This Week at Smart Markets Reston Farmers' Market

No music and no cooking this week—just great produce, meats, and dairy at really good prices, and some of the best home cooks and small food-business entrepreneurs around.

Chef on Wheels was sorry to miss the market last week. He was late getting back to his kitchen after his lunch gig and had sold out of many things at lunch (for the first time), so he could not regroup in time. He wants to participate in our market and wants to be a reliable vendor, so he is going to try again this week. Word from the vendors is that the fish tacos are great!

Heritage Farm has a new yogurt smoothie flavor, Strawberry Mint, and they have plenty of those wonderful country eggs at the check-out area. Also in their freezer this week will be lamb and pork cuts, and I do hope you have tried the fresh chicken. It is processed on Tuesday and not frozen so you can take it home and prepare it right after market.

Look for the small “All Natural” stickers that Nevin is placing on his berries and some other products that are chemical-free at HF&K It is hard to get them to proclaim anything, but he is using the stickers. Just have your magnifying glass handy.

Here is Annie’s recipe for the polenta with chicken thighs from last week. We’ll also have copies at the Smart Markets table.

Shenandoah Seasonal and Shade Farm will begin to bring more vegetables over the next few weeks, all grown sustainably with no chemicals of any kind used on them. They may not be as pretty as other produce, but they are free of pesticides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizer. The chickens that lay the eggs at Shenandoah Seasonal are fed no soy-based or GMO-containing feed.

Celtic Pasties will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie Style, Mango Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Alfredo, Spinach & Feta, Colcannon, and Cheese & Onion.

As the menus and weekly specials come in from vendors, we will post them on our Facebook page.

Thanks for coming out last week in the heat. The vendors are so happy with our new space and the additional traffic we can accommodate. If you park on the other side of the pond, you can walk in past the Taste of Local truck. There is no need to walk all the way around the lower end. We did have some ONE WAY signs made to help the traffic flow. The entrance is really just that, and you should drive up the hill and around to leave the premises. Though at this location, no one is fussing about it. They deal with the confusion all week long.

See you at the market!

Jean

From the Market Master

What a week we all experienced last week; the heat at the markets was as bad as most of us can remember. This week we are all looking forward to a little break and some rain for the farmers.

It doesn’t take many days of mid-90s temperatures to cause some withering in the fields. We are lucky at our Reston market to have farmers coming from the north, south, and west, as the weather in all those places can be very different on the same day. When it was raining here every day for two weeks, Tyson Farms in West Virginia and our sustainable farmers west of us in Virginia were not getting nearly so much rain. At the same time, Ignacio was losing newly planted crops to heavy rains that washed the seedlings away.

One thunderstorm with just two minutes of hail can wipe out a crop; tree fruits are especially vulnerable. But a week like last week can burn up a field in no time. We look at the weather as a matter of convenience; our farmers depend on it for their livelihoods. While we may lose a day at the pool, they could lose thousands of dollars and lots of invested time and labor. It’s important to think about what they go through to bring food to our tables.

For now they are all bringing their best and brightest crops to market, and the market really is abundant with the bounty of the good earth. We enjoyed the tomatoes, corn, and squash all weekend at my house, and I have a recipe for you today for Summer Bread Salad that is simple, fast, and really does taste like summer. Feel free to add and subtract as you wish—take out the beans, add corn. Use whatever herbs you have on hand and whatever tomatoes you picked out this week. Work color into the mix with a variety of tomatoes and peppers. Have your way with this recipe, and it will still reward your efforts.

Which reminds me of a couple more tips. I keep seeing a suggestion for cutting the kernels off an ear of raw corn that involves putting the ear of corn into a bowl and slicing straight into the bowl. That’s a pain in the neck! If the idea is to reduce the number of kernels that go flying off the counter and across the floor, then the easiest thing to do is cut the ear in half, which can be done with a sharp knife pushed into an ear that is lying on your cutting board. Wiggle the knife back and forth until you can just break the ear in half. Watch this video to see what I mean. A farmer taught me that, and I have used the technique ever since. You do not really have to cut all the way through the ear, which can be tricky.

Another technique tip for you: When you are using just-picked tomatoes from the market or your garden, they will peel very easily; the skins will almost slide off once you start on a section. Even if you are peeling as many as 10 tomatoes, hand-peeling them with a sharp paring knife is still faster than boiling a pot of water and dropping the tomatoes in for a minute and then “slipping off the skins.” This works as long as the tomatoes are fresh from the vine (a nearby vine, not one in California).