Vancouver, WA

Esther Short Park is 155 years old and over the decades has served as the town square, hosted a wading pool and skating rink and has come to be considered Vancouver’s centerpiece, its hub of community, culture and history. The park is host to the open air Vancouver Farmer’s Market on the weekends and is bordered by a variety of shops, cafes, and boutiques. It is a great place to ensure a Saturday afternoon is well spent. It is also a great place to get some errands done without feeling like you’re running errands.My particular errand this weekend was to pick up some starter plant for my garden. Spring got off to a late start and I’m anxious about the seeds I planted (perhaps a bit prematurely). In case of disappointment in this year’s modest crop of tomatoes, lettuce and kale I wanted to invest in some plants already well on their way to maturity. My parents and I decided to patronize the farmer’s market in hope that others had better luck with this year’s plant cultivation.

To my relief the market boasted numerous stalls stuffed with starters of lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, kale, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. After grubbing around a bit I picked out a two year starter raspberry bush and a few tomato, cilantro and pepper plants. If my seedlings fail I will at least have homegrown raspberries and salsa.

Once I was laden with plants I remembered the other reason to visit a farmer’s market: to eat all kinds of food you would never eat under any other circumstances. Namely corn dogs and doughnuts. But first a cup of locally roasted coffee. The coffee turned out to be the best value of the day at a $1 a cup. The food stalls progressed in the perfect sequence: next came the doughnut stand where the doughnuts are cooked to perfection as you order and then dusted with powdered sugar or cinnamon and sugar as you wait. And on for a strong finish to my weekend’s food tour de forc: the corn dog stand. Freshly battered and fried with plain old mustard and ketchup. I packed my afternoon snack off to the green, green grass in the middle of the park and sat enjoying every bite. I love running errands.

Now that I had taken care of the real work it was time for another coffee break. Among the shops and store fronts that border the park sits the proverbial Starbucks. This particular Starbucks provides a Scrabble board and letter tiles which makes it a worthy stop on a Saturday afternoon. I play a sort of hybrid Scrabble game requiring only letter tiles, a very basic vocabulary and two or more players with a competitive edge.

To play: pile the tiles face down in the center of the table and draw seven. On “go” everyone flips the tiles face up and must arrange them into interconnected words, like a crossword puzzle or traditional Scrabble format. The first person to accomplish this yells (or simply says) “take four” and everyone, regardless of the status of their own words, must take four additional tiles and incorporate them into their every growing word branches. It’s a race so the first person to use all of their tiles wins. It’s a good idea to go over everyone’s words as mistakes are common due to the fast-paced nature of the game. To keep score simply add up the number values of any letters not used in the words, low score wins.