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This time of year is always a mixed blessing for the farmers’ markets that are open all year long. On the downside, we are losing product and can only hope to have some winter vegetables each week — and we usually do. And we find ourselves competing each week of December with the hundreds of craft shows that dot the landscape like inflatables vying for attention throughout our communities. The upside is that we have a group of vendors who are working very hard to meet your needs and cater to your desires with specials, sales and new items designed to serve our regular customers and hopefully attract new customers too.

Our home bakers have developed party and gift items that combine great cooking skills with home-based creativity. They are adapting their art to the demands of the season — everything from offering mini-Celtic Pasties to filling gift boxes of cookies from around the world. They are bringing meat cuts for those celebratory meals and marking down those comfort-food cuts. And they are bringing items that look more like the season too — even the applesauce has a pretty bow on the jar!

These guys will be standing out in the cold every week this winter for you, and they will have these same items all winter for you. They will continue to farm and cook through snow and sleet and sub-freezing temperatures for you. So I am hoping that in this season where we express our gratitude to our own friends and neighbors who work for us and with us, you will not forget the little house with the welcoming wreath on the door all year long. These guys are working hard for your attention, and your holiday dollar of course. And whatever you spend at a market will stay right here in the U.S.A., mostly in this state, and in some cases in your own neighborhood.

I have been fascinated by the ABC “Made in America” Series which is focusing now on what we can buy that is made in this country for the holidays. The challenge to viewers is to spend a certain amount of money this Christmas on something made in this country, and through an economic formula called the “multiplication factor,” those purchases will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. I found myself actually paying attention to where things are made and trying to do my part. And then I remembered that I buy Made in the USA items every week at the farmers’ market. And so do many of you. I’d love to know how many jobs we have created this year already.

So keep up the good work or begin a new tradition this year — your locally grown vendors are always happy to be here for you.

See you at the market!

Dear Reader,

In spite of many market closings around the area, you still have local shopping opportunities available to you all winter long. We have three year-round markets in Oakton and Gainesville and at Fairfax Corner. And the City of Falls Church sponsors a year-round market also. You can check the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s listings for a full list of markets in your area.

In this area farmers can pick and store many winter vegetables and fall apples throughout the winter, and many of them have also ventured into what we call “value-added products” in the biz, which include pickles and relishes, applesauce and apple and other fruit butters, and even baked goods to extend their seasons and improve their cash flow.

These hearty souls come all winter in just about all weather conditions to bring you their personally grown or produced products. They know it is more convenient for you to buy everything in a nice warm store, but I urge you to consider that it would be even more convenient for them not to have to drive miles and miles to stand out in the cold to make a living. I believe that if we want them to be there with the tomatoes and peaches in the summer, we need also to recognize that they need us in the winter to get them through to the next planting season.

Over the coming cold winter months, when it is difficult to imagine that in this part of the country we can actually eat local when snow is on the ground and frost is on the windowpane, I am going to try to excite and engage your kitchen creativity by reminding you of just how easy it is. And, not coincidentally, to remind you to get out there in the cold and support your farmers and food purveyors who are standing in 10-degree weather to serve you.

Saturday night at my home, I managed to throw together a lovely local meal without really trying; in fact, two hours before we ate, I had no idea how to answer the daily inquiry, “What’s for dinner?” And boy, does it make certain people in my household nervous when I do not know the answer to that question!

I knew what I had on hand — some of which I had bought just that morning at our Oakton market, some of which I had bought days or even weeks before. I had two lovely local pork chops thawing in the refrigerator, and I had quite a variety of local produce available, too. I had freshly shelled red kidney beans from our Mennonite co-op, Heritage Farm and Kitchen, and local onions and carrots.

I had store-bought fennel, which I always have in the refrigerator and which I still have not convinced any of our farmers to grow for us, but I refuse to give up. And I had canned tomatoes — which were my favorite Cento brand, but I could have bought fresh tomatoes that morning and used them if I had been planning ahead.

So I went to work. I ended up making red beans and rice very much like this recipe, but this is a dish that may very well be different in construction and taste every time you make it — and that’s fine with me and my family. My husband grilled the two pork chops, and we sliced them thinly in order to serve the pork as an accompaniment to the beans and rice to all four of us at the table.

I did also use a non-local product that I have recently discovered that gave the “rice” part of the recipe an extra nutritional boost and I am happy to recommend it to you: Rice Select Whole Grain Royal Blend Texmati brown rice and wild rice with wheat and rye berries. This great product is certainly pricier than white or even plain brown rice, but it goes further because it is more complex and filling. And if you cook more than you need for one meal, it keeps long enough to end up as part of a quick stir-fry later in the week.

For dessert we had a heritage recipe apple cake made by Marty Fetters, wife of Dave Fetters, who brings fruit and fruit products to both our Oakton and Gainesville winter markets. I used just one huge slice for four of us and two small cups of Trickling Springs ice cream divided four ways to serve with it, and we were all feelin’ fat and happy after that.

The really great ending here is that I still have lots of good local meat and produce for tomorrow night — and you can be so lucky too.

See you at the market!

Those of you who have been reading these newsletters for several years now know that I am an inveterate clipper of newspaper and magazine articles, which I eventually use to inform my writing or to give or send to others who might be interested in them. In order to make room for new files, I have been clearing out old ones, and this past weekend I went through a box of clippings from the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Boy is it amazing to see what was on our minds 10 years ago — especially since they were most often the same things that are on our minds now. The concerns seem to be the same; only the science has propelled the discussion in interesting directions, often leaving us only slightly ahead of where we were.

One article of interest that was not dated but quoted from a study done in 1999 was printed in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Cafeteria Food Fight.” It reported that school districts were moving toward hosting fast-food vendors and bringing vending machines into their school cafeterias because of the money it brought in.

A companion article titled “Schools Teach Kids to Give Peas a Chance” focused on programs that were teaching cooking and nutrition in school to help students learn on their own how to eat healthier.

It advised that “Making lunch part of the schools’ educational mission, instead of an ancillary service, could help remove the economic pressures that drive lunch programs to serve pizza and french fries.” In East Harlem, students were even visiting local farms, and the parents were given half-shares in CSAs for their volunteer time with a program called Cook Shop.

Then there was the article from Modern Maturity, November 1996, about two “recent” scientific discoveries that linked nutrition and overall health. “One is that many chronic degenerative diseases are largely caused or influenced by free radicals that are produced by tobacco smoke and other pollutants, as well as by normal body processes. The other factor giving nutrition a boost is that scientists now better understand how DNA becomes damaged and subsequently creates cancer cells.”

The study posited that “nutritional deficiencies are to blame for much of the damage.” The article then ends with recommendations for healthier eating — all of which except one are supported by more modern research.

We certainly have moved away from fast food in our school cafeterias but have not made many inroads when it comes to education about nutrition in the classroom. It seems to have taken way too long in the face of incredibly increasing childhood obesity statistics to introduce nutrition into the classroom.

Just think of the money we would have saved already in 10 years on health care if we had worked harder then ever to stabilize the rate. Instead, in 2208, 18 percent of children ages six to 11 were overweight, up from 13 percent in 1999. And while the science is now instructing us to get our nutrition from food rather than supplements, we are less healthy than we were when that Modern Maturity article was written.

How hard can it be to change the lunches served in our cafeterias? And how expensive can it be to introduce some basic instruction in nutrition and eating healthy at home into our classroom curricula? Whatever the cost in your time and mine — and in our tax money — would surely be worth every dime. And what an investment it would be in the collective personal and public health of our population.

My mother always said that we live and learn — I’m beginning to wonder about that. Let me know what you think.

Photo by NS Newsflash

Dear Shopper,

Here is a short video interview with Virginia’s own Joel Salatin, who has come out with a book that all of you who are interested in knowing more about why we should be buying local and what we can do to maximize and optimize our options for doing so should read. Michael Pollan’s books are great as motivational education, but I think this book will reach us at a different level, because we know Salatin has lived what he believes and that he has done much for other farmers in southwest Virginia along the way. It’s always invigorating to learn from someone who is actually sharing what he has learned on the field of play — or in the fields of work, as the case may be.

Joel is pleasantly strident because he knows how far removed we are from growing real food and getting it to our tables in good time and with little processing. And I hope his indignant and incredulous wonder at what we have wrought is contagious.

Here in our own little community there is activity on all levels promoting local producers and improving our opportunities for buying local. There are efforts to educate us about how to eat healthy all of our lives to minimize so many of the chronic illnesses that are now afflicting our children, no longer waiting for middle or old age to catch up with us.

I would like to see more attention paid to these subjects in our schools as part of the larger curriculum, not just the one semester of health that children get in elementary or middle school. This is an issue of lifestyle that has major ramifications for our economy and our health system, and who would argue that these are not issues to be discussed in school if not at home? And most important of all, there are facts out there that can inform the personal issue of eating for health.

I am never tempted to throw anything at the TV, but even the Orioles’ long and easily repaired history of losing does not upset me as do the news stories and ads provided by the drug companies that encourage us to ingest supplements to overcome deficiencies in our diets. If our bodies are not getting the nutrients we need to live long and healthy lives, then we need to eat the foods that will correct that — not eat like idiots and then make up for it with expensive pills. I haven’t quoted my girlfriend’s mom lately, but it never hurts to remember her saying that “food is cheaper than medicine” when even the most expensive apples, collards, good-quality meat or free-range eggs will never cost as much as the supplements and medicines we will need later on in life if we eat junk or poison ourselves slowly with the toxins in much of the food we buy and eat now.

So listen to Joel and get excited about doing something, and then get in touch with me. I will be happy to refer you to one or more of the groups working on these issues in our area. I also look forward to greeting the droves who come to the market this week.

See you at the market!

Jean

Dear Shopper,

Every now and then I like to throw out a thought for your consideration. These thoughts are usually triggered by something I have read. In this case it is two articles that were in the paper just in the last few days.

First there was an article in The Washington Post about a prediction that by 2030, 50 percent of the adults in this country will be obese. Obese does not mean grossly overweight, as we might imagine, but it does mean overweight enough to affect our health in numerous deleterious ways.

Most of the attention this statistic receives concerns those negative health outcomes, including chronic diseases and premature death. But I wonder about the effect of such a statistic on our nation’s productivity. Unhealthy people cannot possibly complete a successful day’s work as we now define it, so I am thinking that this crisis could also affect our economic output and our country’s relative wealth as well as its health.

I also read just today in The Wall Street Journal about some scary findings by scientists who are monitoring the cultivation of the new gene-altered corn crops. These seeds are designed to repel certain serious infestations, but the scientists have found evidence that instead of being eradicated in the cornfields, the bugs are returning as “super bugs” that are resistant to all known insecticides. That’s one we didn’t see coming! Or did we?

Who is going to want to insure all of those obese people? They will be as uninsurable as the Outer Banks homeowners before long. And what happens to the farmers who can no longer get a corn crop into the silo? Even those who did not plant the corn will be affected. Unintended consequences and their collateral damage — these terms are becoming as prevalent as obesity itself. Are we moving too fast or not fast enough in making decisions that affect our society?

In fact, lots of people saw these things coming. We have heard for more than a decade that we are heading toward a health crisis that will make our present health system’s deficiencies and high costs look reasonable by comparison. In doing some cleaning out of files and boxes lately I found clippings from early in this century raising alarms about both of these situations, and ten years ago official spokesmen for organizations and our government were minimizing both of these threats. Just look at the slow progression of the USDA Food Pyramid-to-Plate — you can see where these two issues merge under the umbrella of corporate farming and its political influence in this country.

Medical scientists, physicians, environmental scientists, nutritionists, reporters and writers did see these things coming. But even as these advocates for caution are vilified as radicals and un-American thinkers, it looks as if they were right. I wonder why no one is listening, and I wonder what we can do to change that at the grassroots level. There must be something we can do. If those of us who know how to prevent obesity in our own lives and families don’t take this on, we surely cannot expect those who are overwhelmed by it to lobby for change. And those independent farmers who are at the mercy of their corporate farm neighbors — who represents them?

Think about it as you buy your food from farmers and individuals who are dedicated to feeding you good food for your good health. Sounds pretty simple from that perspective, doesn’t it?

See you at the market!

Photo by puuikibeach

Dear Shoppers,

A few weeks ago, when I was on my way to the mountains on the far side of the Shenandoah Valley for our family 4th of July celebration, I mentioned that Rawley Springs was once the site of a fabulous old hotel that had burned to the ground early in the 1900s. I promised then to come back with more of the story and now I have that — and more. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction!

First of all, a little more on Rawley Springs. At one time, Virginia was home to more than a dozen fine old hotels that were operated as resorts, and one was in Rawley Springs. On the 4th of July when we were in Rawley at our cousin Bev Appleton’s cabin, I asked everyone what they knew about the old hotel that had once stood just below the cabin at the spring house. Bev then handed me a framed copy of an advertisement that we figure was circulated after the first of two fires that ravaged the hotel during its existence.

“THE RAWLEY SPRINGS HOTELS Will be Open for the Reception of Guests June 10th [1886],” the ad reads. “A Brass and String Band of six pieces for the Lawn and Ball Room has been engaged for the season of 1886. The table will be good in every respect, supplied from the rich valley of Virginia. The air pure, bracing, and very dry. Riding, Diving, Bathing, Fishing, Billiards, Ten Pins, Lawn Tennis, Archery, Polo, etc., are among the amusements. As a remedy in Anaema, Scrofula, Neuralgia, Dyspepsia, Liver disease, Maladies peculiar to females, and in general for all diseases caused by poverty of the blood or debility of the nervous system, the Rawley water is unrivaled.”

After the second fire, Rawley Springs was not rebuilt. This website offers more information about the history of the area. The website was created by a developer who is building new homes on the side of the mountain — much to the consternation of the folks who have owned cabins in Rawley Springs for many generations.

But now for the rest of the story: My cousin Bev had a story of his own to tell. In preparation for our reunion on the 4th, he had taken it upon himself to clean up the spring house that stands near the bottom of the mountain where the narrow and treacherous road forks to climb the mountain. As he was cleaning the wooden framework around the top, he uncovered the carved letter J and then an O, and knew then that he had found something of great meaning to our aunt JoAnn, who was always called Jo. The rest of the carving was not so clear, but Bev kept cleaning and uncovered a “+ BILL.” “JO + BILL” had once and forever been carved there — and that same Jo and BIll were on their way to the reunion unaware that the carving still lived in the old cedar wood of the spring house.

JoAnn is my aunt — my father’s sister — and Bill is her husband of nearly 60 years. The carving was done when they were dating — and this is just one example of Bill’s persistence in wooing her. What is the chance that this carving would ever have been uncovered at all, and by the nephew of the people who carved it? And that the next day, Bill and Jo were there to see it again in person? As fiction it would be considered contrived; as reality it’s just a plain old miracle — and a great memory.

I’ll be back to rant next week. See you at the market!

Dear Shopper,

Welcome once again to the dog days of summer — though it is beginning to look like we are experiencing the dog months of summer this year. With that in mind, our next series of cooking classes will focus on cool cooking in the heat of summer, which means foods that need little preparation and little if any time on a stove or in an oven. Best of all, these dishes are light fare with great flavor and freshness — and very adaptable to your own creative machinations. Though the classes will be repeated throughout the markets over the next few weeks, you can try these recipes for gazpacho, an uncooked tomato sauce and pesto on your own. These recipes give you room and encouragement to be creative — I love corn added to the sauce, crab added to the gazpacho, and pesto added to the tomato sauce.

Another part of improving your skills in the kitchen is knowing what to have on hand at all times to expand your repertoire. For a well-stocked pantry, you will need some items that regretfully cannot be bought at area farmers’ markets. But having these items will enable you to cook up those market ingredients on any spur of the moment. They are also the kinds of ingredients that enable you to successfully create a menu of complimentary dishes or a one-dish meal or casserole that needs something more than just the main ingredients to hold it together.

Start with a good vinegar and maybe even two or three. Pick out a good wine vinegar and move on from there to include some flavored ones also. And it never hurts to have some good old cider vinegar around too — for potato salad if nothing else. Then I recommend that you choose a good quality extra-virgin olive oil that tastes good to you, because this is the one you will use for salad dressings and also to dribble over a completed dish to pop the flavor. For most of your cooking, Berio pure olive oil is just fine, and it also works for those salad dressings that will play a minor rather than starring role in a dish. I also use a combination of olive and canola oils in my homemade mayonnaise that I always have on hand.

Next you want to keep lemons, limes and oranges on hand for marinades and salad dressings and to flavor dessert sauces — these are the secret ingredients that add summer brightness to foods.

In the refrigerator, keep on hand a good-quality ketchup and some Dijon mustard for marinades and BBQ sauces. In the pantry have some Worcestershire sauce and good soy sauce for flavoring anything from crab cakes to gazpacho to summer vegetable sautes. And of course you are going to need herbs — buy them fresh when you can, grow them yourself or check out the herb mixes that may be sold at your market. If you do not cook from scratch every night, buying mixed herbs and spices is a great way to save money on individual spices that have skyrocketed in recent years - and to eliminate waste.

I always have a pepper grinder handy, and I confess I am now using sea salt for just about all my cooking — though not my baking. It really does do a better job of bringing out the flavor of the food without overwhelming it with saltiness.

And then there is the cheese. I always have a variety of cheeses that I use on a regular basis including American cheddar, Australian cheddar when I can get it, Parrano and Parmesan Reggiano. Less often I will buy fresh mozzarella because it does not keep so well — and when I have it on hand I will cook something that uses it. If the cheese assortment begins to get moldy, I trim them up and throw them all in the food processor with that mayo I have on hand and make pimento cheese.

In the meat keeper in the refrigerator, I also have either some really good and lean smoked bacon or a package of country ham bits and pieces. I use these almost as much in the summer as winter for flavoring because it does not take much to add aroma and flavor to a vegetable dish like the summer succotash recipe I like so much. And garlic! I always have garlic in the crisper next to the citrus fruits in the other one.

That would appear to be the full circle, though I have probably forgotten something. Reply to let us know what you have on hand.

That’s about it — not too many items for even the smallest kitchen — and I have one of those so I should know. And it’s all you need to cook on the fly with whatever you bring home from the market, just like a French country cook or a modern California chef. All good cooks start with the basics and take off from there. Have a great flight — no need to play it safe on this runway.

See you at the market!

Photo by tomatoes and friends

Dear Shopper,

I am turning over my soapbox today to two stars in the “Do Something About It” firmament, both of whom are doing something about it themselves and exhorting others to join in.

I have to admit I love Jamie Oliver and think that his cooking series Jamie at Home is second only to Julia Child’s original series in its ability to inspire and instruct. And I admire Joel Salatin for not only walking the walk but leaving that to talk the talk all over the country — especially in our area.

Here is a video of Salatin just talking extemporaneously for five minutes — and telling us some things we need to know. And if you get that and want to hear and see more in much more colorful and creative language, please watch Jamie’s speech at the TED awards ceremony last year.

These guys are asking us to Do Something, however small, to improve our food choices. And you know that there are things that each one of us can do in our own homes to make a difference in what we eat, what our families and friends eat, and, more importantly in the long run, what we buy from corporate America. Until the demand changes, that supply of food that is making us all sick is going to be there sitting on the shelves and in the refrigerated sections of every grocery store in this country. Even Whole Foods can’t get away from “organics” grown in China and South America and other foods that contribute nothing to our health — which makes me ask, are they even food?

But let the inspired experts speak to you today — take a few minutes and then share them with someone you love.

See you at the market!

Photo by really short

Dear Shopper,

Check out this interview with Barry Estabrook about his new book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agricultural Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. I read Estabrook’s original article in Gourmet back in 2009 and remember writing something about it at the time. I vowed then not to buy another “fresh” tomato in the grocery store, and I haven’t. In winter I just buy the best canned tomatoes I can find — we do not eat summer salads in the winter anyway. The story of the tomato is a story that is repeated in this and many other countries on farms that raise many of the fruits and vegetables that are sold in local grocery stores, including the high-end stores selling “organic” produce.

I was also thinking the other day about something else that just came to me out of the blue. With all of the marketing power that the major food companies can bring to bear on introducing a new item or a new version of something they already sell, why can’t they just stop making the unhealthy versions of soups and crackers and cookies and sodas, and especially the prepared foods and meals and other baked goods? I don’t doubt that it would cost money up front to do this because of the education effort involved, but if someone or some agency of government brought them together and demonstrated how much money this country (and the companies) would save in health-care costs over the next 50 years — and how much they would eventually save over time by not having to produce so many versions of every product — they could just agree to do it and not even tell us. They fooled us into eating the bad stuff for years; how hard could it be to convince us to buy and eat the good stuff?

If you read this newsletter last week, you know that I mentioned an old hotel that had been built in the mountain community called Rawley Springs just west of Harrisonburg near the West Virginia border. I did learn more about its very interesting history over the holiday weekend, and I will share that with you next week when I hear from my cousin who copied down the wording of an advertisement from 1886 about the hotel.

Last on the list of random thoughts for the day — please check out the prices of the gorgeous heirloom tomatoes at the markets this week. Nowhere in any store are you going to find just-picked heirlooms for no more than $1 difference in price from the regular tomatoes. These are tomatoes that are ready to eat now, and they make the best tomato sauce, better than any you will ever eat in any restaurant. They have also been picked by the guy who is selling them to you, so you only have to ask about how they were grown. And don’t forget you can buy good old beefsteak tomatoes too at a great price from the farmer himself. These are what you want in your salad and on your burger or sandwich, right next to a little tuna salad or even on top of macaroni and cheese. But if you are going to try that uncooked tomato sauce, try a mix of heirloom tomatoes and swoon.

See you at the market!

Photo by ndrwfgg

My father’s birthday was the 4th of July, and I spent most of my early youth thinking that the entire country celebrated his birthday. Since all three of us girls adored our Dad, we thought it made perfect sense that Daddy Paul would be the honoree at everything from family picnics to small-town parades and fireworks. It wasn’t really a disappointment for me to learn otherwise; I just figured that it was the rest of the country who had lost out.

As you can imagine, the Fourth of July is still special for me, even though Daddy Paul is not longer around to celebrate with us. His side of our extended family still tries to get together every 4th, and we plan to spend the day in Rawley Springs this year where my grandparents had a huge split-log cabin for many years up above where the old hotel had sat before it burned to the ground — in the twenties or thirties I imagine. (I will ask about that on the 4th.) That’s also where the swimming hole in the river was known as Blue Hole — named for the color you turned when you hit the water. I did not spend much time in the water there, but my parents certainly did as teenagers. I have pictures of my Dad and his friends jumping off the rocks into the hole, which was quite deep.

But this year I would also like to ask you to consider planning and executing an all-local 4th of July. If we can pull off an all-local Thanksgiving, and many of you know by now that we can, then the 4th should be a breeze. And what better way to honor a country that can feed us perfectly well if we choose to buy from those we know.

We’ve got red meats and some “white” ones too, just about any cut of any meat that you would want for that grill. We have pasta and breads and sauces for that pasta — here again, we have the white and the red covered. And we have a wide selection of items for your summer pantry — herb and spice mixes and rubs to dress up salads and season your grilled specialities, pickles and relishes, jams and jellies and honey. And don’t forget the dairy products for those wonderful homemade baked goods you are going to make yourself. We have some great international foods to help expand your idea of what it means to be an American, and we even have gluten-free products at many of our markets to demonstrate that great American gift for coming up with what we need as well as what we want.

Looking back I see where we have the colors of the flag covered, but if you don’t like blueberries you can always jump into the cold, cold waters of a nearby swimming hole to make sure you have something blue at your celebration!

See you at the market!