This Week at Smart Markets Lorton Farmers' Market

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Our demo chef Annie is back and really looking forward to this week’s class after her enthusiastic welcome back last month. She is still working out a menu because we may not have electricity at her tent, and she would like to make some items that require no cooking. We will post an update on our Facebook page.

Olio2Go will also be with us again with oils and vinegars to complement Annie’s recipes. Good oils and vinegars are essentials in the well-stocked summer pantry.

This week’s big news is that Uncle Fred will return this week as the result of something called “popular demand.” We are happy to have him back, and we hope and expect that he will join us every week. My own family is waiting impatiently for his baby back ribs to show up on the table.

Fossil Rock will have sweet corn this week, which sold out early every week at our Reston market last year. Ignacio will have more of those tasty melons including watermelon. Chester will bring more peach and nectarine varieties as we move through the season, and there are still berries of various kinds throughout the market.

Celtic Pasties will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie, Mango Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Florentine, Colcannon, and Cheese & Onion. Kylie has developed a new cake pop that sounds great. I love her Dreamsicle pops, but this one takes the idea one step further by making a chocolate-orange cake pop. Chocolate with orange is a historic combination of flavors from Mediterranean and French cuisine.

We had a busy market last week and want to thank everyone who came out. We look forward to another good crowd this week, and all of our vendors are planning to bring plenty of product to make it through the market with a good selection for even the late-arriving customers. These small vendors walk a fine line each week as they attempt to anticipate the growth of a market, but we have seen a steady increase in demand over the last few weeks, and everyone will be bumping up supply.

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