Back to School? | August 31, 2020

Fresh & Local:

Back to School?

This year, while we work together to navigate this distance learning curve, Crescent City Farmers Market promises to be your teacher’s pet, helping you get fresh and local foods on your family’s table.

Skipping the store or no time to shop? The CCFM Home Delivery box will be the apple of your eye. Filled with a sneak peak at fall favorites like cherry tomatoes, apples, butternut squash; plus, special treats like mushrooms, jam or artisan loaf bread, the box is complete with easy-to-follow recipes for healthy and delicious meals that will tempt even the most finicky kid, and is delivered straight to your door! Ready for a field trip? Preorder for our Wednesday or Sunday contactless drive thru. Load up on the essentials: produce, seafood, bread, honey, beef, and even plant starts for your fall garden. Then load the kiddos in the car and drive on thru where making groceries means only having to open the trunk of your car! It’s quick and easy and “no contact!” Need a breath of fresh air? Our Tuesday Uptown Square Walk Up market is back, modified to keep shoppers, vendors and staff healthy so we can continue to support our local producers! Reconnect (masked, of course) with your favorite vendors.

Not all New Orleanians are experiencing this return to school equally: Many families depend on school breakfast and lunch to help make nutritional ends meet and get meals on the table. If you’ve applied for and receive P-EBT, the benefit that provides food assistance to families with children who normally receive free or reduced price meals at school, we can accept that benefit at the market, as well as for pre-orders and box delivery. Double your food dollars with Market Match.

New to pre-ordering with WhatsGood? You’re in luck! WhatsGood is sponsoring $10 off first time customer’s orders of $30+! This offer expires tonight, Monday, August 31st, at midnight. CODE: BUYAUGUST

Good Food Word of the Week:

In addition to running farmers markets, a critical component of Market Umbrella’s work is to enhance food and nutrition access and awareness in our community. The Good Food Word of the Week seeks to shed some light on this part of our work and also to demystify the jargon.

Nutrition

This week’s Good Food Word is Nutrition – Nutrition is the intake of food within the context of the body’s dietary needs. Good nutrition supplies a person with all the nutrients—vitamins, proteins, fats, and sugars—necessary for a healthy, active life and greatly reduces a person’s risk of disease and disability. In Orleans Parish, where 84% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunches, the pandemic and distance learning has ushered in special challenges in making sure kids who normally receive lunch and sometimes breakfast at school are receiving proper nutrition. To read more about this complex issue, check out this article. And if you received P-EBT funds to help cover the costs of feeding kids over the summer, remember, those can be spent at our markets (home delivery, drive thrus and walk up) just like SNAP dollars and matched with Market Match.

Picks of the Week:

Thinking Inside the Box

COVID-19 prompted the Crescent City Farmers Market to innovate new farmers market models for safe fresh food sales - home delivery with CCFM partner Top Box Foods, and contactless drive thru and modified walk up markets - all while maintaining Market Umbrella’s signature Market Match program which doubles SNAP dollars spent at market. On September 3rd, Market Umbrella Market Manager, Cristina Berthelot, will be featured in a national conversation about COVID-19 market safety innovations facilitated by the Farmers Market Coalition and Ecology Center through the Nutrition Incentive Hub. Register now for Thinking Inside the Box – Making Healthy Food Accessible with Curbside/Drive-Thru (Contactless) Models at Farmers Markets During COVID-19. It’s free!

Senior FMNP applications still being accepted!

While the kids are at school, their grandparents can take advantage of direct benefit programs dedicated to seniors. The Crescent City Farmers Markets host many farmer vendors who can accept Senior and WIC FMNP vouchers. The Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program provides a booklet of vouchers worth $20 for seniors who apply and qualify to spend on fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs and honey. Vouchers can be spent directly with certified farmers at the Tuesday Uptown market, weekly from 8am-noon until November 30th. Seniors 65+ can apply for vouchers by completing this form and mailing it to:

CCANO/FFS
Attn: Renee Davenport
5600 Hayne Blvd.
New Orleans, LA 70126

Or fax to (504) 241-3102

The phone number for Food for Seniors is (504) 245-7207 if you have questions.

It’s Quittin’ Time

Due to the unpredictability of last week’s double hurricane threat, the Tuesday Uptown market was cancelled and we missed Paul Areceneaux’s last day. Paul, known far and wide for his palate pleasing pesto, has been a vendor for 20 years and a friend of the market since its inception in 1995. He has helped the market grow and take form in his many years of service as a CCFM vendor representative and while we are sad to see Paul retire, we are equally proud of his significant impact on our market. Join us tomorrow while Paul joins us for a final ceremonial closing market bell “Quittin’ Time!”, or you can contact him directly at paul@webdsi.com to say farewell.

Market Match

Market Umbrella believes farmers markets should benefit farmers, shoppers, and the wider community. Our Market Match program is a $1 for $1 matching incentive available to SNAP recipients to help stretch SNAP dollars and purchase the best local produce available at our Crescent City Farmers Markets. If you receive SNAP, the USDA program also known as Food Stamps, then you are eligible to be a Market Matcher! Market Match is available through home delivery, both drive thrus, and our walk up market.

Market Match would not be possible without the generous support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the RosaMary Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.

Vendor of the Week:

Tomott’s Cajun Farm

Tomayto, Tomahto, Tomott’s Cajun Farm! We’re so excited to have Tomott’s back at market, providing us with a bounty of hydroponically grown tomato post-season products and farm fresh chicken and duck eggs. Greg and Ann Sanamo, along with their son Kelly and his wife Rachel, are the owners of the farm that operates out of Larose, Louisiana. They are proud to grow everything pesticide free: Ann says, “we know it because we grow it!” While tomatoes are their specialty, they also grow eggplant, cucumbers, citrus, and other veggies as well as create a variety of tomato products like salsa, spaghetti sauce, and tomato jam.

Recipe of the Week:

Eggplant Adobo

Eggplant lovers rejoice! We are heading into late summer and heat-loving eggplant are here for it. This week we are sharing an Adobo-style Eggplant recipe by Sohla El-Waylly and welcoming leadership changes to Bon Appetit. Bon Appetit has recently named Sonia Chopra as the Executive Editor and Dawn Davis as Editor in Chief, both women of color with decades of experience in the culinary/publishing world. We are excited to see these changes and that chefs like Sohla promote shopping at the farmers market. We recommend Japanese or Italian eggplant for this adobo recipe, but any eggplant found at the market will work just fine. Faust Farms has a local eggplant variety bag available at the Sunday Parkway and Wednesday Bucktown drive thru markets so you are good to go!

What’s your favorite dish to make after visiting the Crescent City Farmers Market? Share your recipes with us on Instagram or Facebook or even Twitter and it might be featured in our weekly newsletter!