Produce Celebrate the arrival of the first sweet corn of the season and arrange a big bunch of sunflowers in the middle of the dining room table. You can get both this weekend at Cromwell Produce on New Bridge Road in Virginia Beach. The Cromwells also will be harvesting long, slender Italian eggplant.
- You will have a true summer meal if you also pick up some fresh basil and Juliet tomatoes (small Romas). Both are grown locally and are just coming into Virginia Garden Organic Grocery at the Virginia Beach Farmers Market. You will also find early tomatoes, among other produce, at the Williamsburg Farmers Market Saturday morning.
- Michele Shean, owner of Virginia Garden, offers this recipe for beets, which are another of the spring veggies available there and elsewhere now.
Saute 2 medium beets, sliced, in 1 tablespoon butter until tender. Chop the beet tops and add them with 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar to the beets and finish by steaming 2 to 3 minutes.
- If you don't want to drive out to a farm market, check your local grocery store ads. This time of year, many stores will have produce grown nearby when it is available. Harris Teeter ads last week advertised blueberries and sweet potatoes from North Carolina, as well as many items grown on the East Coast.
Seafood Rockfish are still scarce, but there's plenty of Chesapeake Bay flounder and mahi from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to be had at Dockside Seafood Market and Marina on Shore Drive in Virginia Beach. On the other hand, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, www.seafoodwatch.org, has suggestions for what seafood we should and should not be eating. The watch list questions the use of Atlantic Ocean flounder, saying it has been overfished.
Program "Farm to Table, Women and Local Food," a program sponsored by Old Dominion University Friends of Women's Studies, will take place from 7 to
9 p.m. Sunday at The Boot, 123 W. 21st St. in Norfolk. Admission is $20 at the door. Call (757) 683-6330 for reservations. Speakers include women from markets that have been mentioned in this column: Shean with Virginia Garden Organic Grocery and Bev Sell with the New Five Points Community Farm Market in Norfolk.
Shopping For more ideas, read the "Good Things to Eat" ads in this newspaper's Classified Marketplace or go to www.virginiagrown.com. Call ahead to check on product availability and/or picking conditions. Some grocery stores also are selling Virginia Grown products and fresh East Coast seafood.
Tell me Farmers, let me know if you hope to harvest any specialty crops or unusual varieties next week. Commercial fishermen, let me know what unusual species you are catching now.
Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net
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