Fall Season in Full Swing
Walking by stands bursting with peppers, apples, pomegranates, persimmons, squash and shelling beans confirms fall season at Orinda’s Farmers’ Market is in full swing. Meal choices shift from salads to soups and customers are ready to tempt their palates with something new.
If something sweet is on your mind, be sure to stop by Patty Cake’s Cookies. Kelsey and Shaun Barbella are new to the market scene but experts in gourmet cookie creations. Chocolate Chip, S’mores and Birthday Cake cookies top the list, and the Double Stuffed Vegan cookies are a proven favorite. The delicious sugar cookies are shaped and decorated like butterflies and hard to pass up! There’s more to check out on Instagram at pattycakecookies.
Peppers are also back on the scene with something sweet to offer along with their spicy hot counterparts. Bell peppers are best known of the sweet peppers. Harvest begins when the peppers are green and continues as they ripen and mature and turn to amazing hues of red, yellow or purple. Other sweet peppers include Gypsy peppers, Hungarian wax and pimientos.
Hot chili peppers add the kick to salsas and stir fries and the pick-me-up to scrambled eggs, sandwiches, soups and stews. The “heat” of the hot chili peppers is concentrated in the interior ribs or veins near the seed heart – the seeds themselves taste hot only because they are close to the veins. This group of peppers range from the relatively mild Anaheim and Poblano to spicy hot Jalapeno, Serrano and Habanero.
The Orinda market is open every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Orinda Wy in Orinda Village. More information is available at www.cccfm.org, facebook.com/OrindaFarmersMarket and Instagram at OrindaFarmersMarket or call the market hotline at 925.431.8361.
Shaun and Kelsey Barbella, owners of Patty Cake’s Cookies, are new to the market scene, but experts in gourmet cookie creations.
