blueberry banana bread and the riley park farm market

today i went to the riley park farm market at main and 30th. i'd been to the trout lake farm market off a few times and it felt like i'd been transported to europe. the trout lake market is smaller than the average european ones, and sadly this means that it boasts much less in the way of cheese. despite the cheese deficiency, i love the trout lake market and it's something i look forward to each week.

i didn't make it out there this weekend because of our blueberry mission in the valley, so i decided to take a half-day from work and head up main street today instead. while blueberries are on the mind... the town i grew up in was either literally, or very near close to the blueberry capital of canada, if not the world. since moving to vancouver 10 years ago i haven't been able to stomach the insane cost of my very favourite fruit. i have not once in a decade bought blueberries without making the trek to the valley. blueberries in the city cost 4 times as much as if you just drive a half-hour into the suburbs.

back to the market... i got a 3 pound mix of every kind and colour and stripe of tomato i could find, some fennel, arugula, a medley of beans, beets, summer squash, zucchini, and gigantic similkameen peaches. i've never actually made anything with fennel before, so that will be interesting. i got halibut cheeks too, and i've never tried those. i don't know what to do with any of it so i decided to work my way through the 8 lbs of berries that remain in my fridge. i froze a ton and then made a blueberry banana bread adapted from this recipe i found through orangette. i've use this as a base quickbread recipe all the time, but i always use spelt flour and add ground flax and rolled oats to mine, and cut the sugar by 1/3. this time instead of adding chocolate chips, i added a cup of blueberries.