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Health & Fitness

This Week at the Smart Markets Reston Farmers' Market

Try something new and local in your Thanksgiving feast this year. We have lots of suggestions for you at the market.

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Wednesday 3–6 p.m.
12001 Sunrise Valley Dr.
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This Week at the Market

This may be the last market you shop at before Thanksgiving. Feel free to check out the new recipes at the Smart Markets tent, and just about anything you buy today will be good to cook next Thursday, having been gathered or picked today in many cases.

Heritage Farm and Kitchen will have a bountiful array of fall veggies. They will also have freshly processed pork cuts and lamb for those looking for an alternative to turkey. And they are bringing black walnuts for the next few weeks, and we will have a couple of great recipes for their use. Black walnuts are also a unique and flavorful addition to many vegetable dishes and fall salads. And don’t forget the egg nog or pumpkin ice cream. The ice cream will be great with the Applesauce Cake.

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Uncle Fred will be with us this week and he is accepting orders for smoked and deep-fried turkeys to be picked up next week. See his flyer for details.

If you have not tried Cavanna’s pumpkin ravioli cooked with a little garlic and sage or in my own warm winter salad, this is a great time to experiment with this heavenly pasta.

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Valley View Bakery will bring at least three great soups to help you prepare for family who arrive early or stay late as well as their fabulous croissants and full bread selection.

From the Market Master

Do you have your list, and are you checking it twice? No, not your Christmas list, but your Thanksgiving grocery list. Whether you are preparing the entire meal yourself for one family or more, or whether, as I do every year, you are contributing to a potluck feast, I thought you might benefit from some sage advice.

If you are planning and preparing the entire meal yourself, buy a bigger turkey than you will need for the day and plan for great leftovers to get you through the next month, when you will be busier than ever with less time than usual to cook up comfort food on the fly. If you are concerned that the extra size will add significantly to the time your oven is devoted to the turkey, remember that the turkey can be completely roasted and carved early in the day. The turkey itself does not have to be hot from the oven; the gravy will warm it up sufficiently. And if you buy a fresh, local, free-range turkey from the farmers’ market, the bird will spend considerably less time in the oven anyway.

We will have handouts this week and next with delicious recipes for kinds of leftovers, so as long as you are dicing, slicing, chopping, mashing and carving, you might as well make enough for a few more meals. Any soup or casserole that you make can be frozen too, so you can bring out that turkey again and again through the holiday season.

Speaking of all that work that goes into the Thanksgiving meal, this month’s Eating Well magazine contains a chart demonstrating that the more cooking you do, the more calories you burn. Using their own Thanksgiving meal menu and Mayo Clinic research, the magazine calculated that you can burn 700 of the slightly more than 1,000 calories that their meal contains just by creating it in your own kitchen. No fair counting as your own workout what your helpers do for you, but it can only help your digestion knowing that the hard work contributed something more than just gluttonous enjoyment.

A family gathering is always a great opportunity to demonstrate how your commitment to eating seasonally and buying locally can result in a delicious meal from soup to nuts. Start with squash bisque, then select from the greens and cruciferous veggies, potatoes and other gorgeous root vegetables, and then for a main course, turkey or another meat from the market. And don’t forget a locally sourced dessert, which this year could include local pears and apples or some lovely black walnuts. You really can make a meal of all-local ingredients with maybe just cranberries and some citrus thrown in for color or acidity.

Whatever else you undertake this Thanksgiving, add something new to the mix and see where it takes you. The kitchen is a wonderful place to experiment, and hardly ever does anything blow up.

See you at the market!

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