Local Flavor

Last weekend we moved to our new house in far-far-far Northwest Houston. So far out we’re not even in Harris county, but we’re close enough to all of the far suburbs that it is easier to call it Houston. Except we’re in the ‘country’. There are more country-ish places out there, but this is pretty much the most country place we’ve ever lived except the hotel we stayed at in San Augustine, Tx last fall for work. *That* was country.

We were out in the nearest big town to us, Tomball, checking on various things like furniture and getting the various sundry items to fill up the house so it is livable. We’d stopped in at an antique store looking for desk chairs and bookshelves when we poked in one of the vendors stands and saw fresh eggs from the owner’s own chickens. They were $2.50 for 18 eggs, which I thought was a bargain for locally grown (who knows if it was organic…) eggs. We had other errands to run so we swung back by on the way home to pick up eggs.

The eggs are still on the small side; he said the chickens were in their first rounds of eggs so they were expecting to lay bigger ones in the coming weeks. I thought that 18 eggs would last us at least two weeks, but we only have four left! We’ve made two loaves of bread and eaten several eggs a few mornings last week, using them on English muffins or making our own breakfast burritos.

The town we’re in also has a farmers market twice a month. We were excited about this, hoping to score some local produce. We were disappointed to see that not much on the produce side was there, however we did see other local vendors. Texas has a Go Texan emblem and site that promotes buying Texas made items. All of these items are from Texas! Well, I’m not sure how much of all the ingredients in the bbq sauce is, but it was assembled here. And the goat cheese was from Texas goats (haven’t tried it yet, we’d just bought some at the grocery store the night before so we ate that first) and the olive oil was from olive trees on the Olivero Farms property. The olive guy had olive oil soaps and lotion, so when we run out of what we have from the store I think I would love to try their items out.

+King of the Pit BBQ
+Blue Heron Farms
+Olivero Farms

The other nice thing about the country is that deer come into our yard in the mornings and evenings. It is nice to see some wildlife! We’ve also had a few rabbits and I saw a hawk fly over one morning. I’m sure we’ll see more wildlife in the coming months!