Our Visit to the Company Shops Market!

Sunday after church we paid our first visit to the Company Shops Market! Seeing the dream come to life was awesome. It's a beautiful facility, and has an tremendous variety of local produce and organic products that just haven't been conveniently available in this area. The shopping savvy moms in our group were impressed that the prices were 'normal' - not the higher prices they are used to paying for organic produce. There was a lot of variety, which you don't always find at farmer's markets. There were of international products, too. And they have wonderful sushi. We were thrilled to see how many Organic Valley products they carry - sour cream, cottage cheese, cream cheese, lots of cheeses (including Parmesan). They also have OV eggs and butter - which you can't get anywhere else in this area. They are going to have the Organic Valley creamers, soon. We're looking forward to the hazelnut and vanilla flavors. Stoneyfield products were also well represented - including their new unbelievable ice cream!! We need to go back and see if they had Organic Prairie meats. We forgot to look, but that gives us our next excuse to pay a visit. The biggest rave of the day came from the fact that they have Organic Valley Milk in gallons! This is local milk - it comes from six farms in the area - including us! We were too late to sample the brunch menu, but the lunch buffet was delicious! Our group probably tried almost everything - and there was a lot of sharing going on. The salmon/endives got special thumbs up, as did the Moroccan chicken. The stuffed grape leaves and olives also won approval - and that's high praise since we had some Lebanese cooks eating with us. We almost fought over the cream cheese brownie...