It's Friday afternoon, do you know where your kitchen table is?

I can rarely find my kitchen table on Fridays. I know where it is, really, I do. This table-clutter problem arises every Friday as it is my main "prep" day for Saturday's market, causing my kitchen to become enveloped in all things of a markety nature.

Some of the things that are obstructing the view to my table are the many jams and jellies that I make all year long. The jam usually lives in my pantry but being that I don't always remember things unless they are in plain sight the jam makes it's migration to the table on Friday so that I won't forget to load it...still not a guarantee. Much of the produce to make the jams is harvested from the trees and gardens on our property and then frozen or canned while it is in season. Our Rhubarb is growing fast and furious right now, so Wednesday I made a batch of fresh Strawberry Rhubarb Jam-one of my favorites. I was searching for other ways to use up some of my tart little rhubarb friends and came across a recipe for Blueberry Rhubarb jam...hmmm....interesting. When I mentioned to my dear husband that I thought I would try making the blueberry/rhubarb concoction for next weekend's market, he wrinkled his nose and with a look of great pain on his face said, "Ewww, you can't do that, blueberries and rhubarb don't belong together!" Well, he has been married to me long enough to know better-if you tell me it can't/shouldn't be done-it's getting done. Now he has sealed his fate, he will be eating blueberry rhubarb jam on his toast next week....I will let you know how that all turns out. In the mean time, I have a large collection of other flavors headed for market: Blueberry, pear butter, caramel apple, peach, pear, strawberry, apple pie, strawberry rhubarb...why is that any different than blueberry rhubarb?
Salted Nut Rolls also adorn my table, for the time being.

For the first few markets I only bake about 5 different varieties of cookies. Once the season gets fully underway I will have about 8 varieties plus "Puppy Chow" and some other snacks. I do all of my baking on Fridays because I am kind of a freshness nut...among other types of nuts that I have been called. Interestingly many of my neighbors 'happen' to stop by on Fridays...coincidence?
Fridays are impossibly busy and always fly by so quickly. Once the baking is done everything has to be labeled, the truck has to be loaded, any produce that I am taking needs to be harvested and cleaned, hand spun yarn gets boxed, clay figurines need to be packed and loaded and lastly, eggs are sorted and ready to put into the cooler in the morning. You may be wondering- if I am so busy why am I writing on my blog? Well...I have to do something while I am waiting for the oven timer to go off every ten minutes or so!

Incidentally, I am not very excited about the weather forecast for tomorrow morning-

Cloudy and 39 degrees by morning with winds at 15-25 miles per hour......I may be eating a lot of baked goods myself.