Summer’s not even over and school is already in full swing! Good thing the market is open ’til the Saturday before Thanksgiving, so you can pack fresh healthy farmers’ market snacks for your kids or your own lunch:
- Pickling cucumbers – sliced and sprinkled with salt taste a bit like a pickle but fresh.
- Edamame – boil beans in pod for 7 minutes, toss with salt, be nice to the teacher and provide a little baggie for the shells.
- Corn and Sausage salad – Truck Patch Farms has a delicious smoked kielbasa that you can grill, fry, or eat straight out of the package. I like it sliced up with fresh boiled corn shucked off the cob and sent to school in a little tiffin.
- Apple Sandwich Stacks – apples sliced into discs and layered with slices of cheese, wrapped in a bit of parchment paper and secured with a rubber band. Or a Silly Band ™ if you got conned into that fad.
- Melon Balls – you can pick up a melon baller at the thrift store for a nickle and tell your kids that they’re mini cantaloupe ice cream scoops. Ruby saw some of these at the neighbor’s and begged me to run next door on the first day of school to borrow their baller.
Whether you’re having one last fling of partying and grilling on the long weekend or going out of town, you’ll want to pick something up from market. If you’re into meat, we’ve got hamburger of course, but also ground lamb, and ground pork. Any combo of these will make an outstanding burger with a few adds: oatmeal or breadcrumbs, an egg, minced onion and garlic, fresh thyme, minced parsley, a splash of something at hand…red wine, soy sauce, Worcester sauce, some mystery condiment you find in your fridge. Moosh together with your hands and shape immediately so you only have to get that intimate with it once. Don’t overcook grassfed meats – they’re not as fatty as grain-tortured animals. Also not as likely to be harboring some scary bug – our farmers raise healthy, outdoor, well-nourished, hormone and antibiotic-free animals and know where any additional feed comes from.
Truck Patch Farm’s applewurst sausage is in a new size like a fat hot dog and is receiving rave reviews from kids. And with absolutely no preservatives!
But it ain’t all about meat. If you’ve got a gas grill and want a project, get a ton of peppers while they’re in season and lay them as close to the flame as you can get them until they’re black, then throw them in a paper bag to steam and cool. Instead of knitting or shelling beans while you drink your last peach martini of the summer, spend some time slipping the charred pepper skins off, scooping out the seeds (do it imperfectly), and stashing them in a jar with olive oil. They really are tastier than the jarred version from the store. Red bell peppers are the obvious choice, but poblanos and bananas are even better.
The peach martini is a simple job: squoosh a very ripe peach into a strainer (I eat the handful of pulp), then mix the nectar with vodka and Cointreau and ice. Or bourbon and a little sugar and ice. Or click on the link for a version with white wine.
Local Events:
Gabe Popkin and Friends from our sister city Mt Rainier will fiddle and pluck for us in the 9-11 stretch with toe tapping, smile making traditional music of the Appalachias. Then Lauren Knapp joins us from 11-1 with folk and country music.
Farmers’ Market Bike Clinic: Tent, tools, pump, stand, and helpful neighbors who drag themselves out of bed at some ungodly MtP hour to help you get your steed back in sweet running order. Volunteers show towards 10am or later, but the stuff is out by 9am if you want to mess around with your bike yourself.
Warm and Fuzzies: The knit and crochet hooligans will be with us every week henceforth, offering training, guidance, support, and camaraderie in the yarn arts. Kids welcome! Leave your wee hellion with them while you shop, come back to find she’s gotten a tattoo and learned how to knit with her fingers! http://www.facebook.com/warmandfuzzies.
Local Foods:
Pleasant Pops: Speaking of Melon Balls – the Pleasant Pops are engaged in a full-on melon gala affair: Cantaloupe Watermelon, Watermelon Mint, and Cantaloupe Lemonade, plus popular Peaches & Ginger. Melons from Richfield Farm, peaches from Quaker Valley Orchard. All dairy free this week!
Adelante Co-op: The first major step in our Latino Outreach and Business Incubation Project is accomplished! The delicious grilled chicken served on the platos and tacos comes from a small, local farmer – our very own Truck Patch Farms. Most of the salad and other adds have been purchased all along from the market. Next step: greening the serving ware. But we need help! Please talk to me or Juan Carlos at the grill if you have some good, cost-effective suggestions – we don’t want to have to raise the prices and potentially lose some customers.
Atwater Bread: Organic sourdough and yeasted breads: Peasant Wheat, Caraway Rye, Cranberry Pecan, Kalamata Olive, traditional San Francisco Sourdough, Ciabatta, Country White, Chili Cheddar, Spelt, Sunflower Flax, and more. Brownies, cookies, scones, muffins, and several flavors of granola.
Panorama Bakery: Baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, mini ciabattas, sliced loaves, danishes, sticky buns, apple turnovers.
Groff’s Content Farm: More pork in this week! Family farm raises 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef on organic fields, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, whole, cut up or smoked. Dog treats and nice big beef bones. Ground beef, steaks, big sausages. Soap made from their own beef tallow.
Quaker Valley Orchards: Honeycrisp apples are back! Plus Gala, Smokehouse and Ginger Gold apples, Asian pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, grapes, blackberries, and raspberries. Corn, potatoes, onions, tomatoes. Jams, tomato sauce, applesauce, etc.
Smallwood’s Veggieporium: Edamame is a great protein source – Mike’s working with a new variety that is fuzzier and smaller than what you’re used to at the sushi joint, but he’s got them at a great price. Sprite melons are a small honeydew, watermelons, bitter melon. Regular and cherry tomatoes, hot peppers: jalapeños, serranos, cayenne, Hungarian wax, Anaheims, Fish Pepper, bell peppers: green, purple and white sweet, summer and winter squash, onions, potatoes, okra. Herbs: thyme, sage, oregano, lemon, Thai, and Genovese basil, mint. Fresh eggs.
Truck Patch Farms: Tomatoes are winding down, but there are plenty of seconds to be had a bargain. Cantaloupe and nice small seedless watermelons, eggplants, okra, slicing and pickling cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet peppers including red, chocolate and yellow bells! Summer squash and the first of the winter squash – yum, grilled butternut cubes! Green and yellow beans. Salad mix, arugula, spinach, kale and Swiss chard. Cut herbs.
Truck Patch Farms Meat Department: Eggs. Pork and beef. Chickens if you pre-order at order@truckpatchfarms.com. Ground beef and patties, ground pork, loose sausage. Sausages: smoked kielbasa and andouille, Polish sausage, sage, celery, applewurst, country hot, mild and hot Italian, sweet Italian with fennel, kielbasa, bratwurst. Steaks, chops and tenderloins, spare ribs, baby back ribs, pork shoulder. Breakfast sausage and bacon.
Cherry Glen Goat Cheese Company: Handmade, artisanal goat cheese. Fresh chevre and ricotta cheese and delicious crottins and brie-like wedges of creamy, soft-ripened cheese.
Reid Orchard: Apples!
Richfield Farm: Melons, okra, eggplants, hot and sweet peppers, corn, tomatoes, beans. Cut flowers.
Sept 4 – Healthy School Snacks and Labor Day Grill
Summer’s not even over and school is already in full swing! Good thing the market is open ’til the Saturday before Thanksgiving, so you can pack fresh healthy farmers’ market snacks for your kids or your own lunch:
Whether you’re having one last fling of partying and grilling on the long weekend or going out of town, you’ll want to pick something up from market. If you’re into meat, we’ve got hamburger of course, but also ground lamb, and ground pork. Any combo of these will make an outstanding burger with a few adds: oatmeal or breadcrumbs, an egg, minced onion and garlic, fresh thyme, minced parsley, a splash of something at hand…red wine, soy sauce, Worcester sauce, some mystery condiment you find in your fridge. Moosh together with your hands and shape immediately so you only have to get that intimate with it once. Don’t overcook grassfed meats – they’re not as fatty as grain-tortured animals. Also not as likely to be harboring some scary bug – our farmers raise healthy, outdoor, well-nourished, hormone and antibiotic-free animals and know where any additional feed comes from.
Truck Patch Farm’s applewurst sausage is in a new size like a fat hot dog and is receiving rave reviews from kids. And with absolutely no preservatives!
But it ain’t all about meat. If you’ve got a gas grill and want a project, get a ton of peppers while they’re in season and lay them as close to the flame as you can get them until they’re black, then throw them in a paper bag to steam and cool. Instead of knitting or shelling beans while you drink your last peach martini of the summer, spend some time slipping the charred pepper skins off, scooping out the seeds (do it imperfectly), and stashing them in a jar with olive oil. They really are tastier than the jarred version from the store. Red bell peppers are the obvious choice, but poblanos and bananas are even better.
The peach martini is a simple job: squoosh a very ripe peach into a strainer (I eat the handful of pulp), then mix the nectar with vodka and Cointreau and ice. Or bourbon and a little sugar and ice. Or click on the link for a version with white wine.
Local Events:
Gabe Popkin and Friends from our sister city Mt Rainier will fiddle and pluck for us in the 9-11 stretch with toe tapping, smile making traditional music of the Appalachias. Then Lauren Knapp joins us from 11-1 with folk and country music.
Farmers’ Market Bike Clinic: Tent, tools, pump, stand, and helpful neighbors who drag themselves out of bed at some ungodly MtP hour to help you get your steed back in sweet running order. Volunteers show towards 10am or later, but the stuff is out by 9am if you want to mess around with your bike yourself.
Warm and Fuzzies: The knit and crochet hooligans will be with us every week henceforth, offering training, guidance, support, and camaraderie in the yarn arts. Kids welcome! Leave your wee hellion with them while you shop, come back to find she’s gotten a tattoo and learned how to knit with her fingers! http://www.facebook.com/warmandfuzzies.
Local Foods:
Pleasant Pops: Speaking of Melon Balls – the Pleasant Pops are engaged in a full-on melon gala affair: Cantaloupe Watermelon, Watermelon Mint, and Cantaloupe Lemonade, plus popular Peaches & Ginger. Melons from Richfield Farm, peaches from Quaker Valley Orchard. All dairy free this week!
Adelante Co-op: The first major step in our Latino Outreach and Business Incubation Project is accomplished! The delicious grilled chicken served on the platos and tacos comes from a small, local farmer – our very own Truck Patch Farms. Most of the salad and other adds have been purchased all along from the market. Next step: greening the serving ware. But we need help! Please talk to me or Juan Carlos at the grill if you have some good, cost-effective suggestions – we don’t want to have to raise the prices and potentially lose some customers.
Atwater Bread: Organic sourdough and yeasted breads: Peasant Wheat, Caraway Rye, Cranberry Pecan, Kalamata Olive, traditional San Francisco Sourdough, Ciabatta, Country White, Chili Cheddar, Spelt, Sunflower Flax, and more. Brownies, cookies, scones, muffins, and several flavors of granola.
Panorama Bakery: Baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, mini ciabattas, sliced loaves, danishes, sticky buns, apple turnovers.
Groff’s Content Farm: More pork in this week! Family farm raises 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef on organic fields, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, whole, cut up or smoked. Dog treats and nice big beef bones. Ground beef, steaks, big sausages. Soap made from their own beef tallow.
Quaker Valley Orchards: Honeycrisp apples are back! Plus Gala, Smokehouse and Ginger Gold apples, Asian pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, grapes, blackberries, and raspberries. Corn, potatoes, onions, tomatoes. Jams, tomato sauce, applesauce, etc.
Smallwood’s Veggieporium: Edamame is a great protein source – Mike’s working with a new variety that is fuzzier and smaller than what you’re used to at the sushi joint, but he’s got them at a great price. Sprite melons are a small honeydew, watermelons, bitter melon. Regular and cherry tomatoes, hot peppers: jalapeños, serranos, cayenne, Hungarian wax, Anaheims, Fish Pepper, bell peppers: green, purple and white sweet, summer and winter squash, onions, potatoes, okra. Herbs: thyme, sage, oregano, lemon, Thai, and Genovese basil, mint. Fresh eggs.
Truck Patch Farms: Tomatoes are winding down, but there are plenty of seconds to be had a bargain. Cantaloupe and nice small seedless watermelons, eggplants, okra, slicing and pickling cucumbers, hot peppers, sweet peppers including red, chocolate and yellow bells! Summer squash and the first of the winter squash – yum, grilled butternut cubes! Green and yellow beans. Salad mix, arugula, spinach, kale and Swiss chard. Cut herbs.
Truck Patch Farms Meat Department: Eggs. Pork and beef. Chickens if you pre-order at order@truckpatchfarms.com. Ground beef and patties, ground pork, loose sausage. Sausages: smoked kielbasa and andouille, Polish sausage, sage, celery, applewurst, country hot, mild and hot Italian, sweet Italian with fennel, kielbasa, bratwurst. Steaks, chops and tenderloins, spare ribs, baby back ribs, pork shoulder. Breakfast sausage and bacon.
Cherry Glen Goat Cheese Company: Handmade, artisanal goat cheese. Fresh chevre and ricotta cheese and delicious crottins and brie-like wedges of creamy, soft-ripened cheese.
Reid Orchard: Apples!
Richfield Farm: Melons, okra, eggplants, hot and sweet peppers, corn, tomatoes, beans. Cut flowers.