Your earnest FoodiePilgrim adventurer is always haring off on one adventure or another, and never shows off his own delightful hometown. So yesterday I took a vacation day to explore Plymouth, home of the pilgrims.

I started the afternoon's peregrinations with lunch at KKatie's Burger Bar (that's spelled correctly). It was every bit as excellent as their Yelp! and TripAdvisor pages indicate, and it was particularly appropriate that the 95-degree day was part of their Tiki month.

From there I walked down to the Farmers' Market at Stevens Field, a seaside  park a very short walk from town hall and a 10-minute walk from downtown.

Plymouth has farmers' markets on Saturdays on the lawn of the old courthouse on Court Street just up Bradford Street from the waterfront, and two on Thursdays, a small one at Stevens Field and a larger one at Plimoth Plantation.

The Plymouth Farmers' Market sees an eclectic range of vendors. In addition to the local farmers, depending on the week we also see lobstermen, fishermen, and the guys from Island Creek Oysters.

We also see an assortment of chefs and prepared-food artisans, including To-Taste, which promises "An exquisite in-home dining experience". Of course Chef Brian was not preparing anything in my kitchen - he was selling half-pounds of hand-crafted compound butters made from clarified butter from a farm in western Massachusetts. I did not learn which farm that is, but we certainly may have visited it in our travels.  

Another star of the day was Yacht Club Sodas, a soft-drink manufacturer from Rhode Island since 1915 making a rebirth as a bottler of quality sodas sweetened with real cane sugar. They have all the cool flavors that can't compete with Coca-Coal and Pepsico marketing, like Sarsaparilla, Birch Beer, and Golden Cream Soda. I got a ginger beer to bring home for later consumption.

I bought a pint of the first blueberries of the season to bring home for dessert, but it was somewhat less than a pint that made it home...

Once I had all my Farmers' Market purchases in hand, I headed back to the downtown area. Downtown Plymouth is laid out rather like a ladder, with Court Street/Main Street on the inland side, and the cleverly named Water Street along the waterfront.

One of the rungs, Middle Street, is home to your thirsty Pilgrim's downtown office: up the spiral staircase at the back of the BBC Plymouth (the original British Beer Company tiny downtown Plymouth location) is a civilized oasis with old chairs and an old wooden table and a fireplace and a dartboard. It was nearly 100 degree Fahrenheit outside, so Mayflower Brewing's Summer Rye Ale was just the thing to restore a thirsty Pilgrim before heading home to whip up a dinner with my farmers' market loot!