Webb City Sentinel column - 9-30-11

We welcome back a vendor today – Du Jour by Jimmi, otherwise known as soups by Jim and Becky Rogers. The Rogers were well-known last winter for their hearty and creative soups and they’ll be back today with Beef with Roasted Barley and Macaroni & Cheese soups – told you they were creative. They’ll also have fresh salsa. In fact, everything they do is fresh.

Jim looked into getting a canning license, but the state requires that each recipe be individually licensed which means it also must be tested in a laboratory for a nutritional label and since Jim makes over 60 recipes that just wasn’t feasible so he’s sticking with fresh. But that’s OK, because we like fresh at the market.

On Saturday, Linda Williams of Mount Vernon returns with her handcrafted aprons and tea towels. Linda came last spring and dropped out thinking that she would return when her garden began producing. It never happened, the weather did her garden in as it did most backyard gardens this year. So she’s back to celebrate the fall and the upcoming gift-giving season with her crafts.

Speaking of crafts, we’ll have lots of woodcrafts on Saturday. Dan Sherman will be here with his birdhouses and crosses made with wood and hardware salvaged from the tornado debris. We’ll also have a new woodworker with yard furniture and benches.
And we’ll have lots of produce on both days. We think of fall as harvest time and it certainly is here at the Webb City market. Our farmers’ tables are loaded with fall greens, peppers, green onions, eggplant, squash, zucchini, sweet potatoes, radishes, gorgeous cut flowers.

Lunch today is all-you-can-eat chili, plus the fixin’s, cake and drink for $6. This is Jim and Trish’s last day this season as the Friday meal provider. In October, on Fridays, we’ll have soup lunches from Du Jour by Jimmi. The music today is by the Plainsfolk.

Tomorrow our music is Red Bridge, a wonderful bluegrass and gospel group based in Ozark, Missouri. The breakfast is being served by the Civil Air Patrol. We love working with the Patrol. It’s a group of young people planning on careers in the Air Force and aviation and they sure know how to follow instructions.
Mai’s Asian Kitchen will serve lunch tomorrow – a selection of freshly made Asian dishes.

We go to our fall schedule this week. We’ll be open on Fridays and Saturdays through October. In November we switch to the Winter Market which is the first and third Friday of each month from 11 to 2. And we’re going inside this winter! We’ll be at the Clubhouse, 115 North Madison. On pretty days, we’ll set up on the parking lot, but on cold or rainy days, we’ll retreat to the comfort of indoors. Our vendors are very excited about the option of warm Winter Markets and we hope you are too.