December 2011 Archives

All Markets

Cakes by Shelby has gift ideas for teachers, family members, children and friends. Don’t forget to stop by and pick up the popular cake pops, too! Visit her website for more information about her treats.

Oakton

Our Oakton market will be open Saturday, Dec. 24.

Fabbioli Cellars

Fabbioli Cellars has the perfect wines for the holidays; they make perfect gifts and will add that special touch to your holiday feasts. Taste some of the best wines from Virginia and see for yourself. We will be bringing our dinner wines: the lighter Chamborcin, the fruity/peppery Cabernet Franc, and our full-bodied flagship wine, the Tres Sorelle; as well as our ever popular dessert wines: Royalty, a port-style dessert wine with a taste of smoked cherries, cloves, holiday spices, cinnamon and cranberries; Rosa Nera, the port-style, black raspberry dessert wine; our phenomenal Raspberry Merlot; and our wonderfully different Aperitif Pear Wine. So come and stock up for the entertaining and gift-giving season.

Peachtree Sweets

Rashmi of Peachtree Sweets will have gift boxes of the following items available for purchase Dec. 17 and Dec. 24.

Prices per dozen:

• Chocolate chip cookies 5.99
• Dark chocolate pecan cookies 7.99
• Rich chocolate brownies 8.99
• Nutty biscotti 4.99
• Berry berry muffins 6.99
• Chocolate almond muffin bites 6.99
• Pumpkin cranberry walnut bread (1 mini loaf) 5.99
• Chocolate truffles 9.99

She will also have chocolate truffles (chocolate hazelnut and coffee flavors) for sale in small 2- and 4-piece packs. You can order any of these items or place a more customized order Dec. 17 and pick it up Dec. 24, or call Rashmi at (630) 276-6168 by Dec. 22 at the latest to preorder. Gift boxes and baskets are also available.

The Finger Buffet

• Samosas with special chutney
• Sweet and savory empanadas
• Mushroom puffs
• Turkish pides
• Phyllo triangles
• Mixed boxes of cookies from around the world
• Fig-covered chocolates
• Variety tartlet trays including apple and pear tartlets
• Brie en croute in large and individual sizes

Nancy will accept orders for any of the above or mixed platters, either baked and ready to serve or frozen for baking at the last minute. Email her at nk22312@yahoo.com or call (703) 944-6802 with special orders. They can be picked up at the market.

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!

We recently had a group of Cub Scouts drop by our Oakton market to see a cooking demonstration and learn from our vendors about where their food comes from. Read this article in the Oakton Patch to find out what the Scouts learned.

Annie Sidley, the market’s demo diva, taught the boys to make some seasonal breakfast foods, including pancakes and a delicious vegetable dish.

“This helps us learn what to eat and what is nutritious and teaches us to try new things,” said 8-year-old William Bush. “This is a good activity for us and everyone gets food.”

We were happy to have the Scouts stop by. If you’d like to bring any field trips our way, let us know!

In case I am preaching to the choir here, please take a step back and consider the children of your neighbors or your co-workers or children you don’t even know as I rant about where we are headed in this country while paying little or no attention to the issue of childhood obesity. We are heading nowhere. As individuals and as a country, we are doing nothing about it.

I have spent time over the last two weeks culling and organizing newspaper clippings from three newspapers that go back ten years. I have saved these because I have been interested in this health issue for that long. There have been a flood of studies; we are even spending tax money to investigate the problem. And there have been numerous stories that examine the implications of our overeating on our long-term personal health. There have also been business-news items about the impact of childhood obesity on our economy, which will pay in many ways to accommodate a generation of young adults with old-age health problems.

When was the last time a politician talked about this issue, except of course to stand up in Congress and charge that removing excess and empty calories from school lunches is encroaching on freedom of choice by telling people what to eat? As if serving unhealthy food is not also “telling them what to eat.” And where is the member of Congress or reporter — or anyone — who stands up and points out that whatever we feed our children in their school lunches imposes limits on their options? Improving the options does not change the school lunch system. It just changes the options. Choosing not to improve the options demonstrates a blatant disregard for all of those studies, a dismissal of the facts and a blind eye to the future cost to our economy.

In the same week that our nation’s pediatricians were advocating testing the cholesterol of young children and a new study emerged that linked early-childhood obesity with long-term heart issues, our Congress decided to cave into the pizza, salt and potato lobbies and refused to improve the nutrient value and reduce the calories in school lunches.

It galls me to watch countries around the world moving so earnestly toward democracy while we can’t use the power of the people we already have to get our democratic representatives to do the right thing — or at least to discuss it on its merits and treat it as an issue that we, the people, can influence.

But I am happy to be the one to remind you that you can do something. If you want to venture out and take this on as a project for the next year, let me know. There are simple things that we can do at the local and state levels. We may not be able to change what Congress decrees is a healthy lunch, but we can change what our schools offer to those children who are not learning at home what to eat at school. There are levels of participation and activism. You can be part of the educational or motivational program. You can work through an existing forum or help to bring the advocacy groups together around a specific goal. You can help develop a database to support our arguments, or you can help manage a petition drive.

I will continue to report on the status of the project — we do need to give it a name — and you are welcome to send us links or referrals to pass along even if you cannot spare the time to participate.

For updates on what is happening around the country, visit Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution website and sign up for the newsletter. If you really want to be motivated or want to motivate a group, watch Jamie Oliver’s speech at a TED conference last year.