Chesapeake Farm to Home launches Baltimore's first online farmers market

Chesapeake Farm to Table just launched a new online farmers market for residential customer with delivery to three culinary partner pickup locations in the Baltimore Metro Area: Culinary Architecture, Remington Wine Company and Towson Tavern will be the weekly pick up locations. Chesapeake Farm to Home offers the same quality, fresh, local produce, honey, meats and dairy items to the home consumer.

Read the full story at my blog Dara Cooks at Baltimore Post Examiner 

Maryland Farmer's Markets opening for 2016 season

How local farmer’s markets have grown, the joy in the availability of farm fresh seasonal produce, flowers, breads, desserts and noshes makes attending a special outing.  For example, Pikesville’s  Farmer Market opened  this past Tuesday, May 3 at Pomona Square at 1700 Reisterstown Road with a record number of 20 participating vendors that span everything from cream of crab soup to falafels:

•Beads by Bettina - Handcrafted jewelry

•Cathy's Ginger Spices - Spices & ginger products, teas & lemonades

•Chiropractic Works - Free chiropractic health consultations

•Connect Hearing - Hearing professionals

•Debbie's Cuisine Catering - Cream of crab soup

•Great Shoals Winery*- Local hard cider and wine

•Hillside Meadow Farm - Produce, fruits & meats (all natural Black Angus beef cuts, all natural lamb cuts, pasture raised free range eggs)

•Just Ice Frozen Desserts - Freshly made Italian ice

•Keith Baker Cabinet Shop & Plants - Bedding plants, vegetable plants, hanging baskets, container gardens, mums and handmade wood items

•Kitchen Saver - Kitchen remodeling services

 •McCleaf's Orchard - Varieties of apples, apple cider, apple butter and other fruits

•The Mondel Broad - Homemade mondel bread & loaf cakes

•Msprity Enterprises, LLC - Vegan skin care & seated chair massages

•The Residence at Pomona Park* - Some of the largest apartments in Pikesville

•Simply Delicious Desserts* - Breads, pies, energy & power bars, cookies

•Susie's Southern Pound Cake - Homemade pound cakes

•Tovavi Falafel*- Vegan & kosher Falafel cooked and served in pita bread

•Washington DC Dills*- Pickles, kraut, beets, ferments

•Wholesome Nibbles, LLC* - Bliss balls: espresso chocolate, almond cocoa, apricot walnut, cranberry coconut

•Your Traveling Chef, LLC - Homemade food

*New venders for 2016 – Pikesville Farmer’s Market Open Tuesdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m through Oct 25^th.

Find your local Maryland Farmer’s Market days and hours of operation  at the attached listing – 2016 Maryland Farmers Market Directory PDF.  Twitter @MDsBest

Charlottetown Farm: Pam Miller and happy goats make extraordinary cheese

Here is an equation for success. Take one empty nest mom with time on her hands, a 4-H background, goats and a passion to brighten the tables of many with her goat cheese products – voila, you have Charlottetown Farm’s Pam Miller. She is a vivacious, down home, spunky,  charming gal who has taken working with goats milk and turned it into a viable, sustainable “buy local” product for our top farm-to-table restaurants with chevre cheese, feta cheese and the ash aged crotin.  You the consumer and many like you purchase her cheeses along with her confections of goats milk cheesecakes, truffles, cajeta (Mexican goat milk caramel sauce) and fudge at local farmers markets.

A chance meeting with Pam had me excited to come to Charlottetown Farm and interact with her pet goats. The milk producing goats; all 263, are at her partner’s dairy farm in Pennsylvania. What looked like a gray day in Northwest Baltimore was a bright blue sky with puffs of white clouds up I83 near the Pennsylvania line. The air was brisk on the autumn day as Pam took us (the husband and I) out into the field to meet her pet goats; these are goats that Pam will bring to the farmers market, fairs and other social engagements. Once inside the gates and out into the field the goats were over to us tout suite, in fact, they seemed fascinated by me and pinned me in from all sides. Later I deduced my popularity with the goats was probably my loose leaf paper as one of the goats took a big bite out of notes. “Goats don’t eat tin cans,” Pam said with a smile on her face, “their favorite food is what they can forage on the floor in the woods.” What the Charlottetown Farm goats eat on a regular basis is free range grass and hay along with supplemental grains; out in the field that day it seemed the fallen leaves were the meal du jour along with my notepaper.

Read the full story, watch the video and check out the slideshow HERE.