The spring farmers' market season is here. On Wednesday, February 19, Urban Harvest's City Hall Farmers' Market returns, kicking off at 11 a.m. The market will include most of the vendors from the previous season, including Angela's Oven, Blackbird Foods, Melange Creperie and Sinfull Bakery, to name just a few.

Tyler Horne, market manager for the Saturday Eastside Street and Wednesday City Hall farmers' markets, says Simply Delicious will also return this season.

"They are one of our popular vendors," he says. "She does sort of like an inspired take on the traditional banh mi sandwich. Her name is Dawn Burrell. She is cool."

Horne is also excited to announce the return of a fan-favorite vendor, the Eatsie Boys, as well as an exciting demonstration with Underbelly's Chris Shepherd and Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing.

"When I begged him [Chris Shepherd] to do it, he was like, 'Okay, cool! I'll bring a Texans player,'" Horne says. "Yeah, it kind of just started as a conversation one Saturday morning. He is there [Eastside Farmers' Market] pretty much every Saturday when he's in town. It's pretty cool about Chris that with all this success at the restaurant, he still manages to drag himself out of bed on Saturday mornings and come to the market and support our vendors."

Cushing and his wife will join Shepherd on the steps of City Hall for a live cooking demonstration beginning at 11 a.m.

"He is a good friend and a good customer, and he is one of these guys who is like, 'I just want to cook,' and so we've been talking about him learning more and more about how to cook personally, and so it just seemed like it made sense," Shepherd says.

Shepherd and Cushing haven't yet officially decided on a dish to prepare for the demo, but Shepherd assures that it will be an easy one featuring what's in season at the markets.

"He [Cushing] comes in and he'll eat pretty much anything," Shepherd says. "I might do something with some beets and greens; there's a lot of kale out right now. I just want to see, you know, as far as a list of farmers that are going to be there on Wednesday, to kind of promote the market more and try to get as much product as we can from there so that people are able to purchase as well."

Shepherd frequents the Saturday Eastside Farmers' Market, and encourages more Houstonians to support local vendors and come out to the Wednesday City Hall Farmers' Market to gather produce for the remainder of the week.

"What happens during the middle of the week? Generally, people go Saturday -- they buy stuff for Saturday, Sunday, Monday. But you've got to get through the rest of the week," Shepherd says. "And you're already downtown. It doesn't take much to have a little with you to keep...just swinging by there and picking up stuff for that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday part of your week."

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