This Week at Smart Markets Springfield Farmers' Market

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We will introduce you this week to your new market manager, Miriam Gribble, who comes to us after a 35-year career with two local school systems. We figure that if she can work with children and families, she can handle just about anything a farmers’ market might throw at her. We know we have great vendors and wonderful shoppers, so she will be fine. Please feel free to approach her with any questions or complaints or just to let her know that you have an idea for getting the word out about the market.

We do need to learn more about what is going on in your community so that we can be there when appropriate to represent Smart Markets. We are ready to go if there is a school function, church fair, or any kind of outreach operation. And we are happy to provide brochures to any group that will pass them out for us.

This week we are celebrating the tomato because our farmers are finally loaded down with them: all varieties including some very reasonably priced and delicious heirlooms. If you are canning them at home, ask the farmers about the seconds that they sort through during the market or that they can save throughout the week to bring you the following week. You can get a good deal on a box of the riper tomatoes that may have a few bruises, which can be easily cut out for canning. Think also about making your own simple tomato sauce that you can preserve by canning or freezing to enjoy all winter. You can even try drying split plum tomatoes in a very slow oven for a long time to add intense tomato flavor to lots of winter recipes. We will have recipes for you at the Smart Markets tent.

Uncle Fred’s BBQ is with us every week now, so you can plan ahead and buy on Saturday morning for a picnic or party that evening. He accepts preorders, and it’s a good idea to make one; he can sell out of ribs and brisket early in the market. It will take him a few weeks to gauge demand. Here’s his menu for your reference.

I can’t wait to see what our bakers have for us this week. We will let you know on Facebook ahead of time. You can also order ahead from Kylie’s Pop Shop, Soul Cakes by Tanya or Delicias del Sur. All three live in the area and will be happy to deliver.

Come for the food and have fun at the market this week; bring the children and let them sample. You will be amazed at what they will try and learn to like along the way.

See you at the market!

From the Market Master

The June issue of Smithsonian magazine featured a number of good articles about food and our appreciation of it. One article in particular reviewed the recent scientific study of how cooked food has helped the human brain develop and how it can aid our good health and good sense today.

Our bodies get much more out of the calories in cooked food than in raw food. A raw-food diet, which of course is also going to be a vegan diet, will contribute to weight loss but will also contribute to the loss of essential nutrients that our body needs to remain healthy over a long life. (Raw fruit is healthy, however, because it evolved to feed animals.) There seems to be a correlation between the discovery of fire, its use to cook food, the subsequent transition to meat-eating, and the growth of the brain as humans evolved. As Adler concludes, “The great apes spent four to seven hours a day just chewing, not an activity that prioritizes the intellect.”

There was also an interesting article about how we develop likes and dislikes for foods. And there’s a discussion between Ruth Reichl and Michael Pollan. Reichl recalled her decision as the last editor of Gourmet magazine to run a story about tomato farming in Florida. It caused tremendous angst among editorial staffers but also led to changes in Florida law that had permitted virtual slavery in the tomato fields.

We need to see more of that kind of journalism, and more of Pollan and others, online and disseminated via social media. How else will our young people catch on to the “food revolution?” Jamie Oliver makes good use of technology, but we are going to need more apostles and more of them using social media. One great article will not make a ripple without more stones being thrown into the water by lots of us standing on shore.

Photo by Sarah Sertic