As area schools swing into a new year, some students might find themselves struggling to keep up because they don’t have the proper supplies.

That’s why the United way of Greater Chattanooga teamed with the Chattanooga Market on Sunday to host the organization’s first “Stuff the Bus” event. The goal, organizers said, was to fill a school bus outside the market to capacity with school supplies for children who need them.

United way Campaign Chairman bill Stacy said he was excited that the donations had “filled the bus” by 3 p.m.

“Chattanoogans are real generous,” he said. “They see a need and they’ll help you.”

All the school supplies imaginable — bookbags and notebooks, stacks of paper, boxes filled with glue, pencils and scissors — lined the bus, awaiting to be delivered to children who will us them.

NEXT SUNDAY AT THE MARKET

Mountain View Bluegrass

What: Mountain View Ford is sponsoring three local bluegrass bands

When: 11:15 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m.

Where: The market’s Carter Street location across from UTC’s Finley Stadium

HOW TO HELP

Donations are being accepted at the United way of Greater Chattanooga’s downtown office, 630 Market St.

Stacy said the donations are for all school systems in the area. Pick-up locations will be announced Tuesday. Starting Aug. 30, people can call 211 for the locations.

The United way of Greater Chattanooga had been gathering supplies for about two months, said Wayne Collins, vice president of marketing. Sunday’s event contributed about $5,000 worth of supplies to the effort, he said.

But, he emphasized, more donations are needed.

“Anything you can think of that’s a school supply, we need,” Collins said.

The box of supplies East Brainerd resident Nancy Owens donated Sunday was packed with folders, pencils, erasers and more.

Owens said she made her donations because school supplies can get rather pricey, “especially for people who have multiple children.”

“I work hard, but there are plenty of people out there working just as hard who don’t have the privileges that I do,” she said. “What you give today might come back tomorrow.”

HomeSchoolNinja.com  August 23, 2010

1-2  cups (diced & salted & drained) heirloom tomatoes

1 cup (diced)yellow watermelon

1 cup (peeled & diced) cucumber

3-4 T (chopped) fresh basil

2-3 T olive oil

Sea Salt

Cracked Pepper

After dicing the tomatoes, place them in a small colander & sprinkle with salt.  Allow to drain for 10 minutes.  This will draw out extra moisture.

In a medium bowl, toss all ingredients gently.  Add salt & pepper to taste.

Amanda Varnell’s Grilled Peaches w/ Blackberry Sauce

3-4 peaches, peeled & halved

1 T Alchemy Wake & Bake seasoning

1 T olive oil

1 pint fresh blackberries

3-4 T sugar

1/2 stick of butter

2 cups vanilla ice cream

Baste peach halves with olive oil & sprinkle with Wake & Bake.   Heat grill pan and grill peaches for 2 minutes on each side.

In saucepan over med-high heat, add blackberries, sugar & 2 T butter.   Heat to a boil, then turn down to a simmer.  Simmer until fruit breaks easily with the back of a spoon and becomes syrupy.  Add remaining 2 T butter & stir until melted.

To serve,  top a peach half with a small scoop a vanilla ice cream and drizzle with blackberry sauce.

Cathy Boettner’s Corn Maque Choux                         Serves 8

5 slices Link 41 Back Bacon, roughly chopped

1 cup diced onion

5 garlic cloves minced

4 ears silver queen corn—kernels cut from cob

1 green bell pepper diced

3 cherokee purple tomatoes, peeled and diced

Alchemy Spice’s Bayou Ya-Ya seasoning to taste (I used about 1 ½ TBSP)

Salt to taste—2 tsps is about what I used

Fry bacon in a large skillet until brown.  Add corn, onion and garlic and cook for 10 minutes stirring occasionally.  Add tomatoes and bell pepper.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the liquid from the tomato evaporates and the mixture begins to thicken.  Add seasonings to taste and cook for 5 more minutes.

Cathy Boettner’s Cucumber-Chevre Slaw                Serves 6

5 pickling size cucumbers grated

1 log plain chevre cheese (or herbed if you wish)

Salt

¼ cup fined chopped red onion

2 garlic cloves minced

1 tsp grated lemon zest

Mix the grated cucumbers with about 1 tsp salt and set aside for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, drain the liquid from the mixture.  With your hands, blend in the chevre cheese, onion, garlic and lemon zest.  Combine thoroughly.  Adjust salt to taste.  Chill completely before serving.

Tommy (a BBQ All-Star on The Big Easy) was inspired by Mike “Pit Pirate” Hedrick who posted a video online at Monkey See who, come-to-find-out was inspired by a “to-go” cup of BBQ flavors created and served at the [Chattanooga] Farmer’s Market by Jade Lockhart’s Fire and Smoke Catering in Chattanooga, TN.

Heat, humidity and a brief downpour of rain didn’t stop the peaches from selling out at the Chattanooga Market’s second annual Peach Festival on Sunday at the First Tennessee Pavilion.

Photo by Jake Daniels/Chattanooga Times Free Press

“It was just fantastic,” said Paul Smith, general manager for the Chattanooga Market. “Chattanooga really showed up for it.”

In the festival’s second year, Mr. Smith said the amount of peaches brought by regional farmers doubled compared to last year. The four farmers, from Soddy-Daisy, Sale Creek, Alabama and Georgia, began selling peaches at 11 a.m. and had sold them all by 2:30 p.m.

Around 1,000 baskets of peaches were sold, Mr. Smith said. He estimated 75 percent of those came from Hazelrig Orchards in Cleveland, Ala.

“There wasn’t a peach left in the market after about three hours,” farmer Michael Hazelrig said. “They went fast.”

Mr. Hazelrig said tree crops, such as peaches, are a lot different than row crops. Maintenance of the trees, he added, is quite difficult because of winter conditions and the constant effort needed to keep bugs away.

“It’s a tough way to make a living,” Mr. Hazelrig said of peach farming. “You’d better enjoy it because if you go into it just for the money like a lot of people do, it’s challenging.”

Mr. Hazelrig was one of many farmers, vendors and marketgoers that hung around during 30 minutes of rain. By the time the sun returned and the festival was drawing closer to an end, the pavilion was packed as though the rain had never come.

“After the rain was over, it just filled back up,” Mr. Smith said.

If our new flickr photos do not appear, try this link.

Friday, May 28

• Gregg Allman Concert, First Tennessee Pavilion
• Nightfall 2010, featuring Big Sam’s Funky Nation
• New Binkley Brothers, Tennessee Aquarium Plaza

Saturday, May 29

• Chattanooga Market’s 2nd Annual Beast Feast BBQ Festival, First Tennessee Pavilion
• Who-Fest Folk Art Festival, Renaissance Park
• Chattanooga FC vs Atlas, Finley Stadium/Davenport Field
• Tim Cofield, Tennessee Aquarium Plaza

Sunday, May 30

• Chattanooga Market’s 2nd Annual Beast Feast BBQ Festival, First Tennessee Pavilion
• Who-Fest Folk Art Festival, Renaissance Park
• Kurt Scobie & Megan Light, Tennessee Aquarium Plaza

Come out and enjoy the long weekend, but keep in mind that this is also a solemn weekend of remembrance.

The top ten answers – the most recurring themes submitted – were presented to conference attendees:

1. Catalyze neighborhood and downtown revitalization
2. Build community and create a sense of local ownership and pride
3. Educate members of the community, especially schools and local businesses, about the myriad benefits of markets
4. Promote economic development
5. Build and enhance social capital: markets as places which draw people together
6. Support local products and the local exchange of goods
7. Provide accessible food to all members of the community through EBT, food stamps and other programs
8. Inspire a feel-good ambiance
9. Create opportunities for small businesses
10. Support, educate and sustain farmers

What’s your take on the above?  Does The Chattanooga Market accomplish these goals in your community?  How can we move towards meeting the needs of the local community we serve?

“Successful markets in the right location have proven to be one of the greatest economic stimulators for downtowns, especially today when markets are experiencing a huge increase in popularity and numbers.” –Project for Public Spaces

For those of you who joined us on Sunday, you may have noticed a few changes at The Chattanooga Market.  Starting this season, we will be expanding beyond the traditional boundaries of the First Tennessee Pavilion and organizing public markets at several new locations, often with a street festival approach.

This photo above (taken at The Chattanooga Market on Sunday) is a great example of our vision.  We closed the street to all traffic in order to protect our families (and small children), and replaced cars with people, music, art and flowers from local farms & artists.  Our kids area, located on the right of the photo, instantly became the place to be (if you were under 10).  It was a beautiful day, and one of our most successful – over $70,000 of local foods, art, soap, BBQ, flowers and other local products were sold in just five hours!

It has been shown that economic spin-off from markets can exceed that of sporting and entertainment combined.

While we are terribly excited about the weekend, we realized last season that in order to meet the growing public interest in local foods & products, and to provide our local farms, artists & entrepreneurs with additional retail opportunities, we need to expand.  The question of how, where, when and why is something that we’ve been studying for quite some time – but fortunately, we’ve had some help.

The Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit organization and national authority on helping communities create and sustain public spaces, outlined a variety of possible options in a detailed research study prepared for us in 2008 (funded in part by a grant from the Lyndhurst Foundation).  The entire report is filled with terrific ideas, but one of their recommendations stood out: if the Chattanooga Market was located downtown (instead of our current location), we would help to accelerate and strengthen the Downtown Chattanooga revitalization efforts — while also attracting more shoppers for our farms & vendors.

Although the First Tennessee Pavilion is our permanent home, and we are fully committed to keeping our Sunday Market on the South Side, we have been actively discussing possible locations for additional markets & events with community leaders & visionaries who understand our untapped synergistic potential.

Most markets are centrally located within a retail core and create value for surrounding properties and businesses by attracting large numbers of people. This synergistic power is one of a market’s greatest assets. Unfortunately, in Chattanooga the spin off potential for the market is untapped.

So it’s with great satisfaction to announce that on Thursday, May 6 we will celebrate the season opener of our Thursday Market & Plaza Party at Miller Plaza, located in the heart of downtown. Starting at 4pm, our mid-week market will provide residents and office workers a downtown destination for fresh produce, local arts & crafts, live music and even a cold “after-work” beverage.  The Thursday market season will extend until the final week of September, when the availability of fresh local produce begins to diminish.

Please join us on Thursday, and invite your friends.  As with our Sunday market, admission is free — but we hope that you will help our expansion efforts by purchasing products from our local farms, artists and vendors.  After all, local really is better.

Chris Thomas
Chairman, Chattanooga Public Market

Staff photo by Jake Daniels

We had a great, record-breaking opening day! Chris Carroll with The Chattanooga Times-Free Press wrote a nice article on us, including video footage from our season opener this Sunday.

Hamilton Gallant sipped a beer and considered his solo situation at the Chattanooga Market.

“When I come here with a girl, I end up spending more,” Mr. Gallant said as he grinned and looked around. “I never come here searching for anything, but I’m always impressed with what I see.”

Read the full article here, or check out the cool video.