Well, that was fun! Yesterday after work (which was, by the way, interrupted by a 4-hour power outage. For those of you familiar with such things imagine the fun of extended power outage + cGMP-compliant contained environments. Fun!) I headed over to the final Grayslake Farmers Market of the season in hopes of buying the majority of the produce I needed for the Picnic (or Steakball, as I’ve taken to calling it) this weekend.

First up: apples! For the Apple Slab Pies (I decided to make three of them), I needed 10.5 lbs each of Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples. I checked with the apple seller with the widest variety and he cut me a deal on Golden Delicious and Cortlands (which I prefer to Granny Smith anyway), $1.42/pound. If I’d haggled I could have gotten it cheaper, but OK. Alas, they were out of the monstrous zucchinis that would have made life so much easier. On my way out, I passed a vendor who had a nice variety of potatoes. A little discussion and some digging in his truck netted me 30 pounds of Yukon Gold potatoes for $0.50/pound. Score! Yukon Golds hold their shape much better than Russet potatoes, and have a nice intrinsically buttery taste. Usually they’re a lot more expensive, too, so I was happy with this find.

Then it was off to Garden Fresh for the rest of the supplies, including 22 pounds of zucchini and 8 heads of garlic. I wrapped up in time to pick up takaza from the train station, and even to surprise him with a small root beer shake (his favorite). After a short break at home, I left him to work on con book stuff and struck off to Sam’s Club, where I picked up the last few things we needed (like powdered drinks and foil pans). The real find was a large pack of ready-to-roll crusts, just what we need for the apple pies, at half the price it would cost to buy them at Jewel. Woo!

So now we’re stocked and ready to roll. Tonight I’ll be making the Asian peanut dressing for the zucchini, the garlic-rosemary oil, and nearly 100 yeast dinner rolls. Tomorrow will be the really busy night, with 21 pounds of apples to be cored and peeled (fortunately, I picked up a little help for that) then making three 13″ x 18″ apple pies. Dan will be a big help with those!

It’s funny – this seems a lot of hassle, and I sometimes wonder why I put myself through this kind of stuff. Last night, though, while relaxing with the knowledge that everyhting was falling into place and things are shaping up to be as good as I hope they will be, I realized that’s the key – that sense of accomplishment. It takes a lot of effort to get there, but it’s a really good feeling.