Preorder Now from the Smart Markets Farmers Market for Playoff Sunday

This Week at our Bristow Market
Sunday 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Piney Branch Elementary School
8301 Linton Hall Rd.
Bristow, VA 20136
Map

Order now for your game day tailgating at the game or at home! You can preorder from Uncle Fred’s BBQ and Cakes by Shelby and pick up your order at the market on Sunday. There is still time!

Check out Uncle Fred’s menu and his special Playoff Offering: a slab of spare ribs, a meat container a large side for $35. And Shelby will bake you cupcakes or a Skins helmet cake, or you can pre-order Game Day Cake Pops. To preorder from her, call 571-261-3803.

We will also have apples and local veggies at Tyson’s and a complete supply of Angelic Beef should you be planning to cook up some chili. Check out two of our favorite easy recipes, one for the meat-lovers and one for the vegetarians.

From the Market Master

Dear Shopper,

Happy New Year! I hope that you are off to a good start and that you are considering making a pledge to spend at least $10 a week all year long on local food. A show of support for our farmers this winter will help us and many other local and national organizations to encourage more of our farmers to extend their growing seasons by erecting hoop houses and greenhouses and arranging to heat the ones they have to meet a growing demand for year-round markets.

Unfortunately, the latest budget compromise does not fund many programs that help small farmers and support the growth of farmers’ markets across the country. (Read this analysis from the Farmers Market Coalition.) Meanwhile, the compromise continues subsidies for large, commercial, unhealthy farms. Which means that farmers who sell at farmers’ markets are left to fend for themselves and will depend even more on their customers to help them meet environmental challenges and use the latest techniques and technologies for sustainable farming.

We can do this! If we can, we will also help our own local economies, because the money you spend on local food stays here and is spent on local business improvements and family needs. That weekly $10 expenditure recirculates and multiplies, and we all benefit from that boost to the local economy.

Another benefit of shopping at a market is the sense of community fostered by people of all persuasions and heritages shopping together and sharing their love of healthy ingredients and their expertise at cooking with them.

One of our customers, Cheryl Cox, developed and shared with us a great recipe for a Sweet Potato and Apple Bake. Almost all of the ingredients were available at the market at the time Cheryl invented the recipe, and she also incorporated the chai-spice mix sold by Deepa Patke, our Aromatic Spice Blends vendor at our Oakton market.

Almost immediately upon seeing the recipe that we were handing out in the stand next to his, Nyall Meredith of Celtic Pasties decided to take the recipe and adapt it as a filling for a vegetarian pastie. Nyall unveiled the new pastie at the market a few weeks ago, and we surprised Cheryl, our shopper and recipe-developer extraordinaire. It was a great example of that spirit of the market that we encourage and extoll at every opportunity.

So come join us this year and start now -- there’s no need to wait for tomatoes and fresh corn. We have flavors right now that are worth pursuing, enhancing, and enjoying at your dinner table. And you live near enough to the market to take advantage of them.