ASP/VERY COMPLEX MSSQL

I have a query to one table but one of the values in the table is referencing a record from another table... here is the sql Code:

strSql = "SELECT streetdate, barcode, itemname, descrip, vendor, sku, catlog, config, retail_cost, cost FROM blah WHERE (STREETDATE >='"& GSTARTDATE &"') AND (STREETDATE <='"& GENDDATE &"') ORDER BY STREETDATE, CATLOG DESC"

now I have 2 things going on here...
1. vendor is just a number... there is a tblvendor that matches the number with a name (that i need.. i coudl nest another db query but figured that would be more resource intensive as this returns 1000s of records)
2. itemname is also a number that references another tblItem the sam way, I woul dlike to sort alphabetical off this somehow (is it even possable)