A few months ago, we shared an image of Freshfarm’s weekly (individual) Market Share. Here is yesterday’s family Market Share. This bigger version usually has larger amounts of that week’s seasonal produce than the individual share with an extra item or two. The produce changes weekly. I picked up at Foggy Bottom, but other options are Columbia Heights, Ballston, City Center, Whittier Elementary, Minnasota Avenue, and THEARC.
The seedless green grapes from Mickley’s Orchard (which sells at the Whitehouse Farmer’s Market) are really good.
-JAY
Editor’s Note: Pawpaw fans will be pleased to know that Two Boots Farm will be selling them the next two Sundays at the DuPont Farmer’s Market.
We recently received a box of sourdough bread from Wildgrain. The bread arrived baked most of the way through and frozen, and you then finish it off it the oven and let it sit for 20 minutes. We focused on the vegan options so did not try their pastries or pasta. Sampled were the Sourdough, Sourdough Wheat, Harvest Sourdough, Sesame Sourdough, and Cranberry Pecan Sourdough. The Slow-fermented focaccia and Sourdough Rolls are still in the freezer, but we wanted to write this article while you still have a chance to join with their “Free Croissants for Life” special which means you need to jump on it by the end of May (2022).
We even joined their affiliate program and were able to get our readers the code “DCFUD” which will give you $30 off your first order. This discount code expires 8/31/2022.
So, how was the bread? You have to be careful not to burn the loaves, but even after slightly burning the first one (as seen in the photo on the right), we could tell that Wildgrain makes quality products that are not bland (under salted) like many other artisan loaves. The favorite was the Cranberry Pecan Sourdough, and we enjoyed the Sourdough, Sourdough Wheat, Harvest Sourdough, and Sesame Sourdough. While we enjoyed the dried fruit in the Cranberry Pecan Sourdough, the Harvest Sourdough was my least favorite because it had too much dried fruit (dried apricots and candied ginger), giving it a weird (flexible) texture. All sampling was of slices fresh out of the toaster.
DCFüd’s long time friend, JC, posted photos of Wildgrain’s Blueberry Biscuits, which she very much enjoyed. Oh, looks like they don’t have eggs, so I actually could have ordered them.
Feel free to comment on this post with your favorite Wildgrain products.
-JAY
Disclosure: From time to time, we are given free items, meals, or entry to events. Our words are still our own.
We recently tried out a week’s worth of Territory Foods‘ meals. Territory is based in the DC area. The meals arrive at your door (Sundays and Thursdays) already prepared and just need to be heated up. They do not use gluten, dairy, or refined sugars in their dishes. Currently, there is a discount code for your first order on their website. You can also check their menu out directly.
Asparagus Rice Pilaf – Family Style
Chicken Enchiladas
Chicken Fajita Bowl
Coconut Curry Chickpeas
Roasted Salmon – Family Style
Zataar Pesto Chicken
It is nice that all the ingredients are listed, so you can avoid allergens. We avoided two ingredients, one of which was in the salmon entrée, so instead ordered the family-style roasted salmon filets (three come in the package) and a family style side of Asparagus Rice.
The Zaatar Pesto chicken had a lot of ingredients, and would up being a bit muddled and one note (from all the spices), which could be corrected by serving it on white rice instead of cauliflower couscous (but they can keep the red peppers). It also was dry, which must be why they include a small container of olive oil. It still wasn’t a bad dish, but we were surprised at how good some of the other dishes (salmon, fajitas) were.
We definitely recommend checking Territory out.
-JAY
Disclosure: From time to time, we are given free items, meals, or entry to events. Our words are still our own.
We recently sampled a few products each from True Primal, and BeanVivo Organics. True Primal produces a line of gluten-free and paleo-friendly soups, most of which are beef, but a couple are chicken. Bean Vivo specializes in seasoned legumes.
BeanVivo Curried Chickpeas and Purple Cauliflower Tacos
True Primal Roasted Chicken Soup, Garnished with Fresh Oregano
True Primal Savory Wedding (Beef) Soup
While I preferred the varieties of True Primal’s chicken soup (Roasted Chicken, Tuscan-Style Chicken) to the beef (Savory Wedding, Beef and Vegetable), the latter were fine if doctored up. The beef soups were a little one note as far as flavor but I added fish sauce, which helped a lot. A little lemon or cider vinegar should work if you don’t have fish sauce on hand. The beef soups are organic certified, but the chicken soups are not (although they are pastured).
We tried BeanVivo’s Coconut Curry Chickpeas, Baja Black Beans, and Three Bean Vegan Chili. We used the chickpeas and black beans in tacos, which we enjoyed. We absolutely did not like the flavor of the vegan chili, but this was the first time we tried vegan chorizo.
Restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores often have food left over at the end of the day that could go to waste. The Too Good To Go app is a marketplace where you can purchase food from business at the end of their day (or meal service). The items in these bags/boxes can be pretty random, even if you pick up two boxes at the same location (or on different days).
Ala
Le Pain Quotidien
The food is usually already packaged as a mystery bag (or box) when you pick it up during the specified timeframe, but there were some exceptions. I didn’t mind waiting a few minutes if a place put a bag together while I waited.
Rose Ave Bakery
Taim Falafel
Purchasing these deals can be competitive, with new mystery bags/boxes usually hitting the website 15 minutes after the current day’s pickup range ends. As an example, The Cakeroom‘s pickup range is 8pm to 9pm, which means that at 9:15pm on Tuesday, the mystery bags/boxes to be picked up Wednesday will populate on the app. There are exceptions such as Rose Ave Bakery that sometimes drop mystery bags/boxes on the app for same day pickup.
Zenebech
The Cakeroom
Below are mystery bags/boxes I tried:
Ala ($3.99) in Dupont Circle has two pickups with different types of items, afternoon and evening (and I tried both). The above image is from the afternoon timeslot, and contained a Halva Croissant, Apple Tea (loose chopped dehydrated apples), an herbal teabag, Meringues, one Thumbprint Cookie, and Crunchy Chickpeas (dried).
Le Pain Quotidien ($4.99) gave me 3 pastries: a Cheese Danish, an Apple Turnover, and a Pan Aux Raisins. PDQ is much more readily available on the app than other baked goods options and has multiple locations (Dupont, 17th Street, Penn Quarter) you can choose from.
Rose Ave Bakery ($3.99) downtown offers fun Asian American-themed pastries. It is located at The Block DC food hall with Pogiboy, which is also on the Too Good To Go app. My Rose Ave mystery box contained green pastries: two Matcha White Chocolate Donuts, a Pandan Donut (green filling), and a Matcha Chocolate Cookie.
Taim Falafel‘s ($3.99) mystery bag included a Falafel Bowl and Tractor Beverage Company‘s Mandarin Cardamom. Their Georgetown and Dupont Circle Locations are both on the Too Good To Go app.
Zenebech ($4.99) is an Ethiopian restaurant in Adam’s Morgan. When I checked in, they put together a Vegetarian Combo for me with injera (spongy flat bread made from teff). I was lucky enough to score bags from both Zenebech and The Cakeroom to be picked up on the same evening, which was nice, because they are on the same street a few blocks from each other.
The Cakeroom ($5.99) put together a bag of mostly chocolate flavored items. There was a slice of Cherry Cheesecake, two slices of Chocolate Vanilla Cake, and two Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes.
I recommend Too Good To Go in DC (it’s in other cities too) but you need to be open to receiving really random items, especially at Ala. If you get something you can’t eat, share it with a friend. Too Good To Go is definitely a good value, since most of the mystery bags I received were worth 3 to 4 times what I paid.
There’s a great relatively new Asian Market in the basement of Rice restaurant in Logan Circle about a block from the P Street Whole Foods. The people working in the market are friendly and helpful.
I often see interesting produce like makrut limes, key limes, holy basil (tulsi), yuzu, Thai Basil, and Thai bird chilies in the market. They carry a variety of prepared foods (from the restaurant upstairs), dry goods including green, red, and black rice, and various types of noodles, condiments, and sauces. The selection is a bit random, with a different option for fish sauce being available on each of my visits. They have groceries from various countries in Asia including Thailand, Korea, China, and Indonesia. It’s a “go and see what they have today” kind of a shop.
The Rounds sponsored a giveaway though Washington City Paper (and I won). It was random that a food blogger won, but I figured it would be nice to give back with a little publicity.
S’mores Pop-tart from Ted’s Bulletin
Everything Bagel from Bethesda Bagel
Bread from Seylou Bakery
Texas Sheet Cake Ice Cream from Jeni’s
Some wonderful local products/companies that The Rounds carries were featured — you can see the list in one of the above images. They even included a Wick & Paper scented candle, and gift cards from Jeni’s Ice Cream and Le Diplomate. For the record, the Baked & Wired Carrot Cake Cupcake was the first thing I ate. 🙂
Glen’s Garden Market in Dupont Circle recently became Dawson’s Market. The store seems mostly the same, which is nice. I know that a lot of businesses haven’t gotten back to doing tastings, but Dawson’s is an exception.
Every Thursday, Dawson’s has a different brewery pour samples 5pm-7pm during a weekly cookout, but lately other tastings have been happening as well. Today, both the Dupont Circle and Rockville locations had a wine and cheese tasting (see the Siema Wines photo above for Dupont Circle), and this weekend there will be tastings from Dawson’s Thanksgiving Menu. In Rockville the Thanksgiving menu tasting will be on Saturday, November 13th 12pm-3pm, and in Dupont, it will be on Sunday, November 14th 12pm-3pm.
Mekhala‘s Asian cooking pastes are organic, vegan, and gluten free, and we were lucky enough to get our hands on a few of them. Of the dozen or so available varieties, the four that we cooked with were the Yellow Curry (Thai), Red Curry (Thai), Lemongrass Turmeric (Vietnamese), and Sichuan Mala Chilli (Chinese).
Lemon Turmeric Wild Coho Salmon
Yellow Curry Cauliflower Stew
The Yellow Curry paste worked well with coconut milk in a vegan cauliflower, peas, and onions dish. This was my second favorite of the four dishes shown here, and my dining partner’s favorite.
We used the Lemongrass Turmeric paste with coconut milk on wild salmon, which was my favorite of the four dishes. The scallions absorbed a ton of flavor, which helped make this a tasty combination.
The Red Curry with coconut milk and Lotus Foods Organic Jade Pearl Ramen (green noodles) was a wonderful soup you might expect to find in a restaurant, so it was nice to have it at home. This was my dining partner’s second favorite dish of the four.
Sichuan Mala Chilli Bacon Salad
Red Curry Jade Ramen
We combined the Sichuan Mala Chilli Paste with apricot preserves and a little lemon juice, and applied it to the bacon prior to cooking. This gave the bacon a nice sweet, sour, and spicy flavor, and a color that might put off people (like my dining partner) who aren’t used to eating bright red meat.
Whole Foods and Mom’s each carry a few of Mekhala’s varieties. I’m keeping an eye out for the Thai Basil Garlic paste. Mekhala also has a line of sauces and dressings such as Pad Thai and Thai Chilli. Once you have some of Mekala’s products in your pantry, you can use some of the recipes on their website, or experiment like we did. And yes, these dishes all involved some cutting and pastes. 🙂
-JAY
Editor’s Note:
Mekhala was nice enough to send several of these products for us to review. The Yellow Curry paste was purchased at Whole Foods.
While winter in the nation’s capital has proven to be exceptionally exciting this year, one calming elixir that always seems to soothe the soul is a cup of hot tea. Although having a large cold brew and focusing on every detail in life may be alluring, it’s important to take a step back every so often and just unwind with a simple yet satisfying brewed tea. That is what I have been doing for several days now, with the help of Jaf Tea. The 75-year-old Rainforest Alliance certified tea company sent me a box of some of their premium teas to taste and enjoy for this review.
The design of the box itself was sleek and premium. The tea bags were all wrapped in their own individual paper and foil packages. The selection included English Breakfast, Ceylon Earl Grey, Black Tea, Green Tea, Green Tea with Soursop & Banana, Green Tea with Strawberry & Kiwi, Chamomile Tea, and Cool Peppermint Tea. With 80 packets of tea, this box has a wide and plentiful selection of unique takes on some classic hot flavors while still offering a solid traditional basis of tea.
For this review, I brewed a cup of English Breakfast, the normal Green Tea, and the Black Tea. Each tea bag had instructions on the proper temperature and steeping instructions for Jaf’s optimal cup of tea. I tried each tea on its own with no additives, but then opted to add sugar to the green tea and sugar and milk to my cuppa English.
The English Tea was the most robust of the bunch. It has a base of black tea flavor with added notes of aged citrus, specifically bergamot. This tea is bold and potent to say the least. The English Tea really does add a whole new dimension to breakfast since and can be a bit overpowering. The addition of milk and sugar help mellow out the tea’s flavor and make it a smoother drink.
The Green was a much needed milder tasting tea. It was naturally sweet, with only some light bitterness on the backend of my sips. The matcha flavor was present and tasted very floral without any harsh chlorophyllic notes which often accompany lower quality green teas.
The final tea I tried was the fruity Black Tea. This tea reminded me of the milder and sweeter English breakfast. It was naturally syrupy tasting and didn’t require any additional sugar. The brew was lighter than the other two teas and had some of the least amount of color. While not the most memorable, this tea was still sippable and pleasant albeit a bit weak.
Overall, the teas offered by Jaf tea exceeded my expectations and were a delightful boost for my early morning and afternoon.
