The Best of Missouri Market marks fall on the calendar. Held the first weekend of October for 20 years, the event with handcrafted, custom and eclectic — not to mention homegrown — items brings a bit of nostalgia, but sets off chimes that a new home-centered season has arrived.

For the first time, guests can indulge in the experience on "First Look Friday." The Kids Corner's unique area with cow milking, crafts, barnyard animals and pumpkin decorating again will be held both Saturday and Sunday at the Missouri Botanical Garden. A variegated array that includes pickles and flowers, baskets and bonnets, soaps and jewelry delight the crowds.

This year more than 120 Missouri food producers and artisans include 30 new vendors, including four proudly sharing their kitchen products to sample and buy.

For Jane Callahan — mixer, roller and baker of Pie Oh My! — delivering handmade pies to customers' doors extends the expertise shared by her mother.

"I grew up on a farm in Minnesota. My mother made pies. I learned to do it from her. It is a tactile experience and it's really very simple and interesting making a pie," she said. "Seeing how happy a pie makes people is delightful to me, too."

A year ago she started her unique gifting with old-fashioned apple and pecan pies, sometimes adding twists. For the market, she'll underline the fall harvest theme with apple pies topped with pastry or crumbs and a pecan-crumble variation, plus pumpkin and pecan pies. Her wee pies are like a dessert buffet.

Some people order pie personalized for a happy or thoughtful occasion.

"Pie is reminiscent of grandma," Callahan said. "Everybody had one, whether she made pies or not."

All-American pie will have its British counterpart with Queen's Cuisine in the food court. Jane Muscroft's home-cooked food has appeal from Europe to mid-America. She is "cranking up productivity" and on double duty this weekend. She has baked shortbread for the Scottish Games and Cultural Festival in Forest Park, while at the Best of Missouri Market she provides a generous cross-section of England in the food court.

Cornish pasties will be filled with potatoes, beef, onion and rutabaga in a flaky crust. Miners in the copper fields of northern England would hold the sturdy dough, then toss it aside, supposedly for the ghosts (knockers) there, but also avoiding invasive arsenic there. She will serve them warm with gravy. Early birds can plan on breakfast items under Muscroft's skilful touch. In deference to English royalty, she will offer chocolate cookie (biscuit) cake, Prince William's choice for the groom's cake at his wedding.

She moved to the United States in 2000, has shared her British cooking style in classes at Dierberg's Markets and the Missouri Botanical Garden and has served tea from the Oatman House in Collinsville, Ill., to The Garden in Missouri. She recently expanded her industry with kitchen space at St. Patrick's Center.

Andrew Freundlich pops up everywhere — weddings, corporate occasions, bar mitzvahs and backyards — with Poptions Popcorn. With more than 20 flavors rotating in the store at Lindbergh Boulevard and Clayton Road in Frontenac every day, his one-of-a-kind business is gearing up to make a unique Halloween blend.

"The most popular varieties include Bissinger's chocolate," he said. Flavors can be personalized.

With weather under outdoor tents at the Missouri Market unpredictable, he will bring durable varieties of his all-natural popcorn, like cheddar cheese.

Some of David Guempel's legacy as chef at Balaban's and Zinnia, his own restaurant, followed him into a new business. He will sample and serve one or two of his Scrumptious Foods at a time throughout the Market.

"Some were usually something that I made for myself and Christmas gifts. I have started a whole line of locally sourced jams and jellies, eggplant caponata, pesto from fresh basil that I grow and I have a great recipe that I adapted from an old Southern watermelon rind pickle one," he said. Last week he had a case of butternut squash to go with green apples for a soup among his vegetarian specialties.

Add to these the sauces he sells on his website, at Ladue Market and the Botanical Garden — including Chinese barbecue, plum ginger and Thai satay — and he will appeal to a wide variety of taste buds.

"A nice man in the Ozarks is now manufacturing the five (bottled) products I sell," Guempel said. He cooks other items in a local church kitchen. "I'm trying to have as much as possible."