March 2010 Archives

Market Ingredients in Season: Tommy V’s salsa and corn tortillas; lettuce; dried or fresh beans; pepper jack cheese; cucumber; tomatoes; and beef and beef rub.

• 3/4 cup bottled ranch dressing
• 3/4 cup fresh salsa
• 1 large or two small bunches romaine lettuce
• 2 cups fresh or dried prepared beans
• 3 cups crushed tortilla chips (or Tommy V’s own corn tortillas, crisped and crushed)
• 6 ounces pepper jack cheese, cut into small cubes
• 1 cup seeded and chopped cucumber
• 1 cup diced jicama
• 3 plum or meaty heirloom tomatoes, seeded and chopped
• 1 medium avocado, chopped
• 3/4 lb. barbecued beef brisket, flank, skirt or flatiron steak

Stir together ranch dressing and salsa and set aside. Toss together romaine and next seven ingredients. Drizzle salad with some of the dressing mixture and top with thinly sliced or chopped warm beef. Serve remaining dressing on the side. Serves 6.

Cook’s Tip: Use Mike’s beef rub generously on Market beef (try the flatiron or skirt steak for this recipe) — and grill along with another meal. Wrap cooled beef tightly and store in refrigerator for 1–2 days. Reheat the beef, sliced or cubed and wrapped in foil, in a 300-degree oven for 15 minutes.

You might be surprised to learn that some frozen vegetables at Whole Foods touted as “organic” may not be organic after all. Watch this report from our local ABC affiliate that explains where the vegetables are coming from — China — and why the organic claim can’t be backed up.

The Kiss Your Cow cow-share program is a cooperative effort between dairy farmers in the Shenandoah Valley and Smart Markets, Inc. Smart Markets has offered marketing and promotional assistance to a group of dairymen who must turn to selling the cows themselves in order to survive. Wholesale prices for their raw milk have dropped — or spilled — off the table in recent years, and families who have been dairymen in the valley for generations are losing their farms as a result.

You will have an opportunity to purchase your cow share from certified organic farmers or from farmers who practice earth- and animal-friendly dairy farming. Kiss Your Cow will offer them a way out of financial distress and offer the consumer a safe, legal and convenient way to access raw milk in Northern Virginia. One cow share will cost $60 and get you a gallon of milk each week. Maintenance including the boarding, feeding and milking of your cow will cost you $32 a month for one share of certified organic care or $28 a month for all-natural and humane care. The only difference is that the small amount of feed that the certified cows eat in the winter months must be organically grown, but not so for the non-certified — though it is all grown on local farms without fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides on local farms, just not on certified-organic farms.

You will be able to pick up your milk each week at any one of a number of Smart Markets farmers’ markets in Northern Virginia. The milk will be kept cold to guarantee its safety, and unlike at some other pick-up locations, your milk will be available to be picked up over a three-hour period.

Special features of this program will include planned visits to the farms to visit your cow and meet the farmers and families who take care of your cow. You will also have the opportunity to meet some of the farmers at our markets to ask them about how they raise cattle. You will be able to learn everything you want to know about your cow, its milk and its caretaker. Read this flier (PDF) to learn more about Cedar Springs Farm in the Shenandoah Valley and its proprietors, Virgil and Julia Wenger.

To receive and review a copy of the contract, please e-mail coordinator Lorenzo Moore at lopatech@comcast.net. And learn more about raw milk at the Campaign for Real Milk website.

Ever entrepreneurial, our salsa vendor Tommy Venable has started yet another venture that will surely be of interest to his fellow vendors at farmers’ markets. Check out his Farmers’ Market Vendor website, which offers marketing advice for vendors as well as Tommy’s own services of designing and printing promotional materials for their displays. The ad below will also give you a sense of what he has to offer — take a look!