Finishing up a visit to Saugatuck, Michigan (on Lake Michigan about 130 miles north of Chicago), my favorite find has to be The Summertime Market.

Driving back home from downtown Saugatuck on our last day here, and hoping to spot some sort of farm stand selling lettuces, we stumbled upon their little store. If you’re ever in the area, it’s very much worth a stop. They’re just on the other side of the bridge over Kalamazoo Lake from downtown Saugatuck. As they say, “Blue Star Highway… At the Bridge.” Great produce, great foods, great graphic design (!), and a solid mission. This is an all-around excellent place. I felt like I was at the farmers market, only somehow magically each farmer had brought exclusively the most perfect of fruits. Some inside, some outside.

Perhaps a bit gimmicky… but I really liked this… each item was marked with the number of miles it had traveled to reach the store. Here’s a little something from one of their take-away pieces:

We’re about eating local, like our grandparents did. We only sell produce from farmers we know and trust, and are located within 30 miles from our stand….

All of our products are made or produced in the state of Michigan. Except, of course the glass bottled real cane sugar Coca-cola….

If you know me, you know I can totally get behind a philosophy of local-everything-but-Mexican-Coke (plus olive oil, wine, etc.). Summertime also carries local cheeses, milk, and meats. I didn’t see any pork on their bulletin board, but hopefully they’re working on that one.

We picked up a beautiful butterhead lettuce, green and yellow beans, and 7-grain bread from local bakers Salt of the Earth. For reference, Salt of the Earth is opening up a new restaurant in Fennville, MI where Journeyman Café (sadly) closed this past fall. I’m sorry we missed their opening! It looks like they’ll be ready for customers later this month.

Thanks to Summertime! We much enjoyed our salad. I’d love to return next season.

The last time I went to the Midtown Farmers’ Market, summer was in full swing with a great variety of vegetables, but most of the vegetables were still pretty small: baby beets, tiny zucchini and summer squash with the flowers still on, new potatoes, spring onions, young greens, etc. After three weeks, the same vegetables have gotten bigger: red potatoes the size of two golf balls, baseball-sized onions, large squash and beets, and full-sized, adult lettuces.

There were a few new vegetables available, signalling the arrival of mid-summer: carrots, green and yellow beans and cucumbers. Cucumbers are one of my favorite things about summer—it is amazing how much sweeter and full-flavored they taste in season versus their year-round counterparts, which are just watery.

I also picked up some still young vegetables—radishes and green onions—which must be cultivated and replanted throughout the summer.

This is one of the most exciting times of the year around the market: there is a large enough variety to keep the kitchen well-stocked and interesting for the week and the most exciting vegetables of the year are just around the corner. I heard talk of sweet corn if we can get a little warm weather and the first cherry tomatoes were already in evidence. This time of year can’t be beat for prices either. What might have been $3 at the beginning of the summer, like the beets, can now be had for one. There’s no better time to be at the market!