This Week at Smart Markets Lorton Farmers' Market

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Annie sends her appreciation for your enthusiastic attention last week, and we will have some of her recipes for you this week at the Smart Markets tent.

We are also expecting Uncle Fred this week. He felt so bad about missing his debut last week that he sent me a picture of the broken axle on his truck. He just wanted to be sure I knew he was on his way. But, as we all know, good things come to those who wait—and he will bring you some good things this week.

We are looking to expand our little market for you next week; two new vendors will join us. But we will keep a lid on their identities until next week. I can tell you that both ladies are very popular at our other markets they have been attending.

This is Wicked Oak’s week to be with us, bringing chicken, eggs, pork cuts, and those great pork sausages, including the chorizo that Annie used last week.

Chester Hess will continue to have both yellow and white peaches and nectarines, and try the white varieties. On dulce de leche ice cream or with caramel sauce, they are fantastic. The yellow ones are better in these recipes, but the white varieties of peaches and nectarines bring a hint of vanilla that makes them a great partner with other flavors.

Fossil Rock is bringing early squashes and tomatoes, lots of each grown sustainably. Ignacio finally has melons and heritage tomatoes at very reasonable prices.

Oli’s mom came to sell last week. We hope to see more of Flor throughout the season. She brought us alfajores in addition to empanadas. They are great little cookies to serve with sliced peaches, white or yellow.

Let us know what you would like to see at the market—we are looking to round out the offerings. But we will look harder for what you want.

See you at the market!

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).