Goodbye to this blog site..

We are happy to announce that our Farmers Market blog is moving to the main Harrisonburg Farmers Market website. Visit that site to read everything about the Market–history, mission, guidelines, weekly offerings, directions, hours, recipes and of course the latest news. All blog posts will be on the Market Blog page.

This site will be deleted soon. Thanks for reading!

A Tisket, a Tasket, a Market Gift Basket

With all of the statistics showing that buying local is one of the best gifts this Holiday Season, I am pleased to share the following article, submitted by Danny Markley, one of the many wonderful Market customers that I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with as Manager…

Are you looking for some wonderful gifts for your family, friends and co-workers for the Holidays? Look no further than the Harrisonburg Farmers Market. The Market offers a great alternative to the crowds and stress of malls, and your purchases directly support the vendors and the local community. Gifts from your local Market hold a unique appeal for friends and family who live in other areas — they are a thoughtful way to share a small slice of your life in the ‘burg.

Consider filling a holiday gift basket with items found at the Market. You can mix a variety of Market foods and crafts or make a themed gift basket. There is a wide variety of unique handcrafted gift items to choose from and a great selection of local farm products and prepared foods to add to the mix.

A combo gift basket could include fresh pears, cheeses, mini-loaves of baked breads, honey or jam and a wide variety of other items. A spa gift basket might include locally made beeswax candles, soaps and an assortment of lavender products. A kitchen gift basket could be filled with fresh herbs and garlic, a hot sauce assortment and pottery or wooden kitchen utensils. You could even do a pet gift basket with a holiday-themed matching dog collar and scarf, along with some catnip toys and “meow milk” for the felines in the house. You will also find beautiful one-of-a-kind handcrafted cards to add the final personal touch to any gift or basket.

…So give up the stress and big box stores, come on out to the Market, support the local economy and experience the joy of creating a special customized Local Gift Basket that will thrill anyone and everyone on your gift list. Now there is a holiday shopping custom that we can all live with!

-Josie Showalter with thanks to Danny Markley for his contribution.

The Thanksgiving Pie

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and many are planning their annual menu. Turkey may be the star of the Thanksgiving table with the gravy and stuffing in supporting roles, but this is the one holiday where PIE is always part of the grande finale and will almost always guarantee curtain calls.

The pie you serve may come from a yellowed butter-stained index card written in a great grandmother’s spindly handwriting and lovingly baked from scratch, or it can come from a fancy Paris-type patisserie, or even picked up at the last minute from a chain supermarket. This year consider the Market as the pie source for YOUR holiday table. There will be quite a selection, ranging from the traditional pumpkin and pecan pies to chestnut-pumpkin and a whole range of fruit pies. See the special pie showcase below the Weekly Market for more specifics on what will be available.

If you buy your pie from the Market, shake the hand that rolled out the crust for your pie and ask who grew and harvested the apples, pumpkins, sweet potatoes or chestnuts that went into your pie. You will not only have a wonderful pie to top off your meal, but you will feel good about where it came from and what went into it — now there a true Thanksgiving treat!

My personal favorite Thanksgiving pie recipe comes from The Pink Teacup, a former hole-in-the-wall restaurant in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The restaurant has since moved to a fancier location with uptown prices, but this pie recipe remains a constant. Find it below in the recipe section.

~Pamela Bodkin

‘Tis (Almost) the Season!

Halloween and All Saints Day have come and gone; the first snow of the winter is behind us and the Holiday season is almost here. With only two weeks until Thanksgiving, it is time to start planning the Holiday menu(s). Keep the Farmers Market in mind, along with our Valley heritage and traditions as you move into the Holiday Season.

There is so much to behold at the Market, and it is the perfect time to take advantage of the meats, fruits, vegetables, the cool weather varieties (tough there are still some late summer veggies available — like tomatoes and eggplant!), mushrooms, shelf staples (flour and cornmeal), honey, chestnuts and walnuts, dairy products, cheese made from cow and goat milk…some with delicious flavorings like pimento, dill, caraway and so on. Additional vendors round out the pantry with beautiful desserts, artisan breads, cookies, tarts, pies and more. Visit the Market for a pleasant and low-stress Holiday food shopping experience!

~Penelope Ferguson, RD

Cold-Weather Friends

After three inches of snow and bitter winds during last Saturday’s Market, it seems pretty clear that Old Man Winter is on his way to the Valley. Soon, people and animals alike will be hunkering down and bundling up (whether that be with extra clothes, extra fur, or extra holiday pounds!) to make it through the cold days…

But the vendors, staff and volunteers of the Market will continue to brave the elements in order to provide an amazing array of produce, baked goods, meat and dairy, crafts and more each week…just as you, our customers, will be venturing out to shop and connect with friends and neighbors. Unlike many farmers markets, we go year round, and continue to have an impressive variety of products, shifting as the seasons shift — now through the Holiday Market in December, and then the Winter Market January through March…

As I stood under the Pavilion last Saturday, snow blowing into my face and soaking my clothes, I had to smile at the steady flow of customers who stopped by and took advantage of Customer Appreciation Day. Whatever the weather, it is always a reason to be joyful when you see the community coming together like that.

~ Justin Van Kleeck

It’s Time to Celebrate!

We hope you will join us on Saturday for our Annual Fall Celebration and Customer Appreciation Day. We have a whole variety of things planned for the entire family! There will be a scavenger hunt, pumpkin painting and more for the young and young at heart; the JMU Science Station will be back; Dan Easley and Friends will be providing their unique and lively music (weather permitting); and you can enjoy free Classic Carriage rides. While you are out be sure to check out all of the additional festivities going on around Downtown! And for your shopping pleasure you can be sure that the vendors will have many different ways of letting you know how much your support of the Market is appreciated!

Eating Real!

I have spent a fair amount of my time this week planning events, attending meetings and generally working on a number of different things related to Food Day. I was struck earlier today by the very first part of the “Why Eat Real?” pageon the Food Day website. It reads as follows: “Real food tastes great. Meals built around vegetables, fruits, and whole grains are delicious and satisfying.” Sometimes that which is most obvious is what tend to forget or overlook.

One of the things that the Market certainly does for us all is to keep this concept fresh (no pun intended) in our minds! Browsing the current beautiful and delicious array of foods available at the Market will certainly inspire us all to cook and eat real, not to mention making it fun and easy at the same time. Bon appétit!

~Josie Showalter

Buy Fresh in the Fall!

If I had to pick a word to describe fall, I think it would be “crisp.” There is a fresh crispness in the air that is pure autumn, and it seems that many of the flavors and textures that we think of related to this particular season have a certain crispness to them as well. Even the colors are crisp. So throw on a jacket, grab your Market basket and come out Saturday and/or Tuesday to enjoy the fresh Fall air and all of the crispness that the Market has to offer…

Juicy apples and fresh apple cider, crunchy carrots, tangy beets, kale, the late green beans, fall raspberries and much, much more. We may be moving into a new season, but you will be amazed at the fresh, varied, and yes crisp selection you will find at the Market!

~Josie Showalter (with thanks to Penelope Ferguson for inspiration)

In the Kitchen with Penelope: Apples

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This is one of the first rhymes of early folklore medicine that we all learned as children. Just start the words and whoever is near you willingly finishes it for you. In the early days of my career as a dietitian, we had to review the nutrition of an apple; the analysis (pre-1975) was: there is very little nutrition in the apple. Apples contain very little vitamin C and no vitamin A, and are not a source of protein nor of fat. The apple truly scored LOW on the nutrition index. They were thought of as merely crunchy things that were part of our diet. Ho-Hum.

This is not the thought today! We now KNOW that the apple a day does keep the doctor away. The updated rhyme also includes “An apple a day keeps the belly away.” Apples, naturally low in calories, have 5-7 grams of fiber — mostly insoluble fiber (especially with the skin on), which slows the digestive process and gives you a feeling of fullness and satisfaction. Studies suggest that chewing the raw apples also helps curb appetite (as an update, the current number of times to chew a mouthful of food is not 25 times, but 40 times…chomp those teeth). The other fiber is soluble fiber, including pectin. The soluble fibers benefit your blood vessel walls, helping to reduce the risk of heart disease in addition to lowering cholesterol. An apple is a lot of nutrition packed in a small travel package, under 70 calories.

There are so many recipes for apples: raw, cooked and as a secret ingredient in many recipes that call for sweetness. There are hundreds of varieties of apples, each with a special feature: tart, sweet, meaty, firm; those good to cook, to bake, to eat raw; some store well in the root cellar… The list of features is endless. My suggestion is to find a few varieties of apples you like and become comfortable with them; then try a few others and increase your knowledge and abilities with rarer offerings at the Farmers Market.

The simplest recipe is to wash the apple well…then eat raw. If you slice apples to serve as a garnish or just as is, wash, core the apple, then slice into water that you have squeezed a quarter of a lemon or lime in. The water is now called acidulated water, where the acid from the citrus protects the apple flesh from oxidizing or darkening; you can slice apples in advance, refrigerate and use later.

I frequently use apple slices as part of a composed salad and always use Poppy Seed Salad Dressing (recipes below).

Salad
Lay leaf lettuce (or Boston Bibb lettuce) on a salad plate, then top with unpeeled apple slices, add orange or grapefruit sections. Then let your imagination and your pantry be your guide. Chopped walnuts are a nice addition, as are raisins or any dried fruit bits, diced celery and so on. Compose or arrange artfully.

Poppy Seed Salad Dressing
Into a food processor with a steel blade, place 1 thin slice of onion, pulse once or twice. Add 1 teaspoon dry mustard powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar and 1/2 cup sugar (I have also used a lesser amount of honey as a substitute). Blend a few seconds or pulses. With the blade running gradually add 1 cup of peanut oil (or make a blend of peanut oil and canola oil), until you have a thickened emulsified dressing. Add 1-2 tablespoons poppy seeds.

This salad dressing is particularly good on fruit salads (as above) or mixed in a chopped fruit salad or dessert. This refrigerates well for up to a month.

Apples are such a part of my cooking, I sometimes forgets that I “serve” them. Frequently, when I am trying to round out a meal, I will serve them cooked. As the dinner preparation is bustling along; depending on the number of people to serve or the number of apples I need to use up, I get a cast iron skillet, (I have many sizes, even the “baby” cast iron skillet holds 1-2 apples), put some butter or other oil in, slice the apples (always with the skin — I am no longer sure what a “peeled apple” is), add a small amount of sweet, like brown or white sugar or honey or molasses, then a few grains of salt along with a flavoring spice. I put it on very low heat and let them cook and reduce down until ready to serve. If I am fixing an oven meal, I do the same thing with the cast iron skillet and in to the oven it goes. This apple mixture is such that almost any oven temperature is okay. I have had them slow bake with a temperature of 250°F to a higher temp of 425°F…just being economical and using the oven fully.

If you are new to cooking and trying to learn things, like oven temperature and how long it takes things to cook…and most of all smelling and seeing how things respond to a slow oven or a quick oven, this oven style of apple preparation is wonderful. When my boys were smaller and we were experimenting in the kitchen, it was difficult to explain the flavors of spices such as cinnamon, allspice, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and so on; that is when I would use the cooked apples as the basis to let them learn the flavors. We would flavor with only cinnamon one time, the next would be nutmeg, and so on, until we had exhausted the spice pantry with flavor trials; by the time you added types of sugars and adding raisins AND types of apples, you can see we ate a lot of apples. It was a good example of science experimentation, recording our results, being in the kitchen and sharing the family moments. I believe the heart of the home is in the kitchen, and what better way to share slow cooking with the future generations.

Penelope Ferguson
Nutrition of the Shenandoah
© October 2011

It’s a Whole New Market!

t’s beginning to be that time of year again… The trees are starting to show off their fall colors, there is a hint of a chill in the air, and  tomatoes are giving way to pumpkins at the Market. Chestnuts, sweet potatoes and all varieties of winter squash are appearing along with cole and root crops and fall perennials. The face of the Market will continue changing from week to week as we transition from summer to fall and then on to the Holiday and Winter Markets. Summer vendors will disappear and year-round vendors will be bringing out their fall and winter crops along with their winter coats and gloves.

Please bear with us during this seasonal transition and ask if you do not see the particular vendor that you are looking for — they may be out for the year or they may have shifted to a different spot to fill in summer blanks. You can think of it as a whole new Market to explore, because in many ways it is just that!