This Week at Smart Markets Reston Farmers' Market

We promised you Annie, and we will deliver this week. She and her sous-chef Louisa Janssen will cook the following menu, and with Annie’s running commentary, you will learn as much as you would in a $50 class at Sur La Table. For free! You will be able to sample all of her recipes, and everything you need to make the menu will be available at the market, as will the recipes.

• Grilled polenta topped with chicken & served with summer fruit salsa
• Sautéed squash salad with tomatoes & cucumbers
• Trickling Springs Lemon Chiffon ice cream with fruit & honey

Annie will begin to prep around 3:30 p.m. and will be in full swing by 4 p.m. Bring a lawn chair, sit in the shade, and learn something new.

Baron Faust of Fossil Rock will bring the first of the great corn they brought last year—they sold out every week. And they are finally picking the lovely squash, peppers, and other produce grown in the Shenandoah Valley. Baron has also come up with “Salsa in a Box”—everything you need to make your own salsa at home. It was such a good idea that I gave him permission to include a lime to save you some time and trouble.

Celtic Pasties will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie, Mango Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Florentine, Colcannon, and Cheese & Onion.

Juice of Life Smoothies was sorry to have to bow out last week. We lost our electrical outlet and had to choose our Extension Agent and her canning demo over Lizette. But she will be back this week, and she is working on an idea to include Whim Pops in her smoothies. She is always looking to support our other vendors and use her creativity to develop new ways of making deceptively healthy smoothies for the kids.

Ignacio will add watermelon to the “melon section,” and we will have some new recipes using melons in salads, desserts, summer coolers, and cocktails.

Look for our new vendors this week. Postmodern Foods and Sweet Nuna are having a wonderful time and great success so far at the market. Come ready to be amazed at the color and aromas of the summer market.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

For 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