coffee beans we’re grinding up this week. It’s so awesome to see the whole flower petals and leaves in the tea too, you definitely need to make sure you have a loose leaf tea strainer or something like that though.

Of course, we bought all of the ingredients for Jamie’s mom’s early Mother’s Day dinner, which I’ll talk more about in the next section. We also bought rhubarb, which was an absolutely gorgeous color and we used that to make our Rhubarb Raspberry Ginger coffee cake, which is linked down below.

I absolutely loved visiting and would go back in a heartbeat! The only thing that we would make sure of for next time is that we bring enough cash, debit cards, or a check. We ended up getting to the front of the line to check out and neither one of us had enough cash on us. Luckily, Jamie’s aunt and uncle came to the rescue, and we paid them back later. Maybe they should put up a few more “cash or check only” signs instead of posting so many “no-taking photos” signs, but I digress. 🤷‍♀️ This is definitely a must-visit for my foodie friends either way though!! 💜

---

The ingredients that we ended up picking to make Jamie’s mom’s Mother’s Day dinner included a great loaf of bread from the Dekalb Farmer’s Market. It was an asiago loaf (by the way, the price was $5.99, not $15.99, I realize with the faded printing it’s not 100% clear on that), which was super crusty and had great Italian spices and cheese baked into it as well. Jamie and I used this to make garlic bread, which had the extra flavor with the Asiago and spices already in the bread.

For the main course, Jamie decided to make one of his mom’s favorites, a one-pot ziti dish that he learned how to make in college. We bought fresh Roma tomatoes, Italian parsley, basil, fresh oregano, and passata sauce, which we use to make the fresh pasta sauce. Into the base of the sauce also went garlic, shallots, and red bell peppers. We bought two kinds of cheese from the cheese market, a Fontina, which is a great melter, along with a Parmigiano-Reggiano, and two sausages to round out the dish. One was Italian sausage and the other was andouille sausage, which had more spice and depth of flavor to it.

We started by prepping all of the ingredients, which included chopping up the shallots, mushrooms, and garlic. After roasting that in a pan with some olive oil until fragrant, we added in the pepper and oyster mushrooms, which gave the sauce a little sweetness and umami flavor. Next came the tomatoes and the passata, which is a pureed tomato base used in Italian cooking to thicken and bolster up sauces.

Once the sauce had stewed for a while, we began cooking the sausage. The pasta we added into the sauce directly so it could cook in the flavored liquids. We did end up adding some boiling water to the sauce which we then cooked out until the pasta was Al Dente.

The sausages were then added into the mix, and after they combined for a few minutes, we put them into a casserole dish and covered that with cheese, to bake for about 10 minutes before serving. We broiled it towards the end to get that crispy cheesy crust on top!

This dish was definitely not Sarah-friendly, but came out an absolutely gorgeous golden brown color, and was fantastic with the garlic bread on the side.

Jamie’s mom loved it! She’s not a huge fan of cooking, so she loves it anytime we come over and make dinner for the family. My mom is coming down to visit this weekend for Mother’s Day, and I’m very excited to show her Greenville and take her around to some of our favorite spots. 💜

---

Last but not least, is a new recipe!  We actually debuted this recipe a week or so ago, but since we originally got the rhubarb from the Dekalb Farmer’s Market, it seems like a great place to talk about it again.

Growing up, I always remember helping my grandma pick fruits and veggies from her garden. Most of the time, I was running out to chop some chives off of her plant with a pair of scissors for cheese and cracker before dinner, or pulling mint out of the garden around Easter for a great mint sauce to go with the lamb we would typically eat. However, I always remember being intrigued by the big red stalks of what looked like celery to me, which I grew to understand was rhubarb.

A ruby red color when it’s really ripe, the flavor of it reminds you almost along the lines of cranberries or grapefruit, with the texture of celery though. My Grandma loved rhubarb, and I can remember her making rhubarb jam, rhubarb raspberry or rhubarb-strawberry pies, and little tarts that had rhubarb in them. And there was always, always, warm Bird’s English yellow custard on top of the pie. 🥧

The recipe that I’m using here on my blog was originally hers in her handwriting. But this is my non-dairy twist to it, of course! In keeping with her flavor traditions, I added raspberries to the coffee cake, along with a little bit of ginger, which plays really well with both of those flavors. This Rhubarb Raspberry Ginger Coffee Cake is perfect with a cup of tea, coffee, or a brunch get-together and makes a great snack warmed up. Check out the link here to see how to make it. 🙌

---

So how was your weekend, Foodie Friends? Where is your favorite local farmer’s market? Sound out in the comments below to let us know your suggestions of what dishes to make or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗