At the Market Tonight - August 22, 2016

It’s a sunny day and we’re looking forward to reconnecting at this evening’s market.  Lots of great dinner options tonight, from Leguminati & Dixie Dharma, The Wandering Wonton, Authentic Empanadas, Tamale Co., Stardust Video & Coffee, and Wild Ocean now featuring Kappo!
You can dine al fresco before you shop for local staples to stock your fridge and pantry.

Full vendor lineup is available in the newsletter.

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Holiday Specials from the Market Family

It’s officially that time of year!  Many of us are shopping for the perfect gift, or stocking up for gatherings with family and friends.  We’re stocking up the market too, in preparation for all that celebrating.  This month you’ll find more variety of handmade crafts and other goods to help you find unique, locally-crafted gifts for your friends and loved ones.  We’ll be updating this post throughout the month as vendors submit different promotional offers, so stay tuned! For now, here’s what some of our stellar vendors have just for the season:
Gift Cards from Living Vitalitea Kombucha

Daniel and his team at Living Kombucha have released these snappy gift cards for the market.  They’ll be available for purchase every Monday night, and the lucky recipients can use them to pick up growlers of the constantly revolving flavors Daniel brings each week!

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Holiday Gift Sets & Stocking Stuffer Specials from Orenda Herbal

Michele will be at the market all month with a variety of gift sets and other fun options, including: Smoking Blend Trio – three tins of Orenda’s popular herbal smoking blend in original, mint, and dream varieties in a collectible kraft box – $25; Tea Lover’s Set – four organic 1 oz herbal teas and a tea mug in a beautiful gift basket – $20; Facial Care Set – a basket or gift bag of Orenda’s entire Facial Care line, including Facial Grains, Facial Toner, Blemish Stick, and Kiss This Lip Balm – $30; Fairy Kit – A small Fairy Dust and a Kiss This Lip Balm in a sweet gift basket – $8; Stocking Stuffer Tea Special – 1 oz teas regularly $4 each, buy 5 and get one free!

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Holiday Fragrance from Ananda Soy Candles

Ananda Soy Candle Co. will be at the market all month with a variety of fragrances.  They’re featuring the Bayberry Scent as a holiday special, drawing on tradition from the early New England settlers.  The scented bayberry candles were coveted for their wonderful fragrance and were saved as a treat to bring out only on very special officiations, such as Christmas Eve or New Year’s Day.  These modern-day versions will be at the market in 7oz square containers with a 30hr burn time for $12.  The included gift box makes it easy to wrap for a teacher, friend, or coworker this holiday season.

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Farm Packages for your Holiday Feasts

Keely Farms is offering up quarter packages of their Berkshire Pork.  A quarter includes approximately 12 pork chops, 6 packages of sausage, 1 ham steak, 1 ham, 1 Boston butt, 1 rib section, bacon, ham hocks, and pork bones.  It can be custom packaged for each customer to include either 2 or 4 pork chops in a pack, cured and/or smoked bacon, choice of sausage style, and custom-sized roast.  At $5.50/pound, these are some of the best prices we’ve seen on such a high quality product!  Visit the Keely Farms Dairy booth at the market to reserve yours now.

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Special Pricing from Connected Earth Intuitive Readings

Holly Caangay has been a practicing intuitive and healer for 7 years. Sit down with her and you will receive insights into life, love, health, and inspiration that you never saw coming. Services include Tarot, Palmistry, Angel Cards, and Empathetic Body Scan.  Holiday Package deals at the market (good through January 31) include: Any Two Services – $30, Any Three Services – $50, All Four Services – $70.  Holly is also offering special prices on Full Session Packages, and will have Colorful Gift Certificates available for purchase at the market.

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Wellness & Aesthetics from JJ Juice

JJ Juice is a delicious, locally-made Aloe vitality drink from John Jacobs.  A 64oz bottle of the freshly-made drink is available for seasonal pricing of $15. Spending so much time growing and working with the versatile Aloe plant means John has a lot of beautiful plants in action, so he’s offering special $10 pricing on the dwarf varieties in solid wood blocks or copper cups.  Show your support for this new local business with a new JJ Juice T-shirt.  T-Shirt and plant combos are available for $25.

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Seasonal Recipes & Specials from Sereniteas & Soothers

In addition to the variety of blends available all year, Sereniteas & Soothers is offering some holiday flavors, including a Holiday Russian Tea.  Made from a very old family recipe, it will only be available for a limited time.  All teas will be available at a discounted Three for $13 price this month!

Recipe: Seafood Gumbo

Thank you and Congrats to Laurel Treweek, who sent in this tasty recipe and won $25 in bird bucks to spend at the market!  She submitted this tasty recipe that makes the best of summer produce and wild-caught shrimp.
Ingredients:

WILD OCEAN SEAFOOD- 2# SHRIMP HEADS-ON

1/2 POUND CRAB MEAT

1 PINT OF OYSTERS (undrained)

2 (16oz) CANS or FRESH TOMATOES

FRESH OKRA

5 ONIONS CHOPPED

2 BAY LEAVES

1 TB OLD BAY SEASONING

1 TB GUMBO FILE

SALT/PEPPER

3 CLOVES GARLIC MINCED

OIL AND FLOUR

Instructions:

PULL HEADS OFF THE SHRIMP AND PLACE IN A POT TO BOIL WITH WATER TO COVER 4-5+CUPS, SIMMER.
HEAT OIL IN A HEAVY SAUCEPAN OVER MED. HEAT, ADD FLOUR VERY SLOWLY,STIRRING WITH WOODEN SPOON UNTIL ROUX IS VERY BROWN.

ADD ONIONS AND GARLIC .COOK UNTIL SOFT NOT BROWN.DRAIN SHRIMP HEADS AND PLACE STOCK IN POT

COMBINE WITH ROUX/ONION/GARLIC. ADD TOMATOES,BAY LEAVES;SIMMER 45MINS.

ADD SEAFOOD SEASONING AND SLICED ORKA-TASTE ADD SALT/PEPPER. SIMMER 5 MINUTES COMBINE WITH GUMBO FILE...

BRING TO BOIL ADD SHRIMP CRABMEAT AND OYSTERS TO THE POT.

READY TO SERVE OVER RICE.

ENJOY!

Happy National Farmers Market Week!

I’m looking forward to seeing you all tonight to celebrate National Farmers Market Week. Farmers Markets are a great way to bring community together, connecting growers, producers, neighbors, artists, and everyone else in one fabulous place! We’ll have all the usual goodness tonight, plus some special extras to mark this special occasion. Be sure to visit the authors of Field to Feast (an awesome cookbook that chronicles many of Florida’s wonderful farmers & chefs) for samples and book signings.  I personally love this book and like to keep it on my coffee table because it does such a wonderful job of showing off Florida’s food communities.  We’ll also have a knife sharpener at the market tonight, so be sure to bring along your favorite knives (serrated ones, too!) to get sharpened by an expert.  Most importantly though, we’ll all be gathering together around food and community, and that’s what farmers markets are really about!  See ya’ll there!

What's Cooking in Your Kitchen?

National Farmers Market week is coming up, August 4th-10th, and we want to celebrate by highlighting what’s fresh from the market!  When I check in with the farmers and food artisans, they often tell me that their customers don’t always know what to do with the seasonal produce or specialty items.  The challenge of finding new recipes and learning new kitchen skills is one of my favorite things about shopping at a farmers market!  And over the years, market-goers and vendors alike have taught me a lot of new ways to make delicious, seasonal meals at home.  With that in mind, I am officially launching the What’s Cooking in Your Kitchen contest!
Over the next 2 weeks, I am inviting you to send in your favorite recipe using items you’ve purchased at the market this summer.  All submissions will be published to this blog, and winners will be randomly selected on Friday, August 2nd.
Here are the details:

1. Recipes can be for entrees, sides, snacks, drinks or desserts, but must feature products available at Audubon Park Community Market.
2. Please provide as much detail as possible (ingredients, step-by-step instructions, etc)
3. Photos are not required but are definitely welcome!
4. Send your submission to director@audubonmarket.com
5. All complete and qualifying recipes will be published to this blog and shared through our social networks
6. The deadline for submissions is Midnight, EDT, on Thursday, August 1st.

Winners will be randomly selected, and prizes include $25 in Bird Bucks (redeemable with all market vendors), a copy of Field to Feast: Recipes Celebrating Florida Farmers, Chefs and Artisans (Brandon, Farmand, McPherson, 2012) a year of home delivery of Edible Orlando, and a one-year membership with the Audubon Park Garden District.    That means that in addition to all recipes being published on this blog, there are 4 opportunities to win prizes!

I look forward to receiving your submissions and sharing them with the community!

This Market is for the Dogs (too)!

If you’re a regular market-goer, the dogs of Audubon Park Community Market are one of the cutest parts of the event (meet some of them here).  Many of you have met Yogi, the adorable mascot of Iced Bakery (makers of my most favorite handmade nutella s’mores).  He’s so important, he has his own Facebook page!

Next week we’ll be celebrating his 9th birthday, and his humans are hosting a party to benefit the SPCA of Central Florida.  Bring any item on the SPCA donation wishlist (see below), and Iced Bakery will give you $1 off a baked good!  The market is in many ways a family, and it’s pretty great to get the opportunity to celebrate and support a good cause!  See you and your pups there!

Reminder: Rain or Shine!

As much as we love spending leisurely evenings outside, shopping for local goodies, sipping wine, and enjoying the live entertainment on Monday nights, sometimes we get that Florida rain. While it’s not as fun as a “regular” market night, we ARE open on rainy evenings.

Some of you may have seen our wonderful and tenacious merchants making do in the weather, cramming as many “booths” as possible inside Stardust, and setting up our now infamous “tent colony” just outside the Stardust doors.

Rain or shine, we want to do our best to keep local goodies available on a dependable, weekly basis. We do hope you’ll join us all summer long, as we improvise our way through the rainy Florida summer!

Cheers,

Gabby

Where to Park?

Lately, we’ve noticed a lot of new traffic at the market, and that makes us very happy!  But it also means that it’s probably time to refresh everyone on parking.  There are lots of places to park in the neighborhood, but there are some places where YOU WILL GET A TICKET of GET TOWED!  For instance, if you park on the side of Winter Park Road anywhere north of ABC liquors, you will get a ticket.  If you park at ABC liquors, you will get towed.  We don’t want your night of local goodness to be ruined by a parking ticket or a towed car, so we want to make sure you know where to park. We’ve worked with the Audubon Park Garden District to put out a map of places where you may legally park (all within VERY close walking distance of the market) during market hours.

Of course, there is always plenty of bicycle parking, and we love that some many of our neighbors can walk to the market.  Which reminds us, the Audubon Park Market takes place in a community where people work and live, so please be mindful of our residential neighbors as you park.

Thank you for Nearly 4 Years of Tasty Goodness!

This week and next are your last chances to enjoy Big Wheel Provisions at the market before they go on summer hiatus.  Those of you who are fans have already heard that Chef Tony Adams will spend the summer as Head Chef of Company of the Cauldron in Nantucket.  Their final Orlando event before they leave will be the market on April 15th.  I’m honored that they are making the market their finale, after nearly 4 years of being an Audubon Park Community Market fixture.  Over the years, Tony and his team at Big Wheel have made local food the stars, showing us new ways to eat and enjoy seasonal food from Florida artisans and farmers.  So with only 2 markets to go until a summer without Big Wheel, I want to say thank you.  Thank you to Tony Adams, Leah Mojer, and the Big Wheel Provisions team for making local food a delicious priority!
The little video up top is from a couple of years ago, featuring market patrons sharing the love.  And here are some of our photos of Big Wheel over the years:

Wild-Caught Seafood: One of the perks of being in Florida!

Wild Ocean Seafood has been an Audubon Park Community Market staple for a few years now.  This family-owned business has brought fresh, wild-caught seafood to Central Florida for generations.  At the market, they’ve taught a lot of us (including me!) all there is to know about seafood in Florida.  They specialize in shrimp – fresh, local, and never from a farm – but they also carry a lot of great fish, beyond your run-of-the-mill grouper or mahi.  I never knew I liked mullet until they came to the market.  Visit them to learn about what is available when, how to cook it, and what to serve it with.

In the coming months, Wild Ocean will be opening a retail location at the East End Market.  The video below was produced in time to promote that upcoming venture.  Until then, Audubon Park Community Market is the only place you can buy their fresh goodies.