By Sherri Smith Brown

Lucille Miller shows Brianna a berry scented bath fizzie that dissolves instantly in the bathtub. Lucille makes the fizzies, or bombs, with oils and natural materials. Fizzies come in two different sizes in a number of scents, including peppermint, lime, rose, berry, and lemonade, which was very popular on this particular day. You can email Lucille about her homemade products at lvus@aol.com.

Most every time I visit my son in California, we head to the Hollywood or Studio City Sunday farmer’s markets, but I had never made it just 20 minutes down the road to the City of Newnan’s Market Day on the Square until this past weekend. The first Saturday of every month, this market features handmade, homemade and homegrown items from vendors all over the state, but many are local. Brianna and I took an initial turn around the town square, checking everything out first. Once we decided where we were going to spend our money, we went around again. This was the first market day of the season and a little early for produce from local farmers, but we found a lot of local area vendors selling their homemade products. (more…)

By Sherri Smith Brown

Exploring rows and rows of produce and other food products at the Dekalb Farmer’s Market can be a fun time for kids. It’s a colorful and busy place with an ethnicity that is interesting and exciting for everyone.

I think the best way for children to learn where their food comes from is a trip to the farm—but if you want to visit a fun and colorful place in the Atlanta area where they can see mounds of fruits and vegetables from all over the world and gaze at every type of fish and seafood imaginable, try the Dekalb Farmer’s Market.

It’s hectic with stockers maneuvering tall rolling shelves filled with produce to load rows and rows of bins with exotic and ethnic fruit and vegetables: eggplant, garlic, beans, peas, mushrooms, tomatoes, plantains, 25lb. bags of carrots, melons, mangoes, blueberries, oranges from Chili and Australia—all brought in several times a week direct from producers.

Kids might not be so interested in the imported cheeses, spices, nuts, sauces, the more than 30 varieties of coffee beans, the olive oils, vinegars, beers and wines—but the octopus and the squid tentacles, tubes and rings will definitely catch their eye. They can also check out fresh conch, crawfish, sardines, smelt, oysters, muscles, shark and marlin, as well as whole red snapper, bass grouper and catfish. There are tanks of live tilapia, Maine lobster and blue crab. Brianna was particularly curious to watch shoppers lift the live crab from the water with prongs. (more…)