I dropped a few quick notes on FB about the Buford Highway Farmers Market in Doraville, GA. You may know Doraville from the Atlanta Rhythm Section song. If not look it up, it’s not their best by far but still good.

Anyway I thought I wrap up the posts on it today on from the actual blog site. Of the 3 markets; European, Mexican and Asian (global really) I feel like this was the one I felt most desirous of sharing about. It is frankly also the one I am definitely going to visit again even though it’s an hour and forty five minutes away. Saturdays is a very busy day and the parking lot is a hive of people just waiting for someone else to leave so they can grab a spot but the store is so large I wasn’t as annoyed as I usually get in a crowded grocery store. I also avoided a couple of the choke points like the seafood section.

Of the produce I brought it turned out to be a mixed bag. The papaya was great, the pear was crap, the breadfruit went bad because I didn’t do anything with it and I’m afraid the mamey sapote is heading in that direction too. The pepino melon will be tried today. The dragon fruit is the only one I have a photo of as I tried it.

I was underwhelmed by the mild flavor of something so dramatically named and striking in appearance. It was ok but if you’re going to look like that and be styled as the fruit of a dragon I want some punch. It did have a good texture and was refreshing so I get why people started eating it but I wouldn’t go out of my way to acquire another one. While on the subject of tropical fruits, I picked up some concentrated passion fruit drink.

This Taiwanese product was a nice find. It has a very nice passion fruit flavor when reconstituted. It says add up to seven parts water. I did 8 ounces in a 2 quart pitcher and that was good. I think it would have been even better if it was carbonated. I definitely can recommend trying it.

The next two meals got me to drag out an appliance I haven’t used in at least 15 years and 3 moves. This old steamer came in handy when I decided to cook one of the items that was my main driver for hitting the market in the first place.

I had a roommate at one time years ago and we alternated cooking dinner to make lives easier. One of his dishes he got from his Thai mother was sticky rice and boneless pork marinated in that red barbecue? sauce you see in Asian restaurants. That was a favorite so I wanted to give it a try and the sticky rice was at the top of my shopping list. Using my steamer I made the rice and I also picked up a packet of marinade.

My rice was quite the right consistency to make rice balls and I didn’t have fish sauce to dip it in but the soy was ok and it clumped together enough to make the experience close enough for government work.

The steamer came in handy when I decided to have some pork and vegetable dumplings for breakfast, because why not.

These dumplings were huge and 3 of them were quite filling. I did try to eat them with chop sticks and that was a minor disaster so after the first one inverted and spilled its innards right into the soy sauce I just went manual for the other two.

I’ve still got a couple of items from the trip to try but I know it will be a while before I try the frozen noodles or the black rice noodles so I wanted to go ahead and as the title says, wrap it up. If you live within driving distance give this market a try. I promise you won’t be disappointed in the offering.

A PS here. There were a few things that amused us one of which was this wonderful job of finding a use for a deer from one end to the other.