The following is great summer fare, as it can be served warm or at room temperature. In Europe this basic preparation is made throughout the Mediterranean and is eaten as picnic and bar fare. You may also add or substitute ingredients. I often add blanched asparagus spears in a spoke pattern and sliced red pepper between the spokes for a more colorful presentation. The frittata is just as good for lunch or breakfast the next day.

• 1 pound Swiss chard
• 1 to 2 large baking or boiling potatoes
• 1 cup thinly sliced onions
• 1 large ripe tomato
• 1 cup thinly sliced fennel
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 6–9 eggs, lightly beaten and seasoned with salt and pepper
• Grated Swiss, Parmesan or cheddar cheese (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Prepare chard by washing well, removing and discarding the thick part of the center core, and finely chopping or slicing the leaves. Add chard to 1 tablespoon oil in 8–10 inch skillet with an oven-proof handle and saute for three minutes till softened. Remove from skillet and add remaining oil, add onions and fennel, and sauté until softened and lightly colored, about ten minutes.

Peel and thinly slice potatoes crosswise and layer slightly, overlapping in concentric circles over the onion and fennel. Salt and pepper lightly and put in oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven carefully and lower oven temperature to 375 degrees. Sprinkle chard over potatoes and arrange tomato slices over chard. Gently pour seasoned eggs over mixture and place mixture back in oven for 25–30 minutes or until puffy and lightly brown on top. About ten minutes before you remove from oven, you may sprinkle with grated cheese.

Cut off the tops of three or four fennel bulbs (three to four cups). Remove the cores by slicing the bulbs in half lengthwise and cutting out the triangular cores in the centers, and slice very thinly across the grain of the bulbs. Save some of the nicer dill-like leaves for garnish.

Whisk together ¾ cup of a good mayonnaise such as Hellmann’s or, even better, your own homemade mayonnaise; three tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice; the grated peel of one bumpy lemon (about one teaspoon); 1 teaspoon of salt; and 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Mix into the fennel and let macerate for 30 minutes. Serves six to eight as a side, unless your family likes it as much as mine and can only stretch it to feed four.

This recipe is only a guide; you may like it more or less lemony with more or less salt and/or pepper. Adjust to your own taste and enjoy with grilled seafood or as part of a vegetarian meal. It goes well with other meats, especially pork, and is an outstanding accompaniment to salmon.

I was so close. I thought this morning when I woke up and was staring into the writer’s abyss that we had gone a whole week with no bad news about our nutritional health or the commercial food industry’s lapses in judgment. But then I opened the Wall Street Journal and was reminded once again that we are not only losing the battle of the bulge, we are losing the war against the damage caused by our unhealthy eating habits. And as always in war, the children of the world suffer most from the collateral damage.

According to Ron Winslow’s April 29 story, children as young as 10 years old are contracting diabetes as a direct result of obesity, and recent studies have demonstrated that the drugs prescribed for the containment of the adult disease are not working in children. Early in the story, Winslow describes how this fact is “heightening worries about the fast-growing and largely preventable disease” — preventable being the key word here.

Stating the obvious, Dr. Phil Zeitler of Children’s Hospital Colorado said, “It would be much better if these kids didn’t get diabetes in the first place.” And Dr. David Allen at Wisconsin American Family Children’s Hospital also reminded us that “children 50 years ago did not avoid obesity and its complications by making healthy choices. They simply lived in a more active and less calorie-laden environment.” Surprise, surprise!

Even if you do not have children at home now, you may have grandchildren or see them on the horizon. You may know your neighbor’s children. You may at least be aware of children who are out there somewhere hopefully running around a little bit — all needing the grown-ups to change that environment for them. And we cannot blame just the parents; most of the choices out there are not good ones. It is harder and harder to find them in a grocery store crammed with prepackaged foods that are cost-attractive and nutrition-deprived.

Help is on the way, but only if we take on a little of the burden ourselves. Jamie Oliver is still going strong working to create and nurture the food revolution worldwide, and check out what the Senate did for the small farmer and farmers’ markets. But this is a project that needs a real grass-roots effort, kind of like the old No Littering campaign of the ’50s and ’60s. It needs a repetitive, persistent drumbeat, or we are going to get sicker and sicker as a nation and be paying more and more in health costs for a preventable condition.

I am beginning to think that apart from my doing more to make our markets available for education and exposure, we can all become more involved in changing the nutrition environment in our schools by advocating for school lunches that offer only good choices and only real foods, by using only healthy foods as rewards, and by teaching nutrition and its relationship to preventive health to young people in every grade. We can all do this because this is our dime — this is our money that is paying for those unhealthy choices, that unhealthy environment, and that instructional curriculum that ignores one of the biggest threats to our nation’s future health.

It’s time to get crackin’! I’m channeling my mother again, but I think it would amaze her that we have come to this. I will provide you with some local names and contacts soon for those who want to reach out and get involved.

In the meantime, continue to do the best for your own family, spend your $10 weekly on locally grown produce, and help keep our small farmers alive to sell more good choices to our school children, once we all figure out how to make that happen.

As we approach the opening of market season across Northern Virginia, I want to devote this post to issues that directly affect the success of farmers’ markets all over Virginia and the country, and that in a variety of ways also affect the farmers that come to our markets. There will be no test on this information, but I hope you will follow these links, read the material, and absorb what you feel you need to make you a better shopper. And of course, we always encourage grass-roots activism because we know it works and because it is good for the soul.

When I rant about something, which in my house we often refer to as “Nanna Losing her Mind,” I do try to inform myself from several sources about the topic at hand. I am less educated about the following topic than some others, mainly because there is a lot of science involved that is usually not explained well in alerts I receive or even in newspaper articles I read. This latest alert from the producers of the movie Fresh! is worrisome, though, for two reasons.

Dow Chemical is developing a new genetically modified seed because of problems with the previous one, and they seem to be putting the new seed on the market soon after those initial problems presented themselves. So how much could we possibly have learned from the initial failure? It also worries me in the same way that the original Roundup-resistant seed bothered me: No long-term studies have yet been released on the effects of these food crops on the animals and people that ingest them. We just need to know more.

Secondly, I want to refer you to the latest update from the Farmers’ Market Coalition, a great Virginia-based organization devoted to supporting farmers’ markets of all shapes and sizes across the country. Evidently, the grass-roots effort to influence the Farm Bill legislation has had an effect on the Senate, and I agree that we need to thank those Senators who led the charge for the small farmer. But we need to say and do more if we want more of our government’s resources to support sustainable farming. This is good information and a great summary of the bill, and FMC has made it easy for you to express your own feelings and opinions.

Thirdly, I invite you to visit the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution website, especially if you are concerned about what children are being fed at school. You can learn everything you need to know about putting together a successful campaign to change the menu. You can also sign up to receive a regular newsletter. If you really want to be inspired, watch Jamie’s speech at the 2010 TED awards.

I take this approach because I realize how much these resources that come to me almost every week keep me motivated and inform not just what I say and write but what I do through our markets to pass along what I learn. And they often provide information that can lead to better farming practices or access to financial help or expertise for our vendors. Just today I sent Max Tyson of Tyson Farms and Orchards an alert about money to help farmers who want to begin using more sustainable and organic farming methods. I do not expect you to find all of this information inspiring or even helpful, but I hope that you will blaze a trail of your own — in your own kitchen, in your child’s school, or in a political campaign.

Photo by really short

• 3 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 and ½ teaspoons cinnamon
• 6 1-inch thick slices challah bread, cut into 1-inch squares
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

Place bread pieces on a large cookie sheet or baking tray and spread with melted butter. Mix cinnamon and sugar and sprinkle on bread. Toast in a 325-degree oven for 12–15 minutes.

For dressing, mix well:

3 Tablespoons light oil 1 Tablespoon finely shredded orange peel 2 Tablespoons fresh orange juice 2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Thinly slice 2 large heads of Bibb lettuce and add 2 cups of fresh strawberries. Add bread cubes and toss lightly with dressing. Add spiced pecans and serve.

Serves 4–6

Spiced Pecans for Strawberry Salad

Toast 1½ cups pecans in a 375° oven for 8–10 minutes.

Combine 2 tablespoons sugar, 1¼ teaspoon five-spice powder, ½ teaspoon kosher salt and ¼ teaspoon red pepper. Set aside.

Combine 2 tablespoons maple syrup, 1 teaspoon dark brown sugar and 1 tablespoon butter. Bring to a boil and stir in toasted nuts. Lower heat and cook while stirring for one minute. Add warm nuts to sugar-and-spice mixture, mix well and cool completely.

Add to Strawberry Salad or serve as hors d’oeuvre.

This is one of the best-tasting things you will ever put in your mouth! I promise. If you have a motorized ice-cream maker of any kind, it should do a good job with this mixture, but I have always made it the old-fashioned way because I like the texture of the finished product as well as the taste.

• 5 cups rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 cup water
• 2½ cups superfine sugar (You can make superfine sugar from regular sugar by whirring it in your food processor for two minutes.)
• 2 cups strawberries

Combine rhubarb and water, bring to a simmer and simmer, covered, for five minutes or until soft. Let cool slightly.

Puree sugar with rhubarb in food processor and pour into a large bowl. Puree strawberries, press through a fine sieve to remove seeds and add to rhubarb mixture.

(This is where you can empty the mixture into an ice-cream maker and process until nearly frozen; then finish off in the freezer.)

Place mixture into two loaf pans and chill in the freezer until mushy. Remove and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and light but not melted. Repeat chilling and mixing. Scoop into a refrigerator container and freeze solid. Thaw 30 minutes in the refrigerator before serving.

Photo by La Grande Farmers’ Market

Smart Markets Inc., managers of farmers’ markets with flair, and the membership of the Vale Club invite you to join us for Cooking Through the Seasons with Annie Sidley, the demo chef for Smart Markets and a personal chef and caterer in Northern Virginia. Working with produce and other ingredients from Smart Markets farmers’ markets, Annie will teach a menu the last Thursday of every month for the next six months at the Vale School using a large, fully-equipped kitchen as the classroom.

The introductory class will be Thursday, May 24, from 10:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m., at a special price of $30. Lunch will be included.

Annie will adapt her menus to use what is available at the markets each week. She will teach you how to do the same, shopping first and then planning a meal or menu. The classes will be interactive, and questions and comments will be welcomed. Feel more comfortable about shopping seasonally and locally during the year and more confident using your purchases for healthy and delicious home-cooked meals for you and your family.

After this Introductory Class, the fee will be $60 per 3-hour class with lunch. Reservations are required three weeks in advance. You may also sign up in advance for all six classes for $300.

To sign up or for more information, email jean@smartmarkets.org.

Dear Shopper,

This week I am going to talk about greens about three weeks earlier than I would normally be able to talk about them. But then I will probably spend the entire growing season catching up — thank goodness my food magazines all arrive about a month early, or I would really miss out on the timely new recipes.

We provide a handout at our markets in the spring and fall that provides basic instructions for cooking greens simply and quickly, and now I have another good one clipped and copied from the April Eating Well magazine that has good pictures and short descriptions of the different varieties. This page about kale has links to pages about chard and other greens.

I can wax eloquently about greens. I spent several years of my youth in South Georgia, where greens were treated with reverence — even if that did mean cooking the flavor out of them and substituting the smoky flavor of a ham hock. That was still good, but not nearly so fresh-tasting and flavorful as the greens cooked the way I and others now recommend.

We now have examples at the market of those early greens and some of the best baby kale I have ever eaten. A package that will easily serve three people costs $2.75; it has been prewashed and is so easy to prepare.

We also have chard, which has many uses in sides, salads and soups. Here is a good spring recipe for young chard. Don’t worry about separating the stems in young chard, though — just treat the soft stems as part of the leaves.

I want you to hear from an expert on the nutritional benefits of greens, which make them one of the most effective products in your preventive medicine pantry. Greens are essentially medicine on the plate, which of course is the case with all healthily prepared vegetables. Please learn from our friend and occasional speaker at our markets, Debra Dennis of Indigo Lifestyle Solutions, who works with clients who want to adopt healthier lifestyles, including changes in diet.

Green vegetables are the foods most missing in modern diets. Learning to cook and eat greens is essential to creating health. When you nourish yourself with greens, you will naturally crowd out the foods that make you sick. Greens help build your internal rainforest and strengthen the blood and respiratory system. They are especially good for city people who rarely see fields of green in open countryside. Green is associated with spring, the time of renewal, refreshment and vital energy. In Asian medicine, green is related to the liver, emotional stability and creativity.

Nutritionally, greens are very high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, zinc and vitamins A, C, E and K. They are crammed with fiber, folic acid, chlorophyll and many other micronutrients and phytochemicals. Whenever possible, choose organic. But eating non-organic greens is much better than not eating any greens at all!

There are so many greens to choose from. Find greens that you love and eat them often. When you get bored with your favorites, be adventurous and try greens that you’ve never heard of before. Broccoli is very popular among adults and children. Each stem is like a tree trunk, giving you strong, grounding energy. Rotate among bok choy, napa cabbage, kale, collards, watercress, mustard greens, broccoli rabe, dandelion and other leafy greens.

I hope that you will seek out greens to brighten your Easter feast this week and learn to eat them more often as part of a seasonal diet. They really are tasty!

See you at the market!

We have morels at our Oakton market today, and if you’re picked some up and are wondering what to do with them, check out these tips and recipes. Enjoy!