Heirloom tomatoes have interesting and intense flavors, glorious colors, delightful shapes. But they won’t last all week – buy only what you’ll eat by next Wednesday. For sandwich tomatoes later in the week, there are some hothouse tomatoes at Truck Patch and some hybrid field tomatoes at Richfield Farms.
Never ever ever refrigerate a tomato – cold converts all those amazing heirloom-y sugars into starch. Except as a last resort – that is, you cut the tomato and only used half, or you know you’re going out for dinner tonight and it won’t get eaten until late tomorrow, and it’s already on the edge. Truck Patch picks the tomatoes and puts them directly into 60 degree cold storage, then brings them cool to market and now it’s all up to you. Don’t have a cold storage? Me neither, and I don’t even have AC, so my house is about 90 degrees. My options are to find somewhere cooler than my kitchen or eat them faster. About the only thing I can stand to cook these days is gazpacho anyway.
Speaking of too hot to cook: Groff’s Content Farm has a lovely smoked chicken breast for cutting up into cubes in a salad or slicing up for sandwiches on Panorama’s mini-ciabatta with a slab of heirloom tomato. Truck Patch Farms has the ground ham back: mix up a classic church salad with hard boiled egg, mayo, bell peppers, relish, sweet onion: fill up a sandwich with it using Atwater’s Peasant Wheat or mini Struan rolls – I love it, no messing around with the grill! Send me your favorite variations on bánh mì – I’m thinking cold, thinly sliced pork loin roast or chuck roast with vinegar and sugar cucumber slices, shredded carrot and radish, cilantro, mayo on a Panorama baguette. Just leave off the pork to make it vegan-friendly (the mayo was really Grapeseed Oil Vegenaise anyway, ‘cuz canola oil is a GMO, and the other oils used in mayo almost all have problems).
There’s this Vote For Your Favorite Farmers’ Market thing on American Farmland Trust. I assume the winner does something smart like bring a laptop to market and aggressively recruit folks to vote. Our ATM machine barely works in these temps, so I ain’t risking my laptop, but if you want to weigh in, here’s the link for a vote for MtP. Go to their homepage if you want to start over and pick a different market! I was torn between MtP Far Mar and Bloomingdale Farmers’ Market.
Local Events:
DC Bicycle Stations will join the Farmers’ Market Bike Clinic this Saturday offering you a chance to try the adorable European Taga bike – converts from a front-loading trike with a kid seat into a…STROLLER! Or a shopping cart, or a two-seater kid carrier, or with a back-facing infant car seat, or more. It’s like a Transformer for mommies!
Mount Pleasant Movies in the Park: Starting this weekend, Mt. Pleasant Main Street is bringing back movie night! This year’s theme is “Road Trip,” starting with Little Miss Sunshine, the funniest movie I can remember seeing in decades! Bring a beach chair and/or blanket and a pillow for the kids, who will crash out on the bricks under the stars, making it the cheapest, easiest date night you ever didn’t plan! Mark your calendar for the other movie Saturdays: 8/7 Ride the Divide, 8/28 Brave Little Toaster, and 9/11 Salt of the Earth. To volunteer, contact Katharine at info@mtpmainstreet.org. Co-sponsored by Cricket and your local Mount Pleasant Business Association.
A.C. Valdez is back from a sojourn to Georgetown where he quickly determined that he preferred living in Mount Pleasant and playing the charango and guitar for you on Saturdays. I’ve missed his lovely voice and compositions: look for him in the shade in the middle of market from 9-11.
Gabriel Maser and Alex Platt will give us a saxophone/guitar duet for the latter half of market. Sounds dreamy.
Local Foods:
Pleasant Pops: New this week! Watermelon n’ Black Pepper. Wow. If it’s anything like the Cucumber Chili, it’ll be a beautiful combination of refreshment and interest. More of the sold-out Watermelon Cucumber pops, plus Strawberry Cream, Cucumber Chili, and Peaches & Ginger. All made with locally sourced ingredients! Except the black pepper, I suspect…
Adelante Co-op: New this week! Ceviche with fish, lime, sweet potato, and local corn. Fabulous grilled fish tacos with fresh market vegetables or borracho grilled chicken or steak. Rice con gandules or arroz casamiento. Plus horchata and chicha morada!
Richfield Farm: Watermelon, cantaloupe, okra, white, purple, and long Japanese eggplants, green and pale green bell peppers, poblanos, jalapeños, sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, heirloom and hybrid tomatoes, summer squash, regular and pickling cucumbers. Green beans. Cut flowers.
Smallwood’s Veggieporium: Curious melons, demand a taste! Tiny Asian Tigger melons, Sakata Sweet, and dainty European Pixies and Cantaloupes. Perfect single serving size. Bell peppers, cherry tomatoes of all colors, red, white, and fingerling potatoes, green beans, beets, white and sweet onions, slicing and adorable lemon cucumbers, green and yellow summer squash, and cut herbs: mint, basil, curly parsley, purslane.
Truck Patch Farms: A lot more heirloom tomatoes from the field! Black Crim, Prudence Purple, Amana Orange, German Striped. And Chocolate Cherry, Sungold, and Sweet Millionaire cherry tomatoes. Good shelf life hot house tomatoes. Sugar Baby watermelons, red seedless watermelons, and cantaloupes. Regular slicing and pickling cucumbers, long skinny Asian cucumbers. Black, purple and white eggplants, both Italian and Asian. Hot peppers and bell peppers. Summer squash and green beans. Greens: salad mix, arugula, spinach, kale, Swiss chard. Radishes and beets with their greens. Cut herbs – my favorite lemon basil, purple basil and more intense Genovese and big leaf Italian, and mint and chives, oregano, sage, thyme. Sunflowers.
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, and ground ham. Sausages: NEW! Polish sausage, plus 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. Ask Bryan about goat meat.
Quaker Valley Orchards: Yellow free-stone peaches, nectarines, blackberries, a few red raspberries, red currants, lovely watermelons and fancy Asian and French melons, red and gold potatoes, Juliet tomatoes – the Roma style tomato that make Fredi’s amazing tomato sauce, sweet onions, Ginger Gold apples, and sweet corn.
Reid Orchard: Plums, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, apples.
Groff’s Content Farm: Family farm raises 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef on organic fields, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, both whole and cut up and smoked. Dog treats and nice big beef bones. Ground beef and steaks, nice big sausages. Soap made from their own beef tallow.
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.
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.
July 31 – Tomatoes and Accordions
I only bought 4 huge heirloom tomatoes last week: a firm, meaty Valencia, a low-acid, beautiful Amana Orange, a Pruden’s Purple, and a German Striped. I thought they’d last ’til Wednesday, but I took them to my sister on her vacation in Rehoboth Beach and she ate them all within two days. What a fiend! She uses them in everything, sandwiches, pasta, or just throws down a platter of them sliced up with some salt and balsamic. Fortunately, there’s a Rehoboth Beach Farmers’ Market on Tuesday, and I bought more from old Tree and Leaf farm hand Kathleen whom I ran into out there! The small world of sustainable agriculture. She was keen on the weird white tomatoes – I’ve always been leery of those pale things, but it turns out they are low acid and extra high sugar. Glad I asked.
Keep up the votes for the Your Favorite Farmers’ Market thing on American Farmland Trust.
Local Events:
Compost Cab: Woohoo! The monthly free compost drop off service is on again this weekend! Your MtP kitchen scraps go straight to awesome local farm project Common Good City Farm. Learn about weekly pick up service from your very own back yard, with clean bucket liners and a promise of free dirt once you’ve contributed enough – like frequent flier miles for compost, I love it!
Lamont Park Deluxe: Oh, the sweet sounds of Rick and Mara’s accordion duet make my heart happy whenever they come to market.
Local Foods:
Pleasant Pops: This week’s new offerings sound like a whole new industry in Frozen Pop Addiction Recovery programs is in our future: Blackberry Basil Cream and Blackberries ‘n Cream (the farmers don’t call ‘em “crack” berries for nothing). Plus, a new variation on the last of those stashed fruits from June: Simply Strawberry. Plus the very popular, even with kids, Peaches ‘n Ginger. All made with locally sourced ingredients! Cream from Trickling Springs, blackberries and peaches from our very own Quaker Valley Orchard, and basil from Truck Patch Farms.
Adelante Co-op: Delicioso! Latino food from the grill. Tortillas, rice con gandules or arroz casamiento. Horchata or chicha morada.
Reid Orchard: Blackberries, white peaches, yellow peaches, white nectarines, yellow nectarines, more new summer apples including Pristine and Zestar! (with the exclamation point – sweet, juicy, crispy apple brought to you by the breeders who came up with Honeycrisp), and maybe 3 or 4 different plums. Plus beautiful heirloom tomatoes with Caitlin’s famous sommelier-style matching advice.
Quaker Valley Orchards: Lots of Fredi’s excellent sweet corn, melons, lopes, peaches, nectarines, donut peaches, blackberries, red raspberries, potatoes, Juliet tomatoes, sweet onions, Ginger Gold apples.
Richfield Farm: Watermelon, cantaloupe, okra, eggplants, bell peppers, poblanos, jalapeños, sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, heirloom and hybrid tomatoes, summer squash, regular and pickling cucumbers. Cut flowers.
Smallwood’s Veggieporium: Watermelons, cantaloupes, Asian melons, okra, eggs, sweet corn, fingerling potatoes, big tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, mint, purslane.
Truck Patch Farms: Heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, cucumbers, eggplants, hot peppers, bell peppers, summer squash. Greens: salad mix, arugula, spinach, 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, and ground ham. Sausages: NEW! Polish sausage, plus 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. Ask Bryan about goat meat.
Groff’s Content Farm: Family farm raises 100% grass-fed and -finished lamb and beef on organic fields, pastured Berkshire pork, beautiful pastured eggs and chickens, both whole and cut up and smoked. Dog treats and nice big beef bones. Ground beef and steaks, nice big sausages. Soap made from their own beef tallow.
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.
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.