I ventured into the city Sunday to check out a new (to me) market, the Bloomingdale Farmers Market. The sister market to the 14th & U Farmers Market, Bloomingdale is open Sundays from 10am-2pm. I was lured in to visit by news of some new cheeses at Keswick Creamery. (Head over to the cheese blog to read about those!) The Bloomingdale market is a small but robust neighborhood market, one block long and featuring a terrific group of vendors.

Keswick Creamery and Copper Pot were perhaps the more well-known vendors from other markets. I picked up strawberries — the most flavorful I’ve had this season, by far — and an heirloom pepper plant from Reid’s Orchard, a Pennsylvania vendor who also appears at some of the Fairfax County markets.

I got arugula and smoked bacon from Truck Patch (who also had lovely strawberries, asparagus and eggs), and a loaf of rustic white bread from Panorama Bakery. In addition to Truck Patch, there were also lamb and goat meat vendors, a vegan baker, and another produce vendor.

And as an added perk, the market is located in front of Big Bear Cafe, so I was able to pick up a Counter Culture latte for my trip home.

Once home, I made a quick lunch of BLTJ’s — last summer’s tomato jam standing in for fresh tomatoes. (Okay, and technically it’s a BATJ, as I used arugula in place of lettuce.) And for dessert, Keswick’s decadent chocolate pudding. I think it’s safe to say the Foodie Tot is a fan.

Bloomingdale Farmers Market
1st and R Streets, NW
Sundays, 10am – 2pm
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To close out the summer, we savored the best of local foods from coast to coast. I’ll write more about our Oregon finds later this week, but for the official last post of One Local Summer I wanted to detail the family barbeque we had this weekend for the toddler’s 2nd birthday.

On the menu:

• Heirloom vegetable crudite with Italian “Little Tree of Sarzano” zucchini, lemon cucumbers, yellow and purple peppers, purple cherokee cherry tomatoes
• Corn chips with fresh peach salsa
• Watermelon gazpacho
• Grilled corn-on-the-cob with South Mountain Creamery butter
  
• Virginia beef hamburgers (freshly ground by the butcher) on Va.-made buns with Tom’s cave-aged smethe cheese & Amish pickles (PA), Bigg Rigg’s ramp mustard (WV) and Mr. Ugly tomatoes (MD)
• Beverages: Peach Sangria, with Barboursville sparkling wine (VA); Fordham (MD), Dominion (VA) and Dogfish Head (DE) beer.
• Dessert: birthday cake & cupcake from Buzz Bakery.

The produce came from our Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA; Mt. Olympus Farm, Reid’s Orchard and a Northern Neck VA farmer at the McLean market; and Tom the Cheese Guy, D&S Farms and the plant stand at the Del Ray market.

Only non-local ingredients: tortilla chips (though Snyders were from PA), jicama, seltzer, Gulden’s mustard and organic ketchup. One lesson learned – don’t ask a butcher how much beef you’ll need unless you want some giant burgers! But they were oh so very good.