This Week at the Smart Markets Oakton Farmers' Market

This Week at our Oakton Market
Saturday 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Hosted by Unity of Fairfax Church
2854 Hunter Mill Rd.
Oakton, VA 22124
Map

Our demo chef Annie Sidley is back, and does she have a great menu for you this week! She will begin prepping by 10:30 a.m., and you can learn a lot watching her chop those fruits and veggies. She will also introduce her summer sous chef, Louisa Janssen, who may be related to the author of this newsletter update. The menu will feature:

• Grilled Polenta topped w/ chicken & served w/ summer fruit salsa
• Sautéed squash salad w/ tomatoes & cucumbers
• Plush Gelato w/ fruit & honey

We will also have a full house of vendors. Janie Hakim will bring more baklava this week, and Plush Gelato will be back with more luscious gelato and coffee drinks for the grown-ups and fresh-squeezed lemonade and orange juice for the kids.

Whim Pops will be back. Maria is on a month-long business trip and her staff is rotating between our two Saturday markets until her return. She sent Blackberry Coconut pops to our Lorton market this week. Boy were they tasty!

Nyall of Celtic Pasties returns! He is moving to his new house this weekend but didn’t want to miss his customers again; he really does offer a superior product and a wonderfully friendly face in the market. He will have Beef & Guinness, Cottage Pie Style, Mango Chicken, Chicken Tikka Masala, Colcannon, and Cheese & Onion.

We welcome still another new BBQ vendor this week. Hal Thomas has been doing several of our markets and is in the process of buying an old BBQ restaurant in Manassas. He is also adopting the new restaurant’s name, which is Absolute BBQ, but his signage hasn’t caught up with him yet. He will be in the BBQ spot so you can’t miss him. He has lots of work to do to bring the restaurant up to his standards, so we are grateful for his commitment to our markets during this busy time.

Fat and Happy BBQ’s Ian Rodriguez is going to take some time to regroup and rethink his business model since severing ties with his partner. We hope to see him working with us again by fall or next season.

We are lucky to have Trickling Springs dairy products at our market. Pick up a brochure or visit their website to learn more about why their milk products are so much better for you than most any milk products available at any grocery store. Their milk is still milk when it is bottled; it has not been “purified” by the elimination of all the good as well as the bad bacteria. It has not been submitted to a high-powered homogenization process that forces the milk through such a fine sieve that it alters its molecular composition. It is still milk made as safe as possible but kept as healthy as possible at the same time. Look for the their yogurt, butter, and cheeses under the Heritage Farm and Kitchen tent. The milk and ice cream are stored in the freezers in the wooden cart down at the end.

I also wanted to mention Doug Linton’s meats — I worry that he gets lost in the activity surrounding our wonderful food truck, Taste of Local. If you are not buying from him now, stop by and talk to him about his unique herd of Italian Piedmontese cattle and why they are so naturally low in fat and cholesterol. We recently had a group of students from Madison High who were looking for the most local item in the market, and after questioning all the vendors, they decided that the beef was it. Because Doug breeds the cattle himself, the cattle are bred, born, fed, and processed locally. The kids were duly impressed with that pedigree. Start out with just a pound of burger meat, try it out on your own grill, and join the crowd of the converted. It’s only getting bigger.

Ignacio has melons this week, lovely cantaloupes and honeydews. Max Sr. of Tyson Farms will return with veggies from his garden and is looking forward to seeing everyone.

See you at the market!