Join Us at the Farm-to-Street Party on July 21st!

FARM-TO-STREET PARTY!

Saturday, July 21
1-7 p.m.
$15 (includes four $2.50 tickets for food/drink and beer garden)
1300-1400 V Street NW, Washington, DC 20009

Please join us at the second annual Farm-to-Street Party being held in the awesome U Street neighborhood! Enjoy scrumptious dishes made with fresh ingredients from local farms, drink local craft beer and wine, shop local retailers and take craft food classes in the pop-up park. Entertainment will by provided by musicians via Listen Local First!

Here’s a taste of the great businesses that will be there:

13th Street Meats featuring Ben’s Chilibowl    |   Busboys and Poets  |   Clean Currents   |   The Diner  |   Eagle Bank  |   Eatonville  |   Flavor Magazine   |   Goldilocks Goodies
Herban Lifestyle   |   Local 16  |   operation:eatery |  Ripple  |   Sonoma Wine Bar  |   Sweetgreen  |   Tevolution  |   United Tables   |   Whisked!  |   Zipcar DC  |   Arden Jewelry Design  | Coastal Nut Company   |   Dreaming Out Loud, Inc.  |   Gouter   |  Just Peachy Organics  |  Kew Park Farm  | Langdon Wood   |  Live Green  |   Logan Hardware  | Loulies |  Mid City Businesses  | MTO Kombucha, LLC  |  My Great Garden|  Neighborhood Farm Initiative|   Pawgevity  |   Penn Quarter Bodega  | Pleasant Pops  | Prospect Solar, LLC  | Route 11 |  Rutabaga Sweets  |  Scout Mob DC  |  Seasonal Pantry  |   Slow Food DC  |  Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative  |  Waldo, Sluggo & Me  |  YB Green

Beer garden:
The Pug featuring DC Brau, Chocolate City and 3 Stars Brewery.

Music by:
Flo Anito   |   Justin Trawick with Drummer Duo  | Bumper Jackson  | Lucky Dub Trio 

CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS!

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Our New Brick and Mortar Friend: The Local Market

The Local Market opened less than a month ago in Falls Church, VA. The store features locally produced breads, dairy products, sausages, condiments and in-season fruits and vegetables from farms within a 100-mile radius of the store. The owners, husband and wife team Tom and Laura Coates, came up with the idea after missing too many Saturday mornings at the town’s award winning farmers market, due to their children’s sports commitments. The Local Market is open 7 days a week from 9am to 8pm, so people like me who also often miss the farmers market (due to travel or oversleeping) can have access to all the great produce, dairy products, fresh bread and more any time it’s convenient. I have been wishing for a store like this since I moved to this area, so I was thrilled when two different friends told me that it was coming to town.

In addition to being a great place to do my grocery shopping, it is the first retail outlet near me to carry my full line of bath and body products, so I love The Local Market even more than I would have!

image copyright The Falls Church News Press

The local press has already given it some great coverage, and word-of-mouth news about the new neighborhood gem has been spreading like wildfire. I believe this store is a place whose time has come, so not only are they going to make it, but I believe it will thrive.

So, if you are in town, I hope you’ll stop by The Local Market at 246 West Broad Street, Falls Church VA 22046.

Mmmmm…Yard Salad: As Local As It Gets

The Salad, before dressing was added

Yesterday I created a salad made from ingredients that are as local as they get. Each of the ingredients originated on my property – either our month-old garden, or from wild plants.

I was able to harvest a cup full of arugula from the garden, and a few marigold flowers. For the bulk of the salad, though, I turned to the wild plants in my yard.

My newly discovered favorite, garlic mustard (Alliaria Petiolata), provided a very nice mustard-green-and-garlic flavor to the salad. I included both the heart-shaped leaves and the petite white flowers in the salad.

garlic mustard - a very yummy weed

It is a highly invasive plant, which can be harvested throughout the year. It grew in abundance on my property in Connecticut – if only I had known then how delicious it is!  In my area of the country, garlic mustard will flower from April to June. After that, the plant goes to seed.

Besides being delicious, renowned ethnobotanist Jim Duke (in his book, Handbook of Edible Weeds) points out that it is a highly nutritious plant, containing twice the betacarotene of spinach, as well as the cancer preventive constituents of both garlic and mustard.

I also included some young dandelion leaves. I have long avoided eating dandelion because I disliked the bitter taste, but I found that including a small amount of young leaves added a nice bite to the salad, along with plenty of nutritional value. Euell Gibbons, in his book Stalking the Wild Asparagus, recommends using leaves from dandelions before they have produced flower stalks.

Garden herbs

I topped off the salad with a delicious vinaigrette, made with a blend of fresh herbs from my herb garden, and a few violets for color. Here is the vinaigrette recipe:
1/4 cup chopped fresh herbs (I used rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano and parsley)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon of prepared mustard
2 garlic cloves, crushed
a pinch of sea salt
a dash of freshly ground pepper

Whisk all of the ingredients together, then pour over salad. It tastes best if prepared a couple of hours ahead of time to allow the flavors to blend.

our nascent garden

Please Note: Make sure not to use any plants that have been exposed to chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. And if you are harvesting wild plants, only use those that are at least 8 feet from the road in order to avoid potential chemical runoff.

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