This Week at Smart Markets Oakton Farmers' Market

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Our newest vendor, Plush Gelato, is a big hit. Their gelato and sorbet are equally delicious. We’ve tried most of their flavors here at our house or at their previous location in Vienna, and I encourage you to give it a try. Do you know that gelato has fewer calories and less fat than ice cream? And that the sorbet has no fat and considerably less calories than both? And there are more than 37,000 gelato shops in Italy and just 1,200 here in the U.S. Boy are we lucky to have one at the market!

Our other new vendor, Janie Hakim of Sweet Nuna, has also been pleased with your response and support. She brings more each week and still sells it all! She has every intention of expanding her repertoire but is already baking more baklava than she ever expected. She will bring something new soon.

Tyson Farms will bring white peaches and nectarines this week, and Ignacio will bring more melons, including watermelon, this week. Ignacio and Heritage Farm are bringing sweet corn. Heritage Farm should still be picking both bicolor and white corn, and Ignacio has a super-sweet white variety. And tomatoes are showing up everywhere!

Fabbioli Cellars will be with us this week. Stock up on your favorites now, as Celeste will be on vacation until mid-August. However, we will have a new wine vendor, Catoctin Creek Winery, who will begin what will be a biweekly rotation with Fabbioli beginning July 27.

Celtic Pasties will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie, Mango Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Chicken Florentine, Colcannon, and Cheese & Onion. Jonita of Three Peas in a Pod Cupcakery has come up with new additions to her growing selection of really good desserts. Remember that she always has cake pops for kids of all ages and that she is happy to accept preorders for your next big party.

Our wonderful volunteer Carol Buckingham, who has been working with me at markets since even before Smart Markets was born, will be managing the market for me this week. If you have questions, feel free to ask and to let her know how much we appreciate her help while we try to replace Diane.

Guess I won’t be seeing you at the market this week! Have fun without me!

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