It may have been spring in Chicago, but we shopped like we shopped like winter in Madison, WI.  Then, home, we bought, of all things, apples at the small market along side Maple Syrup Fest.

Last Friday, we visited those two WI towns of Swiss-dom, New Glarus and Monroe for Swiss-ish foods.  At Roef's meats, we got landjaeger, tripe and mettwurst.  At Hoesty's meats we got kalberwurst, ham and house made cold cuts.  At New Glarus Brewery, we picked up some of the un-plugged specialities as well as some coffee stout.  Further SW in Monroe, we hit the Alps Dell cheese outlet attached to the Roth Kasae factory for a boatload of WI cheeses including Roth Kase Private Reserve, some Brunkow bread cheese, and Sarvechio.

On the way back to Madison we stopped at Paoli Local Foods which does a very decent job of supplying local foods in the country.  We picked up, of all things, delicata and carnival squash–as we had squash keeping problems this year, a bit of squash now is not an eating burden.

The Dane County Market on Saturday was about as winter as March markets can get.  Nothing remotely new at this market and the only storage crops left were apples, onions and potatoes.  A five pound bag of onions was worth it though as most of our onions have sprouted at this point.  We did not need the others as our stores of those are just fine.  From the hoop-houses, we got lots of aru, I mean rocket; some mesclun and $9 worth of spinach.

Leaving the Maple Syrup Fest on Sunday (highly recommended even if they serve Mrs. Butterworth with the pancakes; they can only produce enough syrup for sample cups), my kids had a sudden urge for, of all things, apples.  We picked up a basket of gala apples from Hillside Orchards.  And my wife wants to try the chestnut polenta dish she's made at Mado, we picked up chestnut flour.

What did you pick up this weekend?  More winter or spring?