Team Upton Takes Pepper Place Market

The outdoor farmers' market held on Saturdays at the Pepper Place is one of my favorites in the city! It is where I went last year for all of the locally grown food I used to make Nick's baby food. My mom often going with me, but we always end up seeing a lot of friends. Nick and I are regulars to the market, but this Saturday Jeremy was off work and decided to join us. He also decided it would be a good idea to take Grady (the market is very dog friendly and always has a large canine presence). I have to admit I was very skeptical about taking Grady. She is a really good dog, but at age 4 she can still be very rowdy...

When we arrived Grady was very excited and doing about how I expected on the leash, which is not great. She has never had to walk on a leash and so she is not really accustomed to it. But to my surprise after about 5 minutes and the market, encountering a lot of people and other pups, she bacem very calm, she was letting lots of kids pet her and dogs sniff her out. She even made friends with a 130+ lb Shiloh Sheppard. By the end of the day we even heard other people remarking about how beautiful and well behaved the Airedale was being, and they were actually talking about OUR Grady. I was very impressed with her!

Jeremy ate his way through the Pepper Place market. The market is great about having samples set up at all the tents. Jeremy had some delicious Canebreak Gouda, goat cheese, and Monroeville sausage. They also have several breakfast options, Jeremy had BBQ pork and grits from Jim & Nick's, I had a grilled croissant and Nick and Jeremy shared a cinnamon sugar scone from the coffee shop. Finally Jeremy tried out a Popsicle from the new Steel City Pops. They create gourmet Popsicles that are all natural and delicious, Jeremy had the Strawberry flavor. We met up with Aunt Glo (a part-time member of team Upton) at the market. When we got over to the musicians, she got Nick out of the stroller. He made a beeline towards the music. I think she was surprised by how fast he has gotten. We all danced a bit to the music before grabbing our produce and heading home! This was the first stop on our family Saturday Funday.

Team Upton returned home to take a group nap. When we got up, we had leftover BBQ for lunch and I fried up some green tomatoes (they have been on my Southern Woman bucket list). They were really good considering they were my first attempt. We went to the zoo, complete with Splash Pad time for Nick. We also got to see the new elephant who is joining our herd of elephant bachelors, we will now have 4 African Male elephants. We finished up the day picking up Davenport's pizza for dinner. The perfect end to a perfect day!