store bought local food

The vast majority of my summertime shopping starts at the farmers’ markets. This puts the most money straight into the hands of the farmers, gives me the opportunity to stock up without having to do too much driving to farm stands, and is generally a fun time - chatting with producers and growers, seeing all the neat stuff each farm brings. But sometimes I just plain can’t make it to the market, or run out of dinner material on a Friday night before the big Saturday markets.

Fortunately, we have several stores and markets that do a decent job selling local products, and to a lesser extent, local produce. By local products I mean those things created here or near to here, but not necessarily from local ingredients, such as our wonderful local bakeries. There just isn’t local flour to be had, but we have great local companies we can support.

Two stops - Golden Harvest in Kittery, for the tomatoes from Mackenzie’s in Milton and the bread, and Philbrick’s Fresh Market in Portsmouth for the bacon from North Country Smokehouse - netted me these amazingly delicious BLT’s. The lettuce is Meadow’s Mirth’s Love My Lettuce salad mix gotten the previous week at the farmers’ market - and because it doesn’t spend time travelling it can spend a bit more time in my fridge before I use it.

The mayonaise, well, it’s Hellman’s. Some things are just necessary for a perfect BLT, wherever they may come from.

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