a brave new garden: This post is brought to you by the letter F

Friday, friends, food, film, farmer's market, family, food, film, friends, food, film. That was our weekend. It was a lovely sort of busy-ness, for sure, but I was so wiped from the weekend that I had to take a nap tonight after work!

Friday afternoon, we picked some more ruby red goodness from the rip-roaring tomato patch. Still lots of green little globes hanging on the plants, but we're starting to pluck a pretty steady amount of tomatoes daily:

We drove down to Richmond to have dinner with our friend Jenn, my oldest and dearest childhood friend, and her new partner. We had a long dinner at Weezie's Kitchen in Carytown, catching up and sharing laughs.

Afterwards, Nick and I went to see Food, Inc., which I had been super eager to see ever since seeing Jon Stewart's interview of Robert Kenner on the Daily Show.

It was poignant and moving, and I left the theater feeling a sudden and immense sense of pride in our little backyard patch. Our garden, despite its teeny stature, has nurtured in me an appreciable shift in the way I view my food, and the movie reinforced this with equal measures of both tenderness and a giant whomp in the gut. All I can say is GO SEE IT. If you don't, you're an uninformed idiot. Yup, I said it. Also, if you want to know how you can support your local farmers, check out http://www.localharvest.org/ . Um, now.

Saturday morning, we hit--where else--our beloved downtown farmer's market, which truly took on a greater element of significance for me after having just seen Food, Inc. Our farmer's market score this week:

three heads of organic garlic
a pound of patty pan squash
two striking little eggplants (see below)
a loaf of artisinal ciabatta bread
a loaf of artisinal 7 grain bread
a pound of yellow tomatoes (they're were just too pretty to pass up)
2 organic red onions and 2 organic "white hot" onions
a dozen organic free-range brown eggs

We are probably the only nerds who stop in the middle of the park to pose for pictures with our farmer's market finds:Check out this gorgeous spread from Blenheim Organic Gardens (which is where we nabbed our eggplant, garlic, tomatoes and squash):They were selling these AH-dorably genius salsa kits (neato, right?):We noted that Blenheim Organic Gardens had some of the very same tomatoes at their stand that we're currently growing in our ridiculously robust tomato patch--Arkansas Travelers and the Black Plum Paste tomato. I had a sudden NO-DUH moment when I realized that this is from whom we'd bought our seedlings in the beginning of the season! This prompted a whole conversation of "Hey, we bought our seedlings from you early this season!" and "Oh, yeah? How are they growing?" and "Well, very good in an out-of-control sort of way!" and "Are they ripe now? Yeah? You planted them at the right time then." and "Yeah, we're so happy. These are our first tomato plants!" and "Well, you should try this great recipe for roasting the Black Plum Paste tomatoes." And so on, and it just felt like a farmer's market moment of kismet.

Later on Saturday, my parents and my sister and her daughter made the drive up to Fredericksburg for dinner with us to celebrate my dad's birthday. Happy birthday, old man! My dad is appropriately celebrating his 5th decade by growing, what else, a fu manchu. I'm trying to convince him to use some mustache wax to give the ends a little old-timey bike-peddler curl on the ends. I feel quite sure that he is not taking this suggestion with any modicum of seriousness.

After dinner, the 6 of us headed to Hurkamp Park (same place where our farmer's market is held) for Movies Under the Moon, which was a fundraiser benefitting the Boys and Girls Club. Stretched across several blankets under the stars, we watched the latest Indiana Jones installment. Me and my sister and Indiana Jones:
Sunday, we visited Georgetown with our friends, Katie and Jess, for lunch and a movie (500 Days of Summer, very good). Oh, and in keeping with my affection for cutely baked confections, CUPCAKES! (a la Georgetown Cupcake)