it’s been a food-themed holiday week. family gatherings are naturally that way, of course, plus the only book i’ve managed to read this week was a cookbook, cover-to-cover. Make the Bread, Buy the Butter is half cookbook, half narrative about the writer’s journey in determining exactly which foods one should make from scratch and which should be store bought. of course, all of this depends on how much one likes to cook, and more importantly, how much time one has, but it was a fun read. and i’m actually kind of psyched to try making my own bagels. possibly my own cheese, just once, just to see if i can. definitely not going to touch prosciutto, however. (note: i was so far off from spelling prosciutto correctly that spell checker couldn’t even help me).

in keeping with food-theme, today we wandered Cleveland’s Westside Market. think indoor farmer’s market, but without the yuppie prices, yuppie coffee, or yuppie focus on free-range and organic. or the yuppies. it was refreshing to be in a place where everyone, all the regular folks one normally sees at safeway, were buying their produce and meat, rather than at a farmer’s market where only those who can afford a $3 peach turn up. i do love yuppie coffees and free-range chicken, so there’s a time and place for each of these things. but the market is a 100-year old Cleveland institution; an amazing, bewildering crowded hall of butchers, cheesemongers, fresh produce, spices, grains and loose leaf teas, falaffel, loaves of bread, seafood, fresh pasta, chinese dumplings, baked goods, pierogi, candies, nuts. we had dinner plans immediately following, which cut down on how much grazing we could do, but a $3 tub of blue-cheese stuffed olives for myself and Eva, and a bundle of freshly-made jerky (can jerky BE fresh?) for Ben mostly kept us out of trouble. on the way out i bought some pomegranates. i asked the vendor how to find a good ripe one and he told me to pick the ugliest ones. i’m not clear on whether he just let me in on a little pomegranate secret, or was trying to schlep off his least desirable produce. to be safe we purchased two, and selected the ugliest and the prettiest ones we could find.