This Week at our Oakton Market
Saturday 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
2854 Hunter Mill Rd.
Map

On the Way In and Out

This is the last week for peaches, but we should see Bartlett pears at Tyson’s where Fuji apples will join the Galas and Honeycrisps. The brown and yellow Asian pears will be around for a while, so you have some time to try them out this year in a number of new recipes.

Broccoli and Brussels sprouts are in, as are cabbage and fall greens. Heritage Farm is still bringing those great fresh “shell” beans that have so many uses -- soups, salads and stews -- to provide lots of nutrients and protein in a vegetarian meal. Many of those bean recipes also make great lunchbox meals.

Special Events This Week

Deepa of Aromatic Spice Blends will present a cooking demo, showing you how to prepare tomato chutney with dates and her spice seed mix, pasta salad with available vegetables and her Mezzogiorno blend with fresh basil and tomatoes, and a peach and chai spice dessert.

This Week at the Market

Just a reminder to think outside the lunchbox this year. If you have been buying local all summer, there is no need to back off that commitment now. You can fill a lunchbox with great choices from the market.

And how about a plan to think soup for fall and winter? We have cold soup recipes at our table now and will add some hot soups that can be packed for lunch. Some can even be drunk from a thermos. With a small sandwich, veggies and hummus, or another dip you make yourself, you can create a healthy lunch that only needs an apple or applesauce to round it out.

From the Market Master

Dear Shopper,

I have recently read a book by journalist Barry Estabrook titled Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. The book expands on a 2009 story in Gourmet by Estabrook that revealed that tomatoes being grown in this country by corporate farms were essentially being picked by slave labor.

The book, published last year, details numerous offenses by the tomato industry, including how they have genetically altered tomatoes to accommodate shipping needs. Estabrook also discusses how tomatoes are grown and picked for shipping and what happens to them on the way to their destinations. It is more than anyone who buys tomatoes outside of a farmers’ market would want to know. And it made me angry, and pessimistic about whether the situation will improve. The details are appalling. Estabrook makes it clear that enforcement of existing laws and regulations to prevent the abuses is not working and probably never will.

The publication of the book brought additional attention to the situation in Florida, and more levels of enforcement were mobilized. But it seems now that the effort that really produced results was a grass-roots partnership between the workers themselves and their outraged supporters in Florida and elsewhere. Just this past Sunday, an op-ed in The Washington Post cited some hope of seeing an end to these horrible living and working conditions. It will be interesting to see what happens next.

I am not going to quote from the articles or the book -- you can read as much as you want by clicking on the links above. And within the Gourmet article, you will find other links that may inspire you, but will also give you pause when you shop next at the grocery store. If big-time growers can get away with this kind of operation in the U.S., just imagine how easy it is for them to undermine laws in other countries.

This story also gives us one more reason to ponder the dynamic of organic versus local. Can you trust that a tomato or a peach or a cantaloupe picked on an “organic” farm in Mexico is even really grown organically? Who is watching those farm operations? And what kind of power do the workers have to enforce the laws of their land or the requirements of an American distributor?

Please read these two pieces and pick up the book if you want to know more -- it will make you cringe. It will also make it hard for you to buy a winter tomato in the grocery store this December.

See you at the market!