This Week at Smart Markets Manassas Park Farmers' Market

We have lost one of our farmers, but Victor Izaguirre at Crazy Farm and Max Tyson will both step up and bring more vegetables so that you will have a bountiful selection of tomatoes and other summer fruits and veggies. If you are thinking about canning or making a big batch of tomato sauce, check out the prices on the heirloom tomatoes, then taste and compare to the $4.99/lb. heirlooms in the grocery store.

The regular tomatoes are great for canning, and ask about the seconds that are sorted out during the market. But the heirlooms are the best for making your own tomato sauce, which you can preserve by canning or freezing. What better way to preserve the flavors of summer to enjoy all winter long? Other than making and freezing pesto.

This week, Jonita Green of Three Peas in a Pod Cupcakery will not be with us. She will rotate every other week, at least until school starts. Shoppers must have been planning ahead last week, as she told me she sold out of everything for the first time. She is only out of sight every other week but is still able to bake for you if need a special order for a party. Hopefully you will keep her in mind.

If the weather holds and stays as beautiful as it has been lately, it will be a lovely evening to dine al fresco at the market. We’re all wondering what Chef Lauren has up her sleeve this week. Her “weekly special burgers” have brought rave reviews.

Celeste is on vacation this week, but Cameron will be on hand to sample and sell wines from Loudoun Valley Vineyards. The sourdough bread and cinnamon buns at Becky’s Pastries are “best in market”—any market. This is a mom-pop-and-daughter venture with all three baking their specialties in their home kitchen.

Pick up punch for the weekend or a popsicle for the ride home, and don’t forget some of that fabulous soap for your skin. Select some sausage at Wicked Oak or some steaks at Angelic Beef; choose some dressing for that tomato salad and grab a bag of popcorn on the way out. You’re all set for a great weekend of eating and drinking the best in local fare in your own home.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

The June issue of Smithsonian magazine featured a number of good articles about food and our appreciation of it. One article in particular reviewed the recent scientific study of how cooked food has helped the human brain develop and how it can aid our good health and good sense today.

Our bodies get much more out of the calories in cooked food than in raw food. A raw-food diet, which of course is also going to be a vegan diet, will contribute to weight loss but will also contribute to the loss of essential nutrients that our body needs to remain healthy over a long life. (Raw fruit is healthy, however, because it evolved to feed animals.) There seems to be a correlation between the discovery of fire, its use to cook food, the subsequent transition to meat-eating, and the growth of the brain as humans evolved. As Adler concludes, “The great apes spent four to seven hours a day just chewing, not an activity that prioritizes the intellect.”

There was also an interesting article about how we develop likes and dislikes for foods. And there’s a discussion between Ruth Reichl and Michael Pollan. Reichl recalled her decision as the last editor of Gourmet magazine to run a story about tomato farming in Florida. It caused tremendous angst among editorial staffers but also led to changes in Florida law that had permitted virtual slavery in the tomato fields.

We need to see more of that kind of journalism, and more of Pollan and others, online and disseminated via social media. How else will our young people catch on to the “food revolution?” Jamie Oliver makes good use of technology, but we are going to need more apostles and more of them using social media. One great article will not make a ripple without more stones being thrown into the water by lots of us standing on shore.

Photo by Sarah Sertic