friends of dufferin grove park
Weekly Market Notes for June 16, 2005

Dear market friends,

From market manager Anne Freeman:

"This week we welcome Bruno Pretti and Paula Vosni of Fun Guy Farm with their wonderfully fresh mushrooms and mushroom specialities. They come solidly recommended by Ted Thorpe and Alvaro (Plan B), who have sold Bruno and Paula's mushrooms at markets for some time now. This week they'll bring mostly oyster nushrooms plus dried shiitake and reishi, plus marinated mushrooms (with tasting) and mushroom pesto (with tasting), and kombucha cultures.

At this hour we're still in suspense about whether the first local strawberries will appear at this market!

We've decided to expand the summer hours a bit by allowing sales beginning at 2:30.

Not all our vendors can be up and running quite that early, so early birds shouldn't expect the full market to be open by then, but most people will be set up.

Many of you found Irene of Deer Valley Farm at last week's market, but in case you missed meeting her, she will be coming to market this summer with her farm-raised venison.

Maria of Oh Soy will be away just this week."

How things are connected:

Those of us who bought market vendor Colette Murphy's seeds in April are now harvesting our own lettuce. Market vendors (and farmers) Ben Sosnicki and Alvaro Venturelli grew some of Colette Murphy's bedding plants to her specifications, in their greenhouses. Then Colette rented a back yard in this neighborhood to store the plants between markets. Because of the warm, humid weather, those plants are strong and -- in the case of the tomatoes and zucchini and cucumbers -- already flowering in our gardens. The market farmers always manage to grow the vegetables bigger (and sooner) than most of us do in our gardens. But harvesting your own is also a joy.

Another connection -- park friend Ben Figuereido planted grape vines at the park and gave some of us some grape vines for home too. Ben died this past December, but the grape vines he gave us are more lively every year. Next week is the Cooking Fire Festival of outdoor theatre (Wednesday through Sunday at the park), and it involves -- like last year -- some wonderful food. Former park cook Dan DeMatteis is taking a week off from his job at Jamie Kennedy's wine bar to cook for the festival with current park cook Dan Malloy. Dan DeMatteis visited long-time park staff Anna Bekerman in Spain last year. Now he and Dan Malloy plan to make some "little foods" for the theatre festival suppers -- a bit like the Spanish tapas Dan ate with Anna in Spain. One kind of "little food" will be stuffed grape leaves, using Ben Figuereido's grape leaves. And no doubt the two cooks will be seasoning the festival foods (and before that, this week's Friday Night Supper) with herbs from the park gardens, started with Colette's seeds also. And of course most of the food they cook will be using what they can get at the farmers' market.....

Real, material, vegetable connections at the park. And now some virtual connections:

See you at the market!

(Without the cursing, shoving girl gangsters of last week -- after the basketball players told them to get out of the park, they never returned. Peace seems to have broken out again.)

Market web page:www.dufferinpark.ca/market

Park phone number: 416 392-0913.