W& P Porter Bowl
Have you given into that bowl life yet? Up the lunch game with a sleek, ceramic container—designed by two Virginia natives—with a silicone wrap to keep safe your ancient grain salad. The Porter line includes eco-drinkware and metal straws. // $40
Williams Sonoma Instant Pot Starters
Could making dinner in a multicooker get any easier? Apparently yes. Now there are starter sauces designed for pressure cooking devices. Brown meat, dump in a sauce like yellow curry and Bolognese, and press a button. // $14.95
Origin milk
The dairy industry isn’t letting oat milk/mylk takeover. Look for milk branded with A2, a protein research shows is easier for digestion, and is more like the milk made from cows before human intervention. // $5.99 for 64 oz.; available at MOM’s Organic Market
Comfort in an Instant
75 comfort food recipes for your pressure cooker, multicooker and Instant Pot By Melissa Clark
The multicooker, better known by the brand that launched the craze, Instant Pot, feels far more pervasive than the 11.5 percent of homes the devices are currently in (according to 2018 data from market research data firm NPD Group). Called a “cult” and “religion,” and reliably labeled as the love of users’ kitchen lives on Facebook groups, pressure cooking devices ignited a new genre of cookbooks. Melissa Clark, a New York Times food writer and prolific cookbook author, became one of the converted after reporting on the craze.
Now out with her second pressure cooker cookbook, Comfort in an Instant, Clark gives handy tips, like how to create an aluminum foil sling to lower and lift pans out, and creates recipes from morning (chocolate oatmeal), to night (David Chang’s Korean pork shoulder, bo ssam), to midnight snack (Japanese cheesecake). It’s a way of life. // Clarkson Potter, $22
Full Moon Farm
Find organic oils, herbs and hemp—now legal—from this Sperryville operation.
Hunter-gatherer societies started farming 12,000 or so years ago, but today, a degree in plant pathology and biotechnology is a good place to begin learning how to work the land.
And once Michael Frank, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, explains the process of turning lavender into food-grade essential oil, all that schooling makes sense.
At Full Moon Farm, a certified-organic operation in Sperryville, Frank doesn’t grow and sell the typical squashes and tomatoes. With a greenhouse, and a processing and packaging facility on site, he can take everything one step further, growing basil, zaatar, dill, thyme and the like, drying them and mixing the herbs, seeds and spices into custom blends. He turns peppermint (great for digestion) and sage (supports respiratory, metabolism, reproductive and nervous systems) into essential oils, used for both massaging into temples and spraying over hot cocoa or vegetables.
This winter, Frank—who lives on the land with his wife, 12-year-old daughter, three llamas, two sheep, two cats and one dog—started growing turmeric and ginseng, and will dry them into powders later this year for sale online and at area farmers markets. Now that hemp, a non-psychoactive form of cannabis, is legal to grow in the U.S. after almost a 50-year ban, Frank applied to be a certified grower, and plans to sell hemp seed oil (skin care and cooking) and baking flour. Finally, one of the world’s oldest domesticated crops is back in the age of high-tech wellness.
Barebones Harvesting & Gathering Bag
It’s almost foraging season and with a drop-out bottom for easy unloading, this waxed canvas bag is ready for ramps. // $65
Uncommon Knits towel
Soft, functional, utilitarian and made in Leesburg. // $18
Copper Fox Sassy
Now with a new design, the Sperryville distillery also launched a new spirit: Sassy a single malt rye with grain grown in Virginia that’s smoked with Virginia sassafras wood and takes on a warming, cola note. // $56.99 for 750 mL
Photos courtesy of vendors
