Farmer's Market, Fringe Festival and Crepes

Another nonstop Saturday in DC - starting with an early trip to the Farmer's Market, this time to the Cheverly Farmer's Market, where Michael normally goes.  This one is only in operation ever other week, giving us plenty of room to graze the others, but it had lots to see and choose - veggies and fruits, all kinds of meat, cheese, potted herbs, homemade soaps... it's really hard for me not to take a little bit of everything there is.

But I'm making gazpacho for our church's once a month 'Soup Sunday' tomorrow, so I wanted to focus on what I needed for that, along with a selection of free range and/or grass fed meats... and once again, we've got a nice fat haul which we'll meal plan around tomorrow:

We've got lots of cucumbers and tomatoes, some broccoli, onions, corn on the cob, and kale here, along with potted lavender, rosemary and orange-mint.

... and then there is a pork roast, some lamb stew meat, a whole chicken, some eggs, ground beef, a pack of bratwursts and one of chorizo, and some cheddar-horseradish cheese.

And finally, a couple jars of jam - pineapple-ginger and spiced fig. Yum....

So we were back home with all this by 10:30, chilled out a little while and then headed back up into the city to play.  This is Fringe Festival month in DC, with hundreds of live performances - plays, dance, music, comedy - are available all over town in dozens of small venues.  If you live near a major town, check out if they've got a Fringe Festival... it's a fantastic way to support the arts, and see some really good performances.

This year, we budgeted to see three - last week we saw Fat Men in Skirts, put on by Molotov Theatre (we never miss a performance of theirs and they never disappoint).  Today, we decided to check out some improv by the Washington Improvisational Theatre (WIT) - and by luck we were allowed to see both of their performances.  The first was iTOONsicle, an improvisational send-up of animated musicals... they ask the audience to jot down a setting, and pull one answer from a jar, and then they make up the whole thing on the spot, complete with songs and a mostly cohesive plot. Today's turned into an odd musical set in a Starbucks in the deep south - and the main characters were a Grande coffee cup, a Michael Bolten CD, some coffee beans and cocoa beans and a very perverted South American orange soda. (You hadda be there).

The second performance was divided into a 'radio play' improv using a few audience suggestions to built a speaking-only plot and a series of improv vignettes based on randomly grazing an audience member's ipod... turned out they used mine, so it was both out of date and a blend of the obscure and the embarrassing. hee...  Lots of fun!

We'll be catching one more play before Fringe ends next weekend.

After the play, we had a lovely light dinner at a small cafe near the theatre that is devoted to crepes - every filling you can imagine, both savory and sweet, and sooo good.  Man, I've missed DC.

Finally, we walked a few blocks to a Whole Foods to pick up a couple more items we needed and home again.  Such a full day, with soup yet to make... and I loved every minute of it.