Health & Fitness
This Week at the Smart Markets Springfield Farmers' Market
Remember to preorder your Thanksgiving turkey from Windmill Meadows, and pick up some lovely pork cuts from Wicked Oak Farm.
This Week at our Springfield Market
Saturday 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
American Legion Post 176
6520 Amherst Ave.
Springfield, VA 22150
Map
This Week at the Market
We are open and accepting orders for fresh, free-range turkeys for your all-local Thanksgiving dinner. You can preorder from Jacob at Windmill Meadows when you pick up your milk.
Russ Anderson at Wicked Oak Farm has lovely pork cuts this week and fresh sausage processed and prepared at the abattoir operated by Joel Salatin in Harrisonburg, Va.
Find out what's happening in Burkewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Both of the above farmers also bring country eggs -- wait till you bake with these.
New Vendors This Week
Max Tyson Jr., who brings wonderful fruit from West Virginia to most of our markets in the area, will step in for Tony Fetters Fruit Farm. He will bring a great selection of apples and Asian pears, greens, and root vegetables -- if they have been able to get to the field to pick them since the storm.
Find out what's happening in Burkewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Vendors With Us This Week
Fabbioli Cellars will be with us this week, and Maria is hoping to have perfected some new treats for the winter market to sell from her Whim Pop cart.
From the Market Master
As the storm was on its way to our area, I was in the kitchen cooking up things in my refrigerator and freezer, assuming that it would be easier to heat soup on our butane cook stove than to make anything from scratch. I also made tomato sauce to have on hand for a variety of uses. I was lucky to have local, grass-fed, meaty soup bones for stock and canned tomatoes (Cento and Muir Glen are my favorite brands) to add flavor and body to the soup.
Once I determined that I had the basics, I started going through the refrigerator for ingredients. Everything I needed for a great soup was right there, and it was all local, from our farmers’ markets. I had onions, carrots, sweet peppers, squash, green beans, turnips, potatoes, lovely fresh shell beans, and even the last of the corn from Saturday’s market. It was some soup, hearty and healthy.
If you have a gas stovetop and oven, you can weather a storm much more easily than those of us with only electric appliances. And anyone who loses power has inexpensive alternatives for cooking. Once you are able to get out of the house, you can run to your nearest Asian grocery store and buy a butane cook stove and four butane canisters for less than $20. It may be a challenge to make soup on a cooktop, but you can always turn it into an indoor family camping adventure. You can make an entire recipe in smaller batches or cook the various ingredients two or three at a time, combine them all and add broth to the veggies as needed to complete the soup for two or ten.
Using your raw ingredients and cooking something that can be kept in a cooler packed in ice will also help to preserve veggies that you might lose otherwise.
If this reaches you too late to help you out this time around, make sure you get one of those cook stoves for the next snowstorm. Our demo chef, Annie Sidley, uses one all the time for her demos, and it’s pretty amazing what she can do with such a small appliance. If she can make stir-fries, soups, and sauces in the middle of a market, you can make them in your kitchen.
Here are some good recipes for cooking in a storm:
See you at the market!
