Today was a gorgeous 80-degree day in Mar Vista, and it happens to also be the 1-year anniversary for the Sunday Market feature, and so I’m doing my own shopping this time, just as I did a year ago. I’m starting a veggie-heavy cleanse tomorrow (along with half of Southern California, it seems like) and I need to eat lentils. 
I’ve never really eaten a lot of lentils, so I need plenty of advice and recipes, people: Send ‘em in! 
Plus I’ll be eating a lot of greens, so I picked up swiss chard and kale. I’m so grateful to have the market in our neighborhood — fresh, local produce all year long! Here’s to your health in 2010!
Today in the Green Booth, Jennifer Taggert, of TheSmartMama.com,
was on hand (along with her daughter) to do free lead testing. She tested toys,
which mostly turned out to be safe, and personal effects people stopped by with, including keys — full of lead, since they add lead to the brass to make it machinable,
a mug — which had lead in the painted logo, 
and this handbag — which was full of lead and arsenic — yikes — and will be discarded right away.
It’s so interesting to know how many items we use every day can be contaminated with lead. I feel better knowing my kids’ toys were safe — and I only wish I’d known Jennifer and her handy-dandy, $40,000, lead-testing ray gun when my kids were babies. (She’s available for consults — get in touch with her at TheSmartMama.com.)
OK, it’s not a ray gun, but it kind of looks like one, and she’ll be using it to test for lead in toys, so bring in any suspect items your kids may have received over the holidays and find out if they contain lead. It should be very instructive.
We had the following products donated by their wonderful manufacturers and distributers so we could show them off to all of you who came to the market. And now I’m giving them away! Check it all out:
The 
The 
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A bottle of 
And 2 
And now for the RULES:
She starts with 6 – 7 cloves of garlic, minced, 
and about 2/3 of a yellow onion, chopped 
and sautes them in grape seed oil in a big iron wok. As they start to soften, she adds ground organic, free range sirloin beef she gets from Whole Foods. (Note: if you’d prefer to make this a vegetarian meal then just skip the meat — the rest of the recipe is the same.) Once the meat is browned, she adds 5 – 6 tomatoes, which she’s chopped and removed most of the seeds. 
She cooks this for about 30 minutes and then adds about 1/3 cup of this amazing organic tomato paste from Italy called 
She serves it over 
This is us: Me (Mar Vista Mom), Emily Carey of 
Check back Tuesday for the contest to begin! We’ll be giving away a