Locally Known. Virginia Grown.

I get this rush when I go to farmers markets, especially when it’s a market I’ve never been to before. My heart races as I remove the lens cap from my camera and I ask if I can photograph their beautiful displays, fingers itching to pick up business cards so I remember what I’ve bought and from whom. 

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It’s like a mission. A Meals with Morri mission.

Getting back into the blogging groove has proven itself more difficult than I expected. But going on excursions such as these may help in easing my way back into producing recipes and product reviews. After all, I’d been looking forward to May specifically because it was the start of the farmers market season.

What's in season, you might be wondering? I'm so glad you asked.

The scent of strawberries was heavy and intoxicating at the Wakefield Farmers Market. On Wednesdays from two to six, two rows of vendors lay out their fruits, flowers, vegetables, baked goods, meats, dairy products, and honey in loving fashions. It’s a quieter, smaller farmers market, but the people are happy to strike up a meaningful conversation with you. There’s even a booth run by the Fairfax County Master Gardeners for green thumb enthusiasts.

You can find up to thirteen vendors in the Wakefield Farmers Market:

Produce
Kuhn Orchards*
J & W Family Farm
Level Green Farm
Lois’s Produce & Herbs
F.J. Medina & Son Farm

Meat
Stallard Road Farm – grass finished beef, herbs, and jams
What’s for Dinner Now – corn and grain finished pork, beef, sausages, soups, and entrees*

Baked Goods (alas, not the gluten-free kind)
Cenan’s Bakery – breads, croissants, et al.
Sue’s Pies & More – pies, cookies, and other baked goods

Other Products
Red Fox Creamery – homemade ice cream
Massanutten Mountain Apiaries – honey*
Salsa Las Glorias – salsa
Fields of Grace Farm – all natural farmstead cheese

My first stop was at the What’s for Dinner Now booth run by the Stifler family. Their beef and pork are raised in the Shenandoah Valley, and all cuts are individually vacuum packaged. They were a little confused by my request to take a photo of their meat freezer, but were kind enough to lift open the door for me to do so. Many of their sausages as I could see are gluten free and soy free, but some do contain sugar. 

My next stop was the Massanutten Mountain Apiaries booth. I have a sweet spot for honey, especially since it is used in much of my baking, desserts, fermenting, and brewing. While they didn’t have bee pollen, they did have honey sticks, small jars jam-packed with sliced almonds and other nuts in honey, jars with honeycomb just asking to be chewed on like nature’s chewing gum, and even gallon-sized containers should you want to make five gallons of mead. Most of their honey comes from wildflowers, but they also mentioned to have tulip poplar honey from time to time.

We talked about their bees, and I asked how their hives were doing. They said that Virginia was one of those places where the bees aren’t dying off as they are in some places. A silver lining, that, but we seriously need to do something for nature's pollinators.

I finished my farmers market excursion at the Kuhn Orchards booth. I gravitated towards the absolutely stunning apple display. There was an apple called Gold Rush, and if you could imagine the combining of a Golden Delicious with a Honeycrisp, it was an explosion of sunshine on the tongue. There were greens and rhubarb and other delights, but really, any booth with apples will become my favorite.

With a camera full of pictures and a bag full of goodies, I came home content and excited to write this post. I have a lineup of farmers markets to explore now, and I can’t wait to get to know the people behind the products they sell.

For more information regarding farmers markets or CSAs by region, go to VirginiaGrown.com

One Year Closer

I did it. One year of grad school over, and another to follow. I don’t like to think about it very much, simply because the idea of leaving academia in search of a career scares the heck out of me. School was my only focus for months, and as a result my work at the community center suffered, as did my overall health and social life. I wrote my final papers and proposals in a haze of fatigue and tear-filled vision, my walls finally crashing down and hard. How long have I been like this, you ask. Too long, dear friends. Too long.

The Meals with Morri front page was up on the screen of my laptop on a daily basis yet untouched, a neglected hobby you once couldn’t tear me away from. At one point I had so many recipes and photos it took, I kid you not, weeks to get them all down. It’s been over three weeks, and not one recipe was recorded, with only one meal photographed. I didn't even celebrate my site's second anniversary back in April. Something was seriously wrong. 

Mother's Day Dinner: Grilled scallops & crispy polenta salad

I don’t take the idea of depression well. It’s a phenomenon that happens to other people, whereas all I experience is a funk that won't go away. All the stress and the obligations and the things I simply wasn’t doing were purposefully replaced with over-activity and worrying. I wasn’t eating enough, sleeping enough, or being enough… and people noticed. All I wanted to do was sleep and read, a red flag telling me to slow down if I ever saw one. But I didn’t slow down. I just kept going and going and going.

I know I said I wouldn’t use the “h-word” early on in my writing, but I’m using it now. I hated it. I hated that I couldn’t do it all. I hated that people and activities I loved with every essence of my being were left in the dust while I scrambled to make everything work. The past wouldn’t stay where it was, and the future was a mixture of uncertainty and terror. Never mind the present, I said to myself, because if I work my butt off now I will have everything in place for later. That’s the thing about time, though: it’s always the present.

So with summer school starting next week, I’ve decided to change my focus. I’m not working at camp this year, sadly, but I will have the energy to get through school and also spend these months being with friends and family, starting new hobbies, and going on adventures. 

After all, Life isn’t about how much you do but how much it means to you doing it.