Sammamish Farmers Market Newsletter

Did you have favorite vendors last season? Are you wondering if they are returning? As we worked on the planning this season, many of us kept pestering the market manager about whether our favorite vendors were coming back. They are. We have many, many returning vendors as well other vendors who are going to try out our market. Let's give them a big welcome on opening day, Wednesday, May 20.

We won't have a final list for a couple weeks yet. We'll look at the crafts vendors in the next newsletter. Here are the returning food vendors we expect to see:

Returning Produce and Food Vendors

Blazing Bagels - Over the years, we've had the privilege to watch this Redmond bakery grow. Do you know it recently opened a store in Bellevue next to the Key and Symetra Centers on 108th Ave.? Anyone who goes to Eastlake and is even somewhat partial to bagels has been spoiled. Blazing Bagels is forever their standard in bagel-land. I know this from my daughter, who has had opportunities to compare New York City bagels to those of Redmond. She always finds the Redmond version tops. http://www.blazingbagels.com/ .

Calhoun Family Orchards - Remember their sublimely good peaches? They're coming back with apples, pears, plums, apricots and peaches from their eastern Washington family farm. Last summer, one of the Calhouns, who was nearly always working at our market, told us she planned to develop a line of jams and jellies. Let's hope she brings some to our market.

Cha New Life Gardens-The Cha family was one of our market anchors last year. They offered their astonishing-and that's the only appropriate word-range of produce and flowers from opening day to closing day. We could always count on them to bring lots of good things from their Duvall farm to Sammamish. Let's hope they planted all the pea varieties they brought to market last year. They had English peas, pea vines, and two or three types of sugar snap peas early in the season. How could one get enough?

George's Bakery - There really isn't much to say here other than "Hooray, George's Bakery is coming back!" How can we forget the long lines of market customers waiting for their chance to buy the McKeowns' bread and pastries? And how about those gigantic glazed donuts? Were they 8 or 12 inches across? Joe McKeown comes from a long line of Pennsylvania bakers, and it shows. Welcome back!

Hermosa Mexican Foods - Karyn and Ernest Morena are returning-thank goodness. We can't even guess how many Sammamish families the Morenas fed last market season. As farmers market supporters, the Morenas try to prepare their food using produce from our market. They also use biodegradable plates.
http://hermosamexicanfoods.com/home.html . Hermosa returns to the market by July 1 for the rest of the season

Kittitas Valley Greenhouse - Rich Ness, our tomato vendor, brings his incomparable heirloom tomatoes to market. Did you settle on your own favorite tomato types during last year's season? Well, we volunteers had a pretty tough time figuring out which varieties we most liked, because the tomatoes were Kittatas Valley Greenhouse

all so good-even the seconds. As for me, I really missed those Black Krim and Paul Robeson tomatoes over the winter. Rich tells us he's increased his acreage, plus his tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplant are ahead of last year. We are lucky folks. http://www.kittitasvalleygreenhouse.com/

Marilyn's Nut Butters - This vendor joined us toward the end of the season with her line of nut butters. Just a couple months ago, the Seattle Times featured Marilyn and how she has developed her business,
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/retailreport/2008739140_retailreport13.html .
http://marilynsnutbutters.com/

Misty Mountain Honey - Mark Johns is back again with his collection of local honey and beeswax candles. While growing up the Midwest, I thought that clover honey was all that bees made. The Johns family confounds that notion by bringing us blackberry honey, raspberry honey, maple honey, fireweed honey and even other varieties. This year, in our e-newsletter, we're going to do a bit more exploring about how we can use honey in our cooking, http://www.toltriver.com/Welcome.php .

Panda Catering - Last season, one of our market survey participants mentioned that we absolutely had to have Hermosa and Panda return to our market. The long lines of market shoppers waiting for Panda's dim sum and pad thai tells the story. Both Jovy of Panda Catering and the Morenas of Hermosa Mexican Foods are looking forward to seeing Sammamish market goers once again! They love Sammamish!

Roberts Bistro Style - For many years, Robert Houot of Sammamish owned a French restaurant in Redmond, where he did all the cooking, from appetizers to desserts. Dining there was like stepping into a French bistro. Oh, the soups! Trained in France, he's recently been an instructor in the well-regarded South Seattle Community College culinary program. He brings his soups and dressings to our market, http://www.robertsbistrostyle.com/dynamic/?page=Meet%20the%20Chef .

Tonnemaker Family Orchard - A third-generation family farm, this certified organic grower comes back with its parade of abundance from eastern Washington , including 140 pepper varieties and 100 types of tree fruit. Tonnemaker's also grows some of the best melons around. Their beautiful French breakfast melons came immediately to my mind while reading Mireille Guiliano's French Women for All Seasons (she also wrote the best-selling French Women Don't Get Fat), in which she describes a French woman's keen appreciation of a melon grown in season and freshly picked. She could have been talking about Tonnemaker's melons.

Vue Family - Like Kittitas Valley Greenhouse and Cha New Life Gardens, Vue was one of our market mainstays last year, bringing consistently good produce and lovely flowers to each market day. Who can forget the Vue family's glorious peonies and delphiniums from their south King County farm? The Vues, like the Cha family, do flowers for special events like weddings.

Youngquist Berries - The Youngquists will once again be providing us with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, Marionberries and tayberries. One of the most common sights of the market last season was seeing customers tenderly carrying their berries to their cars. Would that berry season began today! http://www.fidalgo.net/~mjberry/history.htm .