Tomato Vine

We are very lucky to live close to the Greenville state farmers market, and also the downtown Saturday farmers market. We often treat the downtown market as an excursion on Saturdays, taking the time to grab a bite to eat and stroll up Main Street in addition to picking up something from one of the many vendors that have set up shop. It only starts up in the spring, and lasts just long enough to buy a pumpkin for Halloween, but can be a little more expensive than the supermarket and inconvenient when we travel on the weekends. This is why the state farmers market is a favorite place of ours, with fresh, local produce year round and open on Mondays through Saturdays, 8am to 6pm. (And the Piedmont Spring Plant and Flower Festival is coming up May 2-5^th, mark your calendars!)

 

However my recent favorite store for fruits, vegetables and local produce is Tomato Vine, on Old Buncombe Road. With prices up to half what they are in the local supermarkets, fresher produce and a great selection, I tend to stock up once a week.

 

Not everything is local. There is an assortment of products I haven’t seen elsewhere, such as plantain and banana leaves that I assume aren’t from the region. During off-season the fruits have also traveled longer distances, for example your strawberries are from Florida, not the local farm that will supply them in a month’s time.

 

Nevertheless there are entire shelves devoted to local jams, preserves, honey, syrup and bread. Nuts and dried fruit are available in bulk, as well as peanut brittle and other sweets. There's a good selection of chiles, and like I said, the prices can’t be beat.

Located at 4120 Old Buncombe Road in Greenville for at least twenty years now, they are open year round. Parking is easy and grocery carts are available, just remember, they don’t accept credit or debit.

 

 

Note for my Greenville readers:

For those of you interested in native plants for your garden or home, tomorrow (Saturday April 6^th) is the South Carolina Native Plant Society’s Upstate Spring Native Plant Sale. Open from 9am to 1pm, you can find the sale in the parking lot of University Center at the corner of South Pleasantburg and Antrim Drive in Greenville. A great chance to pick up beautiful native plants, grasses, shrubs and trees that provide habitat, nectar and food for our native wildlife!

 

Pâques en Ohio

During Easter in Ohio we got to meet the newest addition to the family, Annalija. Her parents managed to visit us before she was born, and good thing because they are going to be super busy with this gorgeous little girl!

 

Congratulations guys, she’s perfect. Especially since she smiles for tante Liene! Enjoy your time with her while she’s still a newborn, before you know it she’ll be the one hiding under the coffee table with her Easter basket and empty candy wrappers scattered about, not my Lauris…

Mikus was too busy charming everyone to eat any chocolates. He had grandma wrapped around his little finger.

 

We also managed to take a family picture where every single member is actually looking at the camera. The odds of this happening again in the near future are slim to not-gonna-happen.

 

To our hosts, thank you for having us! Can’t wait until the next party!

Happy April Fish!

Four generations under one roof...

Stomachs full after amazing meals with the family, cousins tired after chasing one another around all day (not to mention the search for Easter baskets!), meeting the sweet baby girl who paid us a visit in Greenville before she was even born, satisfying sweet teeth with an array of candy, tortes and cakes...

The days spent with family can be twice the work, but they also bring about enormous joy. I'm so very thankful Lauris and Mikus can kiss their great-grandmother (omammīte), read a book with grandmother, play tag with their cousins and sneak Easter chocolates and Peeps with no repercussions. I hope you had as beautiful and Easter as we did... now if only the two boys would sleep with all that sugar cursing through their systems!!!

Happy poisson d'Avril !!! Have you "April fished" someone today?

Lieldienas, Easter, Paques (or a Frenmericvian Easter)

See English translation below.....

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Novēlu visiem skaistas Lieldienas!


Lai jums būtu veiksme olu sišanās, augsta šūpošanās un varena Lieldienu maltīte ar jūsu ģimeni!

Mums olas ir nokrāsotas un rupmaize izcepta, visas sastāvdaļas paskai nopirktas. Ir atvieglinoši būt atpakaļ ASV kur visas lietas rit vieglāk, bet tomēr pietrūkst Francija. Atceros, ka pagāšgad satikamies pilns dzīvoklis mēs mammas ar bērniem krāsot olas. Māciju kā sīpolu mizās tās vārīt un kuŗas lapiņas un zālīte rod interesantus musturus. Un nemaz nerunāsim par iepriekšējo gadu, kad Lieldienas svinējām Gorges du Tarn ar Matīsu un Indru! Un franču ticējums ir, ka zvans atved Lieldienu olas (nevis kāds zaķis!) un tamdēļ arī veikali pilni ar šokolādes un marcipāna zvaniem. Baznīcu zvani pāris dienas pirms Lieldienām klusē un itkā par šīm dienām ir aizgājuši uz Romu, no kurienes atgriežāš ar krāsotām olām un šokolādēm. Senās dienās tanī brīdī Lieldienu dienā kad visi zvani skanēja, tad tikai drīkstēja visi bērni skriet laukā olas meklēt. (Vai nav piemēroti, ka mani Čikāgas radi svinēs Zvanu ielā Lieldienas?)

Šādos brīžos jāatcerās, ka Francijā nepaspējām atrast šūpoles kur izšūpoties. Varbūt tamdēļ arī visu vasaru koda odi? Un notiekti nevarējām sanākt četras paaudzes ģimene kopā nosvinēt svētkus. Atradīsim mūsu zvaniņus kuŗus paskandināt Lieldienu dienā, izcepsim kādu burkānkūku, sitīsim sīpolu mizās krāsotās olas un kārtīgi nosvinēsim latviskas/franciskas/amerikāņu Lieldienas!

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Wishing everybody a happy Easter!

We've colored our eggs, baked a batch of rye bread and bought all the ingredients for making paska. It's a bit of a relief to be back in the US for this holiday, as keeping with the various traditions has gone more smoothly, however I miss France. A friend reminded me how this time last year our apartment was full, as I taught everyone how to color Easter eggs the Latvian way, with onion skins. Even the year before that, when we celebrated Easter with Indra and Matīss in the Gorges du Tarn, what a memorable holiday that was! I miss the bells too; the French tradition has it that a bell delivers the Easter eggs, and only when all the church bells ring can the children run outside to search for the eggs les cloches de Pâques have brought from Rome. All the patisseries and groceries will be full of marzipan and chocolates in the shape of bells...

It's moments like this that I need to remember that it wasn't all bells and chocolate in France, as we definitely were not able to celebrate Easter with four generations of family. Some of the other Latvian traditions went by the wayside as well, such as swinging on Easter morning to keep the mosquitos at bay during the following year, since we never did find any swings.

So I'm off to search for some bells to ring on Easter morning before the egg hunt, and to double check I have everything to bake a carrotcake, because this year with our onion skin colored eggs and our Peeps we will properly celebrate a Latvian/French/American Easter!

Googly-eyed eggs

Growing up we mostly used the Latvian onion-skin method to color Easter eggs, but I remember a few times when my siblings and I cajoled our mother into using a store-bought dye set. It almost always made a mess, and the eggs never turned out very beautiful – at least that was my opinion. Plus, the natural way has the added bonus at the end; unwrapping the eggs to discover the designs left behind by the various leaves, flowers and blades of grass is similar to opening presents on Christmas morning!

 

I want the boys to experience a little of both worlds. Although they are a little too young to dye their own eggs, Lauris had a hand in collecting the leaves we used for this year’s eggs. He also helped in the tying, although after about one or two eggs he lost patience in the process and took off to play with trains. So when our playgroup organized an egg-decorating day I was glad to have the chance to try a different Easter tradition.

 

The kids had fun drawing on the hard-boiled eggs, covering them with stickers and gluing googly-eyes on. Mikus wasn’t able to participate just yet, but I predict that by next Easter he’ll have the sticker-sticking figured out, like Lauris this year. We had a mini egg hunt after which we went for a brisk walk on the Swamp Rabbit Trail.

 

 

 

The googly-eyed eggs are going straight in with the rest of our Easter eggs. I’m interested to see who chooses which eggs for olu sišanās, the egg war on Easter morning!