More than 120 food producers and crafters will be at at this weekend’s Best of Missouri Market at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Maplewood’s Great Harvest Bakery, Kakao Chocolate and Traveling Tea will be part of it.
Great Harvest owner Steve Jawor said 20,000 to 22,000 are expected. His bakery is baking 1,500 loaves of bread. “We started baking Thursday and will be done Saturday night—baked through the night, Thursday,” he said.
Jawor is bringing breads that can only be found at the bakery: Blueberry Maplewood walnut, Schlafly bacon cheddar beer bread, pumpkin chocolate chip, cinnamon chip, energy bread, Popeye bread, Dakota bread and honey wheat.
Owner of Traveling Tea, Kateri Meyer, said last year she used water from the spigot, and the tea didn’t taste as good, so this year they’re hauling in 35 gallons of triple filtered, reverse osmosis water (the water was previously referred to as spring water, and corrected). “The lengths we go to to make a really good cup of tea,” she said.
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She’ll have ginger citrus tea—her best selling, English breakfast and others.
Meyer also said she’s started making her pumpkin ginger spice tea. Last year she dried six pounds of pumpkin and sold it as fast as she could make it.
She’s taking pre-paid orders this year, and so far already has orders for a pound and a half. She said she’s trying to make more this year.
It’s Kakao Chocolate’s fourth year year at the market. Owner Brian Pelletier said they’re taking the usual: caramels, marshmallow pies, assortments of bark, and bacon brittle.
“It’s a really huge weekend for us,” Pelletier said. “We’ve been busy for a couple weeks getting ready.”
Best of Missouri runs Friday 6-9 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Thanks for the correction, Kateri.
Apologies, to clarify, not spring water, but triple filtered, reverse osmosis water.