Opening Day of the Montgomery Friends of Open Space Farmers’ Market

Attending Opening Day of the Montgomery Friends of Open Space Farmers’ Market - Planet Princeton

Saturday, June 2nd, the 16th season of Montgomery’s Farmers’ Market opens its tents at the Village Shopping Center, 1340 Route 206 South, in Skillman. Montgomery’s Farmers’ Market, an outreach of the Montgomery Friends of Open Space (MFOS), features locally-grown, conventional and certified organic produce, meats, eggs and other farm products.

I'll get my haircut and then head over to the market for some updated photography.

Bees are Not Bugs

Tuesday Photo Challenge – Bugs by jansenphotojansenphoto (Dutch goes the Photo!)

This week’s theme is Bugs! Creepy, crawly, beautiful or inspiring, bring them all! Of course, no challenge would be in this list, unless you could take a very different view of it…

Created by photographer Frank Jansen, the Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography.

Tuesday Photo Challenge – Bugs by jansenphotojansenphoto (Dutch goes the Photo!)

This week’s theme is Bugs! Creepy, crawly, beautiful or inspiring, bring them all! Of course, no challenge would be in this list, unless you could take a very different view of it…

The theme for Frank’s weekly photo challenge is “bugs”. The featured photo for this post is of a bee. Bees are not bugs.

As I mentioned in a comment when Frank published the post with the theme, all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. Well, that’s not entirely true. Computer software bugs are not insects but as everyone knows they are just as annoying.

True bugs are listed within the order called Hemiptera. Insects in this order are different from other insect orders, such as Hymenoptera (ants and bees), Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), or Diptera (flies and mosquitoes). Ask A Biologist

I think the word bug is shorthand for “I think this thing is a nuisance“ or “I am shit-my-pants scared of this thing“. Some people like my wife see a cockroach and immediately fall apart like a four-year-old who just dropped an ice-cream cone to the floor. I think it’s learned behaviour. That same four-year-old is likely to be fearless when confronted with spiders, grasshoppers and daddy-long-legs. The insect is more at risk from unintentional death-by-curiosity in that scenario.

Some people are annoyed enough to swat every insect they encounter even if that insect is in the middle of the forest. I have a general rule. Unless I’m at threat of physical harm I leave the insect alone and I try my best to remove them (or myself) safely away from the area. My kids know that they are not allowed to kill insects that “re-occupy” our home.

I knew that it would be a challenge to find insects to photograph this weekend. It rained yesterday and this morning and I fully expected I would see nothing. But this morning while I was at the farmer’s market looking at the sunflowers I noticed this bee enjoying breakfast. Since this is a bee, not a bug, I technically failed the challenge. But there a few buyers who were bugging out over the buzzing.

Created by photographer Frank Jansen, the Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography.

The Farmer and the Chickpea

Last weekend kicked of the annual Montgomery Friend of Open Space Farmer's Market. I got some cool new photos that I'll be sharing with your over the next few weeks during the summer. Back this year was the Farmer & The Chickpea with some delicious food and dessert items.

A little background:

All of our recipes have an Italian influence, as our background (and our hearts) are in Italy. We love nothing more then taking a traditional American Dish and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.

The main store is located on main street in Manville, NJ. I've never been to the store but based on the few items on sale at the farmers' market I'm sure it must be a treat. Next time I'm driving through Manville, I'll be sure to stop and spend some time in the store. If your time is limited you can always stop in at the farmers' market tomorrow and pick up a few of the delicious items for sale.

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I bought one of the lentil cakes with maple roasted sweet potato and pumpkin for my wife for lunch but ended up eating most of it myself. It's ok to share but sometimes it's good to keep things for oneself.

The lentil cake was delicious with a glass of Villa Milagro Rosita.

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I have type 1 diabetes but these bread puddings look so delicious. I'll have to find how to eat just a small piece that works with my diabetic diet.

rice pudding, sweet potato, fig

rice pudding, blackberry, orange cream