Mark your calendars to take the tour – and if you’d like your garden to be included, please contact the Mar Vista Green Committee and fill out their Garden Questionnaire.

*Photo courtesy of Sherri Akers

Today at the Green Booth, Christy Wilhelmi of Gardenerd (a Sunday Shopper back in September)was on hand to show people how easy it is to compost. She pointed us to the LA City Department of Sanitation and their free composting workshops. They run them at their Griffith Park facility on the 4th Saturday of each month, and they also sell compost bins for very reasonable prices. Worth checking out!

New this week: Petite Bouchée caramels, and let me tell you, they are really good! Krissy Argo-Solomon and her sweets will be at the market once a month, and I recommend trying the Fleur de Sel. It’s a little sweet and a little salty at the same time. I see some lovely holiday gift potential here!

And finally, what day is complete without a balloon animal? Or in this case, a balloon motorcycle?

The special guests were the good people representing allrecipes.com, a recipe site that’s interactive and user-driven, which is very cool. I’m new to the site, but I’m already a convert. The site offers an ingredient search tool that lets you find recipes using the thing you have in your pantry, or in our case, something you find at the market. Not only that, but they have this awesome iPhone app called Dinner Spinner, which you can use to pick recipes and cooking methods based on your available ingredients. Love this app!

Sara Breuer, of allrecipes, was our market shopper today, and she is a fan of figs,which are at the height of their season right now. We found these beautiful Mission figsand then searched allrecipes for something to make.Sara picked this Fresh Fig Cake, which looks pretty easy, and very delicious. Yum!

The new waste management system at the market includes these new trash, recycling and composting collection bins, here being shown off by Jeanne Kuntz, of the Mar Vista Green Committee, City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, Joseph Treves of the Farmer’s Market board, Elise Derby of Elise’s Ramblings, her daughter and her mother.

It’s kind of exciting, even though that might seem weird to say, because the market actually generates a lot of waste — and it’s always a problem of how to deal with it all. So this is a great first step solution towards a zero-waste situation, where the market wouldn’t generate more than it could take care of.

There will be a little learning curve, because both the compost and the trash bins are green, but I know we can figure it out, Mar Vista. Just read the signs carefully!

Note: photo of Jeanne Kuntz, Bill Rosendahl, Joseph Treves, Elise Derby and her daughter and Mother was taken by Sherri Akers, of the Mar Vista Green Committee, and used with permission.