This Week at the Smart Markets Lorton Farmers' Market

This Week at Our Reston Market
Wednesday 3–7 p.m.
12001 Sunrise Valley Dr.
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This Week at the Market

This is our last week with the hours of 3:30–7 p.m. Next week we will cut back to 3–6 p.m. in order to manage through the time change.

Chester Hess is still bringing those wonderful Honeycrisp apples and now has Staymans, too, which are my favorites for everything. Remember to include the Staymans in your Healthy Homemade Applesauce.

And now is the time for those Celtic Pasties -- for lunch or dinner with a lovely winter salad, they are just the ticket on a crisp fall day. Try an Apple, Pear and Cheddar Salad with Pecans; a Roasted Squash Salad with Bacon and Pumpkin Seeds; or Field Greens with Roasted Bacon-Wrapped Pears. We also will have copies of these recipes at the Smart Markets tent.

Vendors With Us This Week

The Divine Wood-Fired Pizza ladies will be back with us this week; they had an out-of-town wedding to cater last week.

Vendors Absent This Week

No Uncle Fred this week -- he is on vacation and will return next week and hopes to come every week from then on.

From the Market Master

Dear Shopper,

I was planning to talk about the great meals we enjoyed this past Sunday, all local and homemade. But I changed my mind after thinking a little more about a conversation I had with my 13-year-old granddaughter, Louisa.

Louisa had mentioned several weeks ago that at lunchtime at school one day, she was hassled about rarely eating fast food. She told her friends that she hadn’t eaten at most of the restaurants they had been to. While she did enjoy the occasional visit to McDonald’s when she was younger, she couldn’t comment on any other than Subway and Taco Bell. She said this past weekend that the subject of her eating habits came up a second time, but she felt proud to have held her own while reminding her friends that she will be healthier all her life because she knows what and how to eat.

Those of us who send kids to school with healthy lunches and a healthy attitude toward their own food choices are sending them to the front lines of this food fight. They need to make sure that they are not just feeding them well but preparing them to do battle.

We should discuss our menu choices openly and make sure that children are involved at an early age in the family’s commitment to a healthier lifestyle. If you have kids, take them shopping with you, to the market and to the grocery store, and let them help choose their favorites or even something new each trip to feel a part of the plan. And bring them into the kitchen, too. Even if you have overcome all the TV ads and peer pressure to raise kids who know what to eat and why, please spend a little extra time to educate them and help them feel proud of how they are living their lives so they can handle that peer pressure when it is brought to bear. Most children are still eating sugary cereal for breakfast, a high-calorie and heavily salted mishmash at lunch and takeout for dinner. And drinking sodas as if they were water.

Don’t just send kids out with an apple; send along a slingshot full of self-confidence. They’ll be healthy and happy about it, too.

More on eating local next week. See you at the market!