Raspberries and more...

One of the things we've been the happiest to discover about Albuquerque is that it isn't all desert! I mean there are areas of desert - lots of them and some are quite beautiful. And there are mountainous areas reminiscent of, though not as pretty as, Colorado and Utah. And there are lush green valleys bordering the Rio Grande. It's kind of weird to drive 10 minutes from our house in one direction and be in a desolate desert and 10 minutes in another direction and be in an incredibly beautiful agricultural area.

The last six weeks or so Gracie and I (and Brian when he has the day off) have been going on Saturday mornings to the Los Ranchos Farmers Market. It's a great little market...nothing like the Dallas Farmers Market (oh how I miss our produce co-op!) more like the little Coppell Market (without which we would have gone broke keeping up with Grace's blueberry habit). There are several markets in the ABQ area that I want to check out, but for now, I'm stuck on this one.

We've gotten some delicious produce at this little market - I was so excited to find it that the first week I took a photo of our haul. That first week we got an herb blend, peaches (some of the best I've ever had), pinot noir grapes, tomatoes, a zucchini and a baguette. We've also gotten bunches of basil, garlic, eggplant, yellow tomatoes, raspberries, corn and leeks.

Grace insists on carrying the baguette when we buy one - it's almost as tall as she is!

And she'll stop along the way to try to eat some of it before we even get to the car. She loves all the dogs that people bring to the market and dances to the music of the folk singers.

Last Saturday after the market we went out to Heidi's Raspberry Farm in nearby Corrales to pick some raspberries. It was a lot of fun and the setting is just gorgeous!

Grace didn't get the idea that we were putting raspberries in our pints to take home and eat later...she just ate everything she picked! Mostly she just had fun running around and playing with the other kids there and Brian ran around after her while I finished filling our pints.

We all enjoyed eating the raspberries this past week, but Gracie ate most of them. We put them on her fingers (I remember my sisters and I doing this with olives when we were little), and she'd eat them off.

But being the berry-glutton that she is she just shoves all four fingers in her mouth at once. She was so fast at eating them, I could hardly snap a picture of it fast enough once I got them all on her fingers.

She calls them boo-berries - it's what she calls all berries be they blue-, straw- or raspberries. So we're working on that one. I swear this girl could live on fruit and would be in heaven if only we'd give her berries and berries only for each and every meal and snack.