In preparation for our week away, the Boy and I headed to the Arlington Farmers Market on Saturday to stock up on grill worthy foods.  Since we knew the cabin had both a gas and charcoal grill, we pretty much knew we’d be throwing everything we could on the grill.  With that in mind, our first stops were at EcoFriendly Foods and Smith Meadows Farm to pick up some meats!

EcoFriendly Foods is one of the best known meat vendors on the East Coast.  Known for their humane and conscientious methods of raising animals and their committment to providing quality meats to their customers, EcoFriendly Foods has become a nationally recognized meat supplier.  Bev Eggleston, its founder, was even featured in Gourmet magazine recently, bringing even more attention to the cause of responsible meat production.  I’ve shopped at EcoFriendly Food’s tent numerous times but I’ve never actually met Bev himself until I stopped by on Saturday.  I was looking around for bacon and before I knew it, Bev was in front of me and trying to help us find what we wanted.  He noticed the Boy’s unique Batman shirt and immediately started laughing.  There was a light banter back and forth as we tried to decide what else we wanted.  Bev was more than happy to offer suggestions and tell us about his products.  Bev’s easy nature and willingness to talk with his customers about his meats and how their raised (and slaughtered) completely embodies the reason I love to shop at farmers markets.  I listened to his suggestion and grabbed a package of bacon.  Since I wanted to try grilling pizza again, we opted to add some of their sweet Italian sausage to the bacon before moving along.  Sure Bev accused me of being a shameless flirt (I’m just Southern…Southern girls are friendly) but it was all in jest and I walked away with a smile on my face.

I’ll be honest, after picking up two NY Strips from Smith Meadows Farm (of course we’re going to grill up some steaks, did you have any doubt we wouldn’t?), it became a haze of produce and people.  The markets are always buzzing this time of year and with so many fruits and vegetables to choose from, you start to go into a shoppers haze.  Yes, I do need all of this corn you tell yourself as you pick up ear after ear of sweet corn.  It’s in season, so of course you should indulge!  Peaches were everywhere and I happily helped myself to a few pounds of the sweet ones, with the intent on making some peach jam and grilling some of them too in a cast iron skillet (a trick I wasn’t sure would work…but I was willing to try).  Toigo Orchard’s peaches were big and beautiful (both the freestone and white variety were for sale) and I couldn’t resist.  To go with the grilled peaches, I picked up some vanilla ricotta from Blue Ridge Dairy (vanilla ricotta could easily mask any grilling disaster, right?).

While I was at Blue Ridge, I picked up a ball of their fresh and applewood smoked mozzarella for the pizzas.  I knew I wanted to top my pizza with some carmelized onions and mushrooms, so I picked up the beauties above and some mushrooms from Mother Earth Organic mushrooms.  And since it was my vacation, I decided to buy some tomato sauce instead of slaving over a hot stove whipping up my own.  So we stopped by Cavanna Pasta to get a couple of containers of their Pommorola sauce, a simple, smooth tomato sauce accented with garlic. We were encouraged to add some fresh herbs to the sauce to give the pizza an added depth.  This of course naturally led me to Red Rake Farm, which had a plethora of fresh herbs for sale, including some wonderfully fragrant basil.  I also picked up some chives and garlic for the skillet red potatoes dish I planned to improvise on the grill (noticing a theme of improvisation and grill work going on here?).

Before we left, we stopped by a stand that was loaded down with samples of buffalo steak mini sandwiches.  I learned the stand was for Willow Restaurant, a self described continental restaurant headed by Tracy O’Grady and Kate Jansen.  Willow, known for using fresh, local and in season products, sets up every Saturday at Arlington Farmers Market offering samples and restaurant related giveaways.  On Saturday, they were using some of Cibola Farm‘s tender buffalo steaks atop a seasonal sauce (that I believe included tomatoes…but I was a bit too enraptured of the sandwich to ask many questions) for toasted sandwiches.  The sandwiches were so tasty, it almost made us rethink our entire menu to make room for buffalo steak.  But our bags were getting full and the sandwiches only highlighted how hungry we were.  We had everything we needed for our vacation, so before I bought any more produce, we headed off in search of breakfast.

The Arlington Farmers Market is located right next to the Arlington Courthouse parking lot, adjacent to the Courthouse metro station.  It’s open every Saturday from 8 am to noon!

I didn’t want to leave Market Week without sharing this amazingly simple but oh so delicious treat!  But sadly, my writing mojo is seriously lacking today (okay, all of my mojo is lacking today…people, I wore TWO DIFFERENT shoes around my office for an hour today before noticing my mistake).  So instead, I will let my pictures do the talking! I want to thank Kelly over at eat make read for hosting this wonderful event! Check out her site for links to other bloggers who participated in Market Week or hop over to the Market Week Flickr page! 

Fresh milk from a local creamery!

Vanilla Ricotta Cheese from Blue Ridge Dairy: YUMMMMMMM!!!! You can eat it simply with fresh berries!

Place 8 ounces of the vanilla ricotta in a mixing bowl and get out your trusty whisk!

I honestly didn’t use cups to measure out the ingredients, so just add heavy cream and some milk (use more heavy cream then milk) to the ricotta.  Whisk until you have a yogurt like consistency.  Add only about 1/4 cup of sugar…taste to see if it’s sweet enough for you.  If it is, refrigerate the mixture for at least an hour.  Then follow your ice cream machine’s instructions!  For the blueberry sauce, I simply placed one cup of fresh blueberries in a saucepan with about a tablespoon of sugar (add more sugar if you like your sauces very sweet).  I then heated up the berries and sugar over medium high heat until the berries released some of their juices and it thickened to my liking.  Scoop, sauce and enjoy!  This is the perfect Summer treat and it was easy as pie to make.  Have a good weekend and check out a local farmers market!

On Saturday morning, the Boy and I headed out to the Falls Church Farmers Market to pick up provisions for the week.  Hitting up one of the many DC area farmers markets has become a weekend ritual for us.  But our trip Saturday took on special purpose because of my participation in Market Week.  I almost always bring along my camera to take pictures at the farmers market (so much so I’ve become known as “the camera girl” at Panorama Bread at the 14^th & U farmers market).  So it was second nature to bring it along this time.  Considering how often I have taken pictures at markets, you’d think this would have been a breeze, right?  Uhmmmm, no.  In typical Shaw Girl “let me find a way to screw this up” fashion, I took all of my pictures in the manual mode.  Ughhhh.  That lovely picture of blueberries perfectly bathed in the Saturday sun?  A blur of blue and light…overexposed to a fault.  The pictures of the treats on display by the new dog treat baker?  I can’t even identify what shape the biscuits are in, let alone the name of the vendor (so sorry).  And I didn’t realize this mistake while I was at the market…oh no!  I didn’t notice this until I was going through my pictures at home.  I was crushed, especially since Market Week has its own Flickr group.  But I managed to salvage a few of the pictures (thank you iPhoto), showing off just a hint of the goodness evident at the market.

Saturday in DC was gorgeous…a sunny day with low humidity.  And considering DC is on a swamp, low humidity days in July are few and far between.  When we arrived at the market, there were already people sitting on blankets in the grass, eating some of their purchases.  I hadn’t been to the Falls Church farmers market since late Winter, so I was surprised at how much it had grown.  Not only was there a local wine vendor, there was also a new artisanal ice cream and gelato vendor as well!  You really could do all of your grocery shopping at this one market:  milk and cream from J. Wen Farmers & Dairy; meats from Cibola or Smith Meadows Farms; endless amounts of fruits and vegetables; breads and baked goods from Atwater’s, Bonaparte or the Bread House; snacks of salsas, dips and hummus from Wisteria Gardens; the aforementioned frozen treats of Dolzecca Gelato and Sinplicity Ice Cream (a new addition to the market); pastas from Cavanna Pasta and Smith Meadows Farms…the list goes on and on!  I was actually a bit dazed at all of the options and didn’t want to leave.  I could have stopped at every booth, I was so entranced (okay maybe I did).

Although I was ecstatic to see all the new vendors, I was even happier to see that the market hadn’t lost its friendliness.  The vendors love to talk with the customers, offering samples and giving cooking suggestions.  They freely answer all of your questions about their farm and their farming methods.  And trust me, this is information you won’t find at Safeway (if you can even find an employee willing to answer a question).  This is the connection of people with their food at its purest sense.  There isn’t a middle man between you and the farmer who is growing or raising your food.  Every week, I have a conversation with the people responsible for what I eat and to me that is priceless.

Even though there were a lot of new vendors I was dying to try, I did show a measure of restraint in my purchases.  I stuck (more or less) to the list of things I knew I wanted to pick up:  eggplant, Summer squash, onions and cheese for a veggie quesadilla; tomatillos and jalapeños for salsa verde; tomatoes, basil and mozzarella for a pizza; blueberries for pie, muffins and various other products to fuel my blueberry addiction; Blue Ridge Dairy’s vanilla ricotta for a homemade ricotta ice cream and peaches for snacking.  There were a few other things I picked up that weren’t really on the list, including an aged Gouda from Fields of Grace farm and a bunch of pastas from Cavanna (one of my favorite local sources of pasta).   All and all, it was a fantastic haul, which tested my arm strength.

Falls Church Farmers Market is open every Saturday from 8 am to 12 noon during the Summer market (May 2^nd to December 26^th) and from 9 am to 12 noon during the Winter market (January 3^rd to April 25^th).  The market is located at 300 Park Avenue in Falls Church, Virginia and is somewhat accessible from the East Falls Church Farmers market (it’s a slight walk but not too bad).

I was lucky enough to get out of work early this afternoon, so I headed over to Penn Quarter Farmers Market.  My co-worker James was along for the ride, as he wanted to pick up a few things for himself.  I had a list of things I wanted, including the new Ricotta Vanigla from Blue Ridge Dairy and blueberries (oh how I love blueberries) for a weekend batch of crepes.  But as often happens whenever I shop hungry, I ended up with a bit more than what was on my list.  And thus this quick, yet delicious pasta dish was created.

Even if I plan on going to a Saturday farmers market, I always make a trip to Penn Quarter on Thursdays after work to pay homage to Red Apron Butchery.  Chef Nathan Anda’s created quite a buzz around his house cured meats and the bacon alone lives up to all the hype.  I could easily shovel it down by the package full and have been known to steal a piece or two from the Boy’s plate (hey, if you’re going to leave bacon unattended in my presence, you suffer the consequences).  And don’t get me started on his hot dogs!  When I saw he had prosciutto last week, I snapped it up without even thinking twice…and wasn’t disappointed.  The prosciutto was a wonderful mixture of salt and pork goodness without any distracting spices to confuse the natural flavors of the cured meat.  So it was no surprise that I was back at the Red Apron tent this week, asking if there was anymore prosciutto.  Nathan pointed to a bin near the cash box, saying they only had 2 packages that week.  Being the greedy, evil child that I am, I bought both packages (and thanked my lucky stars I got there early enough to get them).

I continued on my merry way to pick up the rest of the items on my list but was heartbroken to find out Blue Ridge didn’t have any Ricotta Vanigla.  The vanilla infused ricotta was a fairly new item for Blue Ridge Dairy and I was curious to try it as a crepe filling.  To console myself, I got some crimini mushrooms to go with the prosciutto, along with an onion from Mountain View Farms and a big bulb of fresh garlic from another stand (there is never a sign but I always have a lovely conversation with the lady who runs it).  I made a pit stop at Cowgirl Creamery for a block of their Parmigiano Reggiano and some linguine and then headed home to experiment.

While I was being jerked about on the Metro (gotta love that manual operation) on the way home, the idea of a creamy mushroom sauce came about.  By the time I made it to the house, the entire recipe had been formed and I got to work almost immediately (hunger is a strong motivator…and a bitch until satisfied).  After reading the directions on the back of the Pasta Abruzzese, I opted to follow their suggestion and toss the pasta with cheese before adding the sauce.  When all was said and done (a mere 35 minutes later), I had an amazingly simple but flavorful dinner.  And a nice glass of Sangria to toast my success (it’s a holiday weekend…I can drink on a Thursday night).

Linguine with Creamy Mushroom Sauce and Prosciutto (4 servings)

1-16 ounce package linguine

1 container crimini mushrooms, sliced

1 large clove of garlic, diced

1 small onion, chopped

8 ounces prosciutto, sliced lengthwise (I simply shredded mine with my hands)

1 tablespoon butter

1/4 to 1/2 cup heavy cream

Salt and pepper to taste

Approximately 1/2 cup Parmigiano Reggiano, shredded

Bring a large pot of water to boil, salt it liberally and add the linguine.  While the pasta is cooking, get started on the sauce.  Make sure to stir the pasta periodically to prevent it from burning and clumping up.

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium high heat and add the garlic.  Cook for about 2 minutes, or until the garlic takes on a golden hue.  Add the onions and cook until soft before tossing in the mushrooms.  Stirring constantly, allow the mushrooms to reduce and release their juices into the butter.  Start slowly pouring in the heavy cream, adding enough to cover the bottom of the pan.  If you like a thinner sauce, use closer to 1/2 cup of cream.  If you like a thicker sauce, use closer to 1/4 cup of cream.  Continue stirring the sauce, allowing it to thicken slightly.  Once it reaches your desired consistency, remove the sauce from the heat.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Drain the pasta and pour it into a bowl.  Add the grated cheese and toss.  Add the shredded prosciutto in four batches, tossing the pasta after each batch is added.  Add most of the mushroom sauce, reserving a bit to top the pasta.  Toss the pasta once more, making sure the sauce evenly coats everything.  Serve with a small spoonful of the reserved sauce on top (and a grating of the cheese if you wish…which I usually do).

Anyone who knows me knows my love of farmers markets.  So this Winter season has been pretty tough for me to take.  Although I found some new gems during my writing for DCFoodies (including the Falls Church Farmers Market…if you haven’t been, go next Saturday!), I have been longing for the days of Spring and all the berries, peppers and tomatoes it has to offer.  So I was quite excited to see the market re-opening schedule posted at FreshFarm Markets site this morning as I was waiting for my popovers to bake (more on those later).  With a little more digging, I came up with a pretty decent list of the opening dates for farmers markets in and around DC.  And my mother always encouraged me to share, so read on!

Farmers Market Opening Dates (subject to change – UPDATED):

*NOTE:  This list provides opening dates for farmers markets that are not open year round.  This is not a comprehensive list of farmers markets in the DC area.  For that, you can visit this website (although the opening dates on this site are for the 2008 Market Season)*

April 1: Foggy Bottom Market, Wednesdays 2:30-7pm – I Street between New Hampshire and 24th Street, NW

April 2: Penn Quarter Market, Thursdays 3-7pm – North end of 8th St. NW, between D and E Streets NW

April 5: Dupont Circle Market returns to its Spring/Summer hours, Sundays  9am-1pm – In the 1500 block of 20th St., between Massachusetts Ave. and Q St

April 11: Del Ray Farmers Market (Alexandria, Virginia), Saturdays 8am-12 noon- Corner of Oxford and Mount Vernon Avenues

April 18: St. Michaels Market, Saturdays 8:30-11:30am – Muskrat Park on the St. Michaels Harbor, at Willow and Green Streets, one block from Talbot Street

April 18: Silver Spring, Saturdays 9am-1pm – Ellsworth Drive between Fenton Street and Georgia Avenue

April 25th: Chevy Chase, Saturdays 9am-1pm – Grounds of Lafayette Elementary School at the corner of Broad Branch Road and North Hampton Street

May 2: H Street NE, Saturdays 9am-12noon- 624 H Street NE

May 2: Mount Pleasant Farmers Market, Saturdays 9am-1 pm – 3200 Mount Pleasant St. NW

• Mount Pleasant Farmers Market has added four new vendors to their market:
• Cherry Glen – Goat cheese
• Groff’s Content Farm – lamb, beef, eggs
• Painted Hand – veal, goat, and butter
• Atwater Bakery – breads, muffins, scones, cookies

May 3: Annapolis, MD, Sundays 8am-12 noon – Donner Parking Lot, Compromise St., on the Harbor in Downtown Annapolis

May 5: USDA Farmers Market at the Department of Transportation, Tuesdays 10am-2pm – 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE

May 5: Mount Vernon Farmers Market, Tuesdays 8am-12noon – Sherwood Regional Library, 2501 Sherwood Hall Lane

May 5: Fairfax Farmers Market, Tuesdays 8am-12noon – Van Dyck Park on Old Lee Highway

May 7: Herndon Farmers Market, Thursdays 8am-12noon – 777 Lynn Street (Old Town Herndon)

May 7: Annandale Farmers Market, Thursdays 8am-12noon – Mason District Park (6621 Columbia Pike) in Annandale

May 8: McLean Farmers Market, Fridays 8:30am-12:30pm – Lewinsville Park (1659 Chain Bridge Rd) in McLean

May 8: Kingstown Farmers Market, Fridays 4pm-7pm – Kingstowne Town Center (near the Sunoco Gas Station) off of Kingstowne Boulevard in Alexandria

May 9: Reston Farmers Market, Saturdays 8am-12noon – Lake Anne Village Center in Reston, Virginia (on Village Road between Wiehle Ave. and Reston Pkwy)

May 12: Crystal City Farmers Market (NEW MARKET), Tuesdays 3pm-7pm – Crystal Dr. between 18th and 20th St.

May 16: Rockville Farmers Market, Saturdays 9am-1pm – Corner of Route 28 and Monroe St.

June 3rd: Rockville Farmers Market at Rockville Town Center, Wednesdays 11am-2pm – Rockville Town Center at East Montgomery Ave.

June 5th: USDA Farmers Market, Fridays 10am-2pm – 12th St. and Independence Ave. SW

June 6: Baltimore (Harbor East), Saturdays 8am to 12 noon – 1000 Lancaster St. between South Exeter St. and Central Ave., on the Inner Harbor

I am still researching the opening dates of more DC area farmers markets and will update as I find out more information.  In the meantime, head over to DCFoodies.com for my interview with FreshFarm Market’s Liz Falk!

UPDATE:  I spoke with  Esther Siegel from the Adams Morgan Farmers Market and was told there are still shares available for the Licking Creek Bend Farm CSA!  She provided me with the CSA flyer, sign up sheet and CSA crop schedule for the season.  I have yet to figure out how to upload these files to my blog (don’t judge), so if you’d like information, please email me!