Most people simply view farmers markets as places to stock up on locally grown healthy food such as fruits and vegetables. Don’t get me wrong here, they’re great places to shop for stuff like that (if you’re into that sort of thing), but you can usually also find plenty of deliciously unhealthy foods at them as well. To give you some examples of what I’m talking about I took a trip down to the Wauwatosa Farmers Market on a recent Saturday morning.

My first stop was a crepe stand where for $3.50 I purchased a cinnamon and sugar crepe with powdered sugar sprinkled on top of it. Once I finished that off I headed to a tent where there was a family selling homemade egg rolls and crab rangoon. I decided to try both of these deep fried offerings and was glad I did because they tasted great.

Stop number three was at a tent that was selling various dip mixes. I sampled a few of them and ended up buying a mix to make a cheese and bacon dip. They were also selling honey ham sticks so I picked up seven of those as well. You know what goes great with ham sticks? Cheese curds, and that’s why my next stop was at the West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe tent where I purchased a bag of the white Cheddar variety.

After that I walked over to the Maxie’s Southern Comfort / Blue’s Egg tent and enjoyed some grits topped with tasso gravy and a fried egg. Since I started off my morning by eating something sweet I decided it was only appropriate to end it the same way, so I headed over to the Apple Holler tent and finished off my trip to the Wauwatosa Farmers Market with a cinnamon bun topped with tons of frosting.

So, there you have it folks. If you thought your local farmers market only sold fruits and vegetables you’re probably wrong, so stop down and check it out. If someone would just open a tent that sold beer the Wauwatosa Farmers Market could easily become my new favorite place to hang out on Saturday mornings.

How have I gone through life for this long without ever trying a Monte Cristo sandwich? I’ve heard of them before, but never really knew what one was until recently. From what I can gather the Monte Cristo differs based on where you get it, but the main premise is that it’s a ham and cheese sandwich (with turkey also added on occasion) that is dipped in egg batter and then fried.

I was at INdustri Café for lunch recently and noticed that they had a Monte Cristo sandwich on the menu so I decided to give it a try. Theirs differs a little bit from the traditional version and doesn’t have any ham on it at all, but is instead filled with hand-carved turkey, Swiss cheese and bacon (which is always a welcome addition in my book). Also, instead of dipping the entire sandwich in an egg batter and frying it they simply just use French toast for the bread.

As great as frying the whole sandwich sounds, substituting French Toast in the place of regular bread certainly sufficed. In fact, I kinda of wish restaurants would start offering French toast as an option when asking what kind of bread you’d like your sandwich on. Think about how great it would be if a waiter took your order and then asked “would you like that on white bread, wheat bread or French toast?”

I also tried their polenta-bacon griddle cakes on this visit, and those were pretty good as well. I actually didn’t have any idea what polenta even was prior to ordering them, but just seeing the words “bacon” and “griddle cakes” together on the menu was enough for me to decide that I wanted to try them.

I know it might be a surprise to some of you, but I don’t always spend my lunch breaks eating at places like McDonald’s and Burger King. There are even some times (although they’re few and far between) when I try to eat healthy by going to the salad bar at the Pick ‘n Save grocery store near my work.

Pick ‘n Save has two options at their salad bar; either you can pay $4.65 per pound and get your salad to go, or you can pay an extra $1.34 to stay there and eat all the delicious salad you want. Any time I’ve gotten a salad to go its always ended up costing me more than $5.99 anyway, so on my most recent visit I decided to go the all you can eat route.

For my first plate I made a salad with romaine lettuce, spinach, chicken, eggs and mushrooms and covered it in ranch dressing. After I finished that I decided to try a plate with two of their pre-made salads; tortellini vegetable salad and pasta salad. My third plate of salad was almost identical to my first except that with this plate I swapped out the mushrooms for some shredded Cheddar cheese. For plate number four I tried some cottage cheese and a couple more of their pre-made salads; a seven layer salad and some American pasta salad. Apparently the lack of ham is what makes the American pasta salad “American,” because aside from that it was almost identical top the regular pasta salad. I think they need to differentiate the two pasta salads a little more and maybe add some bacon to the American pasta salad. What’s more American than bacon right?

At this point I was pretty full, but decided to have one more plate of salad anyway. My fifth and final plate was piled high with romaine lettuce, spinach, ham and turkey chunks, feta cheese, chicken and eggs and was topped with ranch dressing. Come to think of it, with the amount of dressing I put on the salads that I made and the number of noodles I ate in Pick ‘n Save’s pre-made salads it probably would have ended up being healthier for me to just eat lunch at McDonald’s instead.