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Health & Fitness

Smart Markets: Food as Good Medicine

Honeycrisp and Gala apples and yellow Asian pears are all at the market this week.

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

Vendors With Us This Week

Celeste will be with us with honey, jellies, handmade soaps, and of course her llama wool. Time to start working on those holiday knitting projects! She will also have the full line of Fabbioli wines.

And Maria will be here with her fabulous Whim Pops. Bring a cooler and take some home to enjoy her seasonal specialties all winter long.

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Vendors Absent This Week

Deepa of Aromatic Spice Blends will return next week with a demo of her favorite Indian recipes from her own cookbook! As soon as she provides a menu, we will post it on our website and Facebook page.

On the Way In and Out

Honeycrisp apples are here and just as crisp and juicy as always. Except for hailstorms, the weather can’t do much to ruin a Honeycrisp apple. Tyson Farms is also bringing Galas, which are the perfect lunchbox apple -- just the right size and kid-friendly. And this week yellow Asian pears are joining the brown ones -- try both to see which you like best. They are great served with pork or chicken -- they hold their shape well when sautéed or braised. Bartletts are coming next week. Here is a delicious recipe that uses Asian pears.

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Stock up now on tomatoes for canning and peaches for canning or freezing. I am finally going to make my favorite peach dessert before the season ends -- hope you like it, too!

This Week at the Market

Think about buying local for your holiday weekend activities. Come to the market and see what’s available; check out the recipe table if you need to and then do your shopping. Let us know how close you come to an all-local feast.

From the Market Master

Dear Shopper,

One of the many newsletters that I read on your behalf as well as mine arrived in the mail yesterday. I realized while reading it that my involvement with farmers’ markets and the changes we have made in our diet because of that has altered my view of what I see on the news and read in these newsletters.

The example at hand is the September issue of the Harvard Women’s Health Watch. Articles are available online only to subscribers, so unfortunately I can’t link to them here.

The front-page story is all about the danger of red meat. There is nothing really new here, but the story is based on a recent report by doctors at the Harvard School of Public Health. The report links the consumption of red meat to earlier death rates but never makes clear what is an acceptable amount to eat, and they admit they don’t know. What they do know is that red meat is high in saturated fat, cholesterol, and a form of iron that is not good for us. The story then suggests substituting chicken, nuts, and fish.

Nowhere in the story is there any mention of grass-fed beef, which is found most often at farmers’ markets but in grocery stores as well. Where have these doctors been? Was no doctor or technician working on this report who had heard about the significant differences between grass-fed, free-range beef and the beef they examined? Regardless, if you are looking for alternative protein sources, you can get chicken and fresh beans at our market.

I also learned that my “apple a day” piece last week was right on! The Harvard newsletter says that “an apple a day -- plus a walk -- might contribute to a longer life.” Boiled down, the recommendation an older women in particular is to add a piece of fruit or a vegetable to her daily diet and to get out for a 30-minute walk most days of the week. Make that fruit a good apple (or Asian pear, now in season) from the farmers’ market, and you are halfway there.

Even if those apples cost a little more at the market, remember that unable huge corporate farms, our farmers cannot absorb the loss of a third of their crop to a hailstorm, as the Tysons suffered this year. And crop subsidies don’t cover their losses; they just go without that expected income when they lose crops to drought, a deluge, or a swarm of stink bugs. Besides, local apples taste so much better, maybe you will want to eat one every day. If you pay a higher price, it is the cost of staying healthy.

The Harvard newsletter also contained an article about what you can eat to minimize the need for vitamin D and calcium supplements. Yogurt is a great source of calcium, and you can buy the best yogurt around at most of our farmers’ markets. Cheddar cheese and kale are other good sources of calcium, and milk and yogurt are also mentioned as good sources of Vitamin D. Several of our markets carry all of those products.

The inveterate market shoppers among you might have picked up on these same things, but can you remember when you wouldn’t have? When the farmers’ market in your neighborhood was not even on your radar or weekly agenda? A weekly commitment to buying local will change your life and your viewpoint. And that’s a good thing!

See you at the market!

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