To market, to market to buy a fresh pig...

One of my favorite things so far about D.C. is the Eastern Market.  Honestly there's nothing that's like OHMYGOSHYOUHAVETOSEETHIS! about it, but I just really like it.  For you non-D.C.ers, it's basically a farmer's market with one building that has permanent vendor booths in it (think refridgerated cases) and then on the weekends, lots of other vendors come and set up booths outside in tents.  The bonus is that there are also non-food vendors that have lots of fun stuff!  I made a quick visit last weekend and this morning L and I went together because he had never been.  Plus, on Saturday mornings, the lunch counter there has a good breakfast, so we were able to eat first and then shop.

I took some pics of the permanent counters inside.  Check it out: they have fresh, handmade pasta. 

If you look closely, you'll see some dark-colored ravioli on the bottom row in the picture above.  That's a dessert ravioli that is made of chocolate and filled with some kind of cream.  I have no idea how you cook it, either, but it was interesting!

And look at all these meats:

Some of the pretty flowers:

There was lots of seafood that I didn't get to take a picture of.  At some point I want to try some of the meat counters and pasta.  I also want to get some mussels and, if we can go back again while it's in season, some soft shell crab.  Never tried making either of the latter but it seems like they'd be fun to try.  And delicious.  We ended up coming home with peaches, blackberries, cherries, a cantaloupe, fresh garlic, potatoes, and 2 of the biggest carrots I've ever seen.  The best part of all is that all of the produce we bought is organic and fresh-picked.  Everything tastes that way it's supposed to taste.  I wish food from the grocery store tasted this good.

Completely unrelated: if you are like me and SRG and you don't love reading blogs in Google Reader, you can now sign up to get my posts emailed directly to you via the feedburner I installed this week.  If this is of interest to you, enter your email address into the "Become a Regular" field on the top right side.  Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!!