Los Angeles Farmers Market

For the past many years some Christmas money is reserved for our annual Los Angeles Farmers Market adventure. This time, as you can see, Darth Vader and Belle joined us. And Darth Vader clad in rain boots and polo shirt, which, I think, is a very rare sighting, so we felt very privileged.

The long cape was eventually swept away in a pocket of the stroller, because it proved a bit cumbersome in a crowd. Overall though I think we improved in agility seeing as last year Alynna brought her doll stroller and pushing that through a busy marketplace proved difficult and a tad bit frustrating since she kept ramming it into our ankles as her attention was caught by all the sights and sounds of the food court.

Eating out as a family of six is expensive. We order cheap, while somewhat healthy, meals that the children can share. That might be why our children are all so slender. Just kidding! Anyway, we have our own little tricks to make it affordable, but when we're at the Farmers Market we "live it up". The children each ordered their dream dish and had it all to themselves.
Kaeley ordered this odd looking, but crazy good "pizza". It was so good I thought about having one for dessert or perhaps taking one home for a midnight snack. If you ever go to the Los Angeles Farmers Market let me help you narrow down the hundreds of choices... get the pizza thing! Now Kaeley is nearly ten and she must be growing, because the girl ate the entire pizza (minus the small chunk I took as a general parenting tax), many bites of Nathan's large seafood salad, and then several bites of my own food (which must have been her tax rebate) and she still had room for dessert!

Nathan, our seafood lover, had a dream-come-true shrimp Caesar salad. It's already been decided that for his birthday we're taking him to a seafood restaurant where he can order all the crab legs and lobsters and oysters and any other little sea critter he wants to.

If you do decide to go to the Los Angeles Farmers Market let me save you the $4.50 and assure you the hot dogs are just hot dogs. Buy your hot dog at Sam's Club and pocket the three leftover dollars for the college fund or something. However, Simon and Alynna were both thrilled that in a market representing a good dozen different ethnic foods the beloved hot dog was still available.

Now every year I tell myself I'm going to try something new and yet I always end up in line for the Greek food. It could be the grumpy ladies behind the counter have cast a spell on me. More likely though I have learned, just as Nathan has, to grab when opportunities present themselves. Brad does not get excited about Greek food, so I get Greek food twice a year - the Farmers Market and my birthday. I was trying to order healthy, so I ordered the vegetarian option. I laughed at myself as I watched the falafels balled up like meatballs and promptly dropped into frying oil. So I ordered a Greek french fry in hopes of going healthy. Well, it could have been worse, right?