I've always wanted to go to a farmer's market. The closest one to us is in Grayslake, every Wednesday from 3-7pm. But I am almost always working during this timeframe, making it impossible to go. However, this past Wednesday I just happened to get home at 5pm, so I took the opportunity to head down to the market.

It was a beautiful day out, so I decided to ride my bike down there. I chained my bike to a light pole on Slusser St., grabbed my cloth shopping bag, and got to shopping.

It was the best thing ever! There were so many tents with so many different items. I started off getting some broccoli. Then I was offered a free sample of raspberries from another tent...amazing! So I bought a box of them.

The next tent was the mushroom man. I told him how I hated to get a package of mushrooms from the grocery store, because I don't use them fast enough and inevitably, at least half of them end up getting thrown away. He said I could buy as many or as few of his mushrooms as I wanted. So I picked out 4 mushrooms and was on to the next row of tents.

I sampled a BBQ sauce, chips and salsa. I bought all three. I grabbed some organic potatoes as well. I didn't anticipate buying this much stuff, so my one cloth bag was nearing capacity. I did all I could to avoid taking a plastic shopping bag from one of the vendors.

By this time, Colleen had called me on her way home from work. She was upset that I was experiencing this without her. So she decided to drive down there so we could meet up. Unfortunately by the time Colleen got there, only 30 minutes remained until the market closed.

Despite the time constraint, we still had enough time to sample some wine from the Glunz Winery. I thought it was cool that you can bring the empty bottle back and get a dollar. It's kinda like Oberweis milk. We bought a bottle.

After buying some apple cake mix we really like from the Tastefully Simple tent, we figured we might as well buy the other ingredients while we were here.

We visited the egg man. I asked if his eggs were available in quantities lower than 12. His answer was no. Apparantly, he did not have the same business plan as the mushroom man. But he did assure me that the eggs were freshly laid on Saturday or Sunday, and that they would last 6 weeks. I bought a dozen. My package contained white eggs, brown eggs, and one greenish colored egg. He said that the the green egg comes from an "easter egg chicken". Sweet. Now I can make green eggs and ham.

By this time we were low on cash, and only had enough for a few apples. There were many other tents that we didn't visit. Some with cheese, baked goods, pastas and pasta sauces. We thought it would be a bad idea to sample anything else if we didn't have the option to purchase it. So we called it a day.

I rode my bike home and Colleen drove. We cooked up an excellent meal of items that we purchased at the market. It was fantastic.