Health & Fitness
This Week at Smart Markets Bristow Farmers' Market
Sunday 10:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Piney Branch Elementary School
8301 Linton Hall Rd.
Bristow, VA 20136
Map
What a great market we had last week. The farmers all did well, Cindy Santa Ana had a great time and spoke with many of you about healthy eating at home, and Mike Burner sold out of his Cornish hens and was pleased with the response to his beef.
This week Mike and Lauren at the Holly Brook Farm tent will have freshly processed lamb, including a wide variety of cuts and lamb sausage. And Lauren is hoping to have mastered the sour cherry jam I have been waiting for.
Nyall will be back with his Celtic pasties—great to have on hand in the freezer for lunch or a quick dinner with a side salad. They are tasty, hearty, and made with care by a jovial Welshman. Can’t get much more authentic than that. Celtic Pasties will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie, Mango Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Florentine, Colcannon, and Cheese & Onion.
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Our “above and beyond” organic farmer, Curt Shade, is finally picking some produce from his West Virginia farm. Check out his heirloom tomatoes and gorgeous little peppers. He also has plenty of soap this week from Cedar Ridge and has found us local honey, too.
Ignacio has melons this week, Luis has gorgeous heirloom tomatoes at ridiculously low prices, and Max Tyson is bringing white peaches and white nectarines for the first time. Ignacio also has sweet corn. Try some! It tastes so good raw that you will wonder how it could be any better. But of course it is when cooked just five minutes in boiling water, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and slathered with butter or one of our saucy corn sauces.
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Stop by for BBQ to go from Hal Thomas. We like his brisket and pulled pork, but you gotta try his chicken. He threw one of Mike Burner’s chickens on the smoker last Sunday for the vendors and market staff to sample, and it was wonderful even without sauce. It was moist and just smoky enough. Check out the recipes we have at the Smart Markets tent for smoked BBQ as an ingredient in a pasta dish and a salad recipe. They call for pulled pork but would work just as well with the chicken.
Heritage Kettle Korn will have a selection of iced tea drinks to whet your whistle while you walk the market, and Valley View Bakery will have French baguettes, hamburger buns, delicious croissants, and giant cookies. My granddaughter and I strongly recommend the small banana tea bread too. Her opinion is that it is the best she has ever eaten, and she is a true connoisseur of banana bread.
See you at the market!
From the Market MasterFor busy people—and isn’t everyone busy these days?—cooking more at home can be a challenge. I know because I am as busy as I have ever been in my life and I am still cooking dinner almost every night. What I have learned in more than 40 years in the kitchen is that making the time often means making the most of the time I have. And that takes organization and planning but not necessarily writing out menus in advance.
It’s much more fun to balance that precision with flexibility that gives you a little more opportunity for creativity. It’s nice to be organized but more fun to be able to take what you have on hand and do something interesting with it.
This week I started with eight ears of corn and, though I have not used all of it yet, I am going to share with you some of the meals that will feature the corn. The first night we hosted my granddaughter and enjoyed corn-on-the-cob with melted butter and lots of pepper as part of our all-local meal of burgers and homemade slaw. I had five ears of cooked corn left over.
The next night I got creative with a hearty side to our local pork chops, which were small and grilled to perfection by our in-house grillmeister. Looking in the fridge for inspiration, I sautéed chopped onion and green pepper with cubed yellow squash and the corn from two of the ears that I had cooked ahead. I also added brown Jasmati rice (grown in the U.S. and sold under the brand Rice Select).
Tomorrow night we will have quesadillas with a filling based on local ground beef, sautéed until brown with the remains of the previous mélange and the rice mixed in.
Later this week, I will make my very favorite Green Grocer Potato Salad and use the rest of the corn in it. I will probably serve this with grilled lemon chicken—the two recipes are so good together. It must be the lemon in both that carries the theme on the tongue.
I did not plan any of this in advance; I just knew that I would find some great ways to use the cooked corn. Cooking it all at once meant that it was ready to use and also that I had to boil a big pot of water only once for all those meals.
Being organized in the kitchen does takes time and experience to master, but thinking ahead is a little easier and over time will help you to relax and experiment in the kitchen. Then you can get organized and make better use of the time you have.
Photo by Sarah Sertic