Recipe: Salsa (Fresh & Canned)

Hello there! Well it's Friday again, and at the Southwest Edmonton Farmer's Market, that means only one thing... it's recipe blog post time again! Charles, at the Butcher's Bus, told me that there was a time, years ago, when vegetable vendors would sell literally TONS of produce at a market for people who did home canning. He lamented the fact that no one cans anymore... no one makes pickles or jams and that it's a dying art. 

Well... I'm here to tell you that it just ain't so! And I've accepted his comments as a bit of a challenge. I've been putting out very, very simple canning and jam making recipes of late on the market blog, and today's is no exception, to help to fulfill my friday recipe blog purpose:

1. To get people to purchase fresh veggies and fruit at the market.

2. To get people back into the kitchen preparing simple & nutritious home-cooked meals & to get families gathering together for their meals.

3. To teach people a little something... whether it be a new cooking skill or a piece of nutritional knowledge.

4. To entertain people who love food.

5. To give people another way to support and connect with the local food system.

6. To encourage people to stay connected to our market, and to become loyal shoppers & patrons.

I hope you enjoy today's blog post... here it is! 

Peppers are not only spectacularly beautiful vegetables, but they are incredibly nutritious as well. Jonny Bowden, in his book The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth writes,

Both Animal and human studies have indicated that consumption of chile-containing meals increases both fat burning and calorie burning. And a recent study in the July 2006 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that chile pepper has a beneficial effect on insulin levels. Subjects fed a meal containing accayenne chile blend had less insulin in their bloodstreams after eating, meaning something in the chile helped clear the insulin from their bloodstreams after it did its job. Since high insulin is a risk factor for a lot of things, that's a good effect. The researchers think that the active ingredient responsible for the effect is capsaicin. And by the way, the results were even more dramatic in the subjects with the highest body weights.

These peppers were available at last week's
market at TR Greenhouses.

We all know that fresh peppers are good for you... their vibrant colours mean that they're chock-full of antioxidants. Their crunch and their juicy (yes juicy) flesh is delicious. Both sweet bell peppers and their spicy, thin-walled jalepeno and red chile counterparts have capsaicin. So clearly, both sweet and spicy peppers are very good for you.

The Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market has TONS of beautiful looking peppers crying out to make it to your family's lunch & dinner plates! And what dish has them in abundance? Why salsa, of course!

making spicy salsa
Salsa is one of those easy, go-to recipes that for me, defines a vibrant, fresh tasting summer meal. In our house it comes about in one of two ways...

1. It is made up quickly with fresh ingredients and served on tostados or refritos or eggs. It's also delicious on fish and even on a bed of lettuce with a sliced, barbequed/grilled chicken breast.
2. It is cooked up in a huge batch each summer or fall and canned and put away to be pulled out in the winter and eaten with baked tortilla chips, turned into nachos, put in and on meatloaf, etc.

Canned (homemade jarred) salsa tastes infinitely better than any salsa that you can buy in the store. And it is both far less expensive to make up a batch at home... and far more nutritious!

I have included two recipes here. Fresh salsa is quick and easy to make. There's really nothing to it. Canned salsa takes an investment of time... there's lots of chopping and a good hour or more of cooking to get it nice and think and to get the flavours blending, and then there's the bottling and processing. But that investment of time is SO well worth it and you have access to a bit of bottled summer bliss in the depths of winter!

Fresh ingredients for both salsa recipes are pouring into the market now that the summer growing season is upon us. See our vendors for their spectacular produce...

• Holden Colony has hot house tomatoes, red & green peppers and onions, and they will have field tomatoes to come soon.
• T.R. Greenhouses has hot house red & green peppers, spicy red chilies, beautiful deep green jalepenos and many varieties of tomatoes to choose from (Tena recommends the fleshy roma tomatoes for cooked, canned/jarred salsa).
• Dargatz Family Farm is starting to have field grown tomatoes. And if you want to try growing your own peppers, they have full grown potted plants for your garden or deck, hung with peppers... they had bell peppers, spicy long red chiles this past week.

fresh salsa
The fresh jalepeno here is key... it gives it heat and crunch... chop it finely, using disposable gloves if you want to avoid getting the chilli oil into your eyes or stinging any cuts you may have on your hands. The other thing that makes a world of difference is using fresh squeezed lime juice rather than bottled juice... once again, the overwhelming nutritional differences aside, there's a world of difference in taste when you go fresh with all of your ingredients.
ingredients
½ c. cilantro leaves
1 c. chopped tomatoes
1/4 c. chopped red pepper
1/4 c. finely diced red onion
1 small jalepeño pepper, seeded & finely diced
2 T. freshly squeezed lime juice
instructions
Mix all salsa ingredients until everything is thoroughly melded. Serve immediately or cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

making bottled/canned salsa
I had this recipe for the first time over 15 years ago in my good friend, Kathy Toogood's, backyard, and I've been making it every year since. I usually double it and use a huge canning pot to hold & cook it all.

The number of jalepenos here are approximate... you'll need to adjust to your taste. Start with the lower number if you like very, very little heat. I usually put all 6 in, but if you like things quite spicy you will want to put more in OR switch to the spicier Thai chilies or little orange habenero peppers... they're very powerful little heat bombs, so be careful!!! As a general rule with spicy peppers, the smaller the pepper the more spicy heat it packs, so don;t be fooled into thinking you need to swap them volume for volume!

The cooking process definitely reduces the peppers' spicy heat, so half way through cooking, you'll want to taste the salsa and see if it is as hot as you'd like it to be. You can always add more spicy chills, but you can never remove them.
ingredients
4½ lbs ripe tomatoes (18 med... or as many as you can jam into a large sized ziplock freezer bag)
3 chillies, diced finely (or a tin)
1 lg. red onion, chopped
1 large green pepper, diced
1 large red pepper, diced
2-6 jalepenos
1 sm tin tomato paste
3/4 c. vinegar
1/4 c. brown sugar
1T pickling salt
2T paprika
instructions
Put tomatoes in the freezer overnight in a large ziplock bag. When you're ready to make the salsa, remove them from the bag and place the tomatoes in a sink of very hot water. The skins will easily slip off and the tomatoes are super easy to chop up with a sharp knife when they're frozen like this. Discard the skins. Roughly chop the tomatoes (they will break down when they are cooking).

Boil all the ingredients together in a large pot, stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn, uncovered for 1 hour. Place into sterilized jars (200F 20 minutes in oven). Wipe rims with clean cloth before putting lids on. Process in a boiling canner at a rolling boil for 10 minutes. Remove and set on the counter overnight. Check their seals once cool and store  in a cool, dry place any with lids whose dimples successfully popped. Refrigerate any that don't seal.

Fresh Salsa Recipe from The Healthy Kitchen, Page 217
Cooked Salsa Recipe from Dr. Kathy Toogood, Principal with Edmonton Public Schools and dear friend of mine
Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Recipe: Making Jam

I have a few confessions to make: I love the birds and I love foraging in my backyard. I love fresh food.  Really, really fresh food. So I get a serious thrill out of picking something one moment and eating it or preserving it in my kitchen the next. For all of these reasons, our backyard is full of fruit and constant birdsong.

Yup... you can grow fruit in Edmonton! Just ask the Fruits of Sherbrooke people at the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market... there is a wealth of fruit that can be grown in our climate. The Fruits of Sherbrooke volunteers go about "rescuing" unwanted fruit in the older neighbourhoods of Edmonton and turning it into wonderful jams, jellies, savoury and tart sauces and ketchups.

When we moved into our home, we purposely put strawberries, red currents, black currents, red raspberries, yellow raspberries, black raspberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, highbush cranberries and a single, lone apple tree in our teeny tiny backyard when we did our landscaping. There are flowers too... but my secret thrill comes from the fruit scattered throughout the yard, from the creative experimentation that I can do with our meals and preserves and with the wildlife that that purposeful planting has brought to our backyard. And I love the sense of wonderment, adventure and independence that finding, picking and searching for that fruit gave our children when they were young... and that gives our neighbours' three and five year olds today.

Making Jam is one of the easiest things to do and the berries are fresh, ripe and sweet at the market right now. There's nothing like biting into a ripe, juicy sun-kissed berry! And it is ever so simple and really super-easy to capture that flavour... to capture a little of spring and summer... and put it in a jar to bring out in the depths of winter. If you have freezer space, you don't even have to worry about sterilizing jars or even cooking the jam! (And I think that freezer jam tastes far better than cooked jam.) Simply mash the fruit, add the sugar and pectin & stir it up & put it in jars!

See? Nothing to it.

Right now, strawberries & rhubarb are in season and available in Alberta, and raspberries are coming out of BC. Locally, saskatoon berries are about a week or so from being ripe for the picking. At the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market you can find:

• raspberries (at Steve & Dan's Fresh BC Fruit)
• strawberries (at Steve & Dan's, Red Apple, and Osoyoos BC Fruit)
• saskatoons (at Peter's Lakeview Farm)
• rhubarb (Dargatz Family Farm)
• cherries (Red Apple, Steve & Dan's, Osoyoos BC Fruit)

Each year, I experiment with different combinations of fruit. Sometimes that experimentation is the mother of necessity... a recipe calls for two cups of fruit but I only have one and a half cups of one kind and need to add a half cup of something else to complete the recipe. And sometimes, I'm trying to improve on the flavour of a previous jam.

Black currents have strong flavours, but combined with mellower fruits like raspberries or saskatoons, they can be terrific. My favourite jam last year was a half and half combination of black currents and saskatoons. And I love the colour of a raspberry jam that is made from a combination of red and yellow raspberries.

Certo makes making jam incredibly easy. Certo is fruit pectin that is extracted from lime peels. I buy it in its liquid form in packages that are pre-measured. Fruit pectin is what thickens jams and makes them spreadable, rather than pourable. It is a natural ingredient that is extracted from lime peels. Every box of certo (you can usually find it in the sugar/flour/spice aisle of any grocery store) comes with a leaflet instruction chart inside. Follow the recipes there and you will always have success. If you want to find out more, click here.

For now, here's a super simple recipe. Join me... I'm making a batch today!

freezer strawberry jam
This is, hands down, the easiest jam to make! Be sure to use a potato masher to crush the berries and not a food processor so you get little chunks of fruit in the jam. And don't cut down on the sugar or double the recipe as the jam won't set (thicken) properly.

ingredients
1 & 3/4 c. crushed strawberries
4 c. granulated sugar
1 pouch liquid certo pectin
2 T. lemon juice

instructions
Hull (remove the stems) and then thoroughly crush the strawberries. In a large mixing bowl stir together the fruit and sugar. Let stand 10 minutes. Add the certo and lemon juice. Stir for 3 minutes. Put into clean glass jars or plastic freezer containers, filling up to 1/4" from the rim. Cover with lids. Leave at room temperature 24 hours or until set. Yield: 5 cups jam.

Recipe from Original Certo Liquid (instructions in the box)
Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Fresh Sheet: May 29th

Garden Festival

Another market day is just around the corner and it's a special one! It's our Annual Garden Festival! You will find lots of fun filled, informative and delicious things to do at this week's market. Here are the highlights:

This is our annual kick off for Plant A Row, Grow A Row, our partnership with Edmonton's Food Bank that is designed to collect fresh fruits and veggies and deliver them to the food bank in the fall. It is our opportunity to make a difference in a really important way, contributing "real food" to the Food Bank's storage vaults: food that is fresh, nutrient dense and ever-so-healthy! To find out more about this important initiative, read these old blog posts:

• Plant A Row Grow A Row: A Unique Partnership
• Plant A Row, Grow A Row: What Do I Plant?
• A Tour of the Food Bank

The Edmonton Food Bank and its volunteers will be onsite collecting donations of:

• Sealed Bags of Rice
• Empty Egg Cartons
• Boxed, Canned & Bagged non-perishable Food Donations
• Any used shopping bags

Help us Grow A Stack of egg cartons at the SWEFM Info Tent for Edmonton's Food Bank... how tall can we make it??? The food bank is always in need of empty egg cartons.

Help us Fill our Wheelbarrow to overflowing with sealed bags of rice for the food bank. Rice is something simple, nourishing & easy to store that many food bank clients would love to see in their hampers regularly. A familiar staple the world over, our food bank doesn't see enough to meet its demand. Please consider bringing a bag of rice to our Garden Festival event... after all, a grain of rice is a "seed!" There are many ways to GROW a donation!

Servus Credit Union will be holding a penny drive, collecting old pennies that we can no longer use here in Canada, converting them into "real" cash and donating the proceeds to Edmonton's Food Bank. They have actually been collecting them for the food bank for the past 2 weeks at their local Rabbit Hill Rd. & 23rd Ave. branch! WIN BIG! Swap your old pennies for a draw ballot: you could win market bucks to use at your next visit to the market!

Our veggie growers will have plants ready for your gardens and hanging baskets all set to beautify your front porches, balconies and backyard decks. Most importantly, there will be little vegetable plants ready to put in your gardens and patio pots for Plant A Row, Grow A Row.

A number of organizations will be on site to answer any questions you might have and to help you take your gardening to the next level. 

Master Gardeners will be on site in our Community Tent... ask them any questions you have about gardening! They will have the answers! At the same time, they have a children's craft for your kids to do to help them participate in Plant A Row, Grow A Row. Stop by and have them make a newspaper pot and plant a seed or a seed potato for the food bank. Then take it home, plop it directly into a pot or your garden and.. voilà!... your kids are growing a donation!

Master Composter will also be at our market this year, teaching us all how to compost our kitchen and yard waste easily, efficiently and effectively. Stop by their booth to see for yourself how easy it can be to turn your garbage into valuable, nutrient-dense goodness for your garden!

Sustainable Food Edmonton focuses on ways to make our local food resources support our community, lessening our dependence on food trucked and shipped in from afar. Eating local food decreases the environmental cost of our food system, and increases the nutrient density of our food... find out more by stopping at their booth.

Here's what else you can expect to find at your community market this week.

For The Kids

Baring 25km/h winds (or greater... keep your fingers crossed!), kids can come and have a blast on the giant inflatable slide! It's 16 feet wide, 30 feet long and 22 feet high!! Just think how much energy your kids will expend racing up and down this slide... and how well they'll sleep at night! Rides will be $1 each, or $5 for unlimited slides. Remember that the slide will only be set up if, by noon Wednesday, the winds are & are forecasted to be 25km/hour or less.

Once again, wee ones can be transformed into butterflies and tigers when they get their faces painted with wonderfully creative and vivid designs by The Dolphin Lady that will be sure to spark their imaginations and instil a little wonderment into their lives... her hair has been blue, her hair has been pink... who knows what crazy colour it'll be this week! Pretzel will be there as well, creating amazing balloon figures in fabulous designs and colours as only he can, sure to amaze the inner child in all of us!

For Your Kitchen

Fresh veggies are finally trickling in... expect to see rhubarb for sure, and possibly spinach, this week! Dargatz Family Farms, The Holden Colony and Riverbend Gardens will have their over-wintered potatoes, carrots and squashes on hand. And you'll find herb plants, ready for your kitchen garden. There will be farm-fresh eggs as well. And of course, Good Morning Honey will have their bee-made products on hand. 

There are other staples available as well, such as... fresh bread at Prairie Mill Bakery or gluten free bread at Celebrate, Gluten Free. There are wonderfully buttery croissants & crunchy arlettes at Raspberry Cocoa for your breakfast or for your afternoon/after dinner tea. And decadent cupcakes at Sweet Stuff. There are intriguing homemade icecreasm at Back To Basics. And there are prepared jams, jellies and savoury sauces at Fruits of Sherbrooke.

Do you have a hankering for something Mediterranean (think Italy, Greece & Turkey)? There are pre-made items like dips at Theo's Greek Kuzina and Turkish food at Melodi's Kitchen. There are pastas... both regular and gluten-free at Back To Basics.

How about something Indian or Thai? Mini Kitchen will be here each week from now on selling frozen Indian and Thai food, prepared for your home table with favourites like butter chicken, coconut chicken and naan bread for dipping.

There's plenty of fresh produce available from our local greenhouses! TR Greenhouses and The Holden Colony will have cucumbers (large, long English and small sized, great for snacking & packing in lunches for the kids), tomatoes (including small, sweet tomatoes on the vine and my personal favourite... the incredibly chewy, meaty & unbelievably flavour filled zebra tomatoes) and peppers (sweet & hot).

Plenty of options are available for meat for your weekday meals, from whole chickens, lamb, cuts of beef and bison through to prepared sausages, deli meats and jerkies. Be sure to check out what is available this week... and remember, vendors like Greenstein Farm (lamb), Red Tractor Meats and Sunworks Family Farm all accept pre-orders which make your market shopping very simple.

Just go to our website (http://www.swefm.ca/meat-vendors.html), find their profile (in alphabetical order on our list) and click on their links to connect to their websites to place your order. Then, show up on wednesday and make your last stop at their booths, pick up and pay for your order, and head straight home to your fridges and freezers. There are also frozen fish items and bottled sauces to enhance your fishy meals at Food Direct.

For Your Wednesday Night "Dinner at the Market"

The food trucks are back again! Once again, expect to find delicious comfort food from the food trucks, those gourmet kitchens on wheels. Bully will be back, serving great, inventive foods that feature meat, bread, fruit  & veggie vendors at our market. Sailin' On will be back this week, and we'll have a new food truck with Big City Sandwich on site, introducing us to one more take on the whole food truck scene. Little Village will be on hiatus one more market, returning next week.  Fat Franks will be on hand serving hot dogs and cooked smokies & sausages. Desserts can always be found at Pink Kernel (ice cream, mini donuts, cotton candy), Sweet Stuff (cupcakes), Phil's Fudge, and soft icecream cones at The Butchers' Bus.

This Week's Line-Up

For information on these vendors, and the ones listed below, be sure to go to our website Browse Vendors By Category. There you will find excellent descriptions & eye catching photos of the vendors that come to our market & the products that they bring. Browse by category to find out more about the personalities behind the creations, the produce & the food items, and to find out what each vendor will be bringing to market. Please note that not all vendors you see here will be at EVERY market as some come part time (like when their items are in season, or once or twice a month, etc.).

You will be amazed when you see the wealth of creativity, the level of inspiration and the amazing quality of goods that will be at the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market... your neighbourhood market where communities, artisans and farmers all come together .... this season.

Artisans & Crafts People:
Ada's Soap Shop (natural products that do not irritate eczema: olive oil soap, soap shapes)
Expressions by Lori (custom fit women's clothing)
Hemperial Fidelis (soaps, lotions, natural bug spray (body/bath stuff), soy candles, 1/4" twine, raw hemp, hemp seeds, organic and pressed hemp oil)
Mod Shop Tots (Crocheted children's items, booties, cotton hats, hair accessories)
Orange Avocado (jewellery)
Jewels by Amy (crystal & silver jewellery)
Traveling Author, Lynn Link 
Vicki Sather Design (Hats, lampshades, pillowcase covers)

Baked Goods:

Celebrate Gluten Free (gluten free; flax bread, cheese buns & bread, multi grain bread, banana & lemon loaves, cookies, cupcakes, cinnamon buns, brownies)

El Mercado Tortillas (2 types of authentic Mexican corn tortillas)

Inked Cakes (sweet breads & loaves, brownies, bars & squares... formerly Robert's Loaves from Alberta Beach)

Moonshine Doughnuts (gourmet doughnuts in various flavours... formerly Heritage Baked Goods)
Prairie Mill Bread (organic, preservative-free bread)

Raspberry & Cocoa (Tea cakes, puff pastry, croissant, green tea)
Sweet Stuff Cakes (cupcakes)

Meat & Dairy:

Butchers' Bus (Sausage, smokies, pepperoni, pork or turkey jerky) 
Food Direct (fish)

Greenstein Farms (lamb, biweekly)

Red Tractor Family Farm (fresh, frozen meat) 
Sunworks Organic Farm (chicken, beef, prepared sausages)

Food Trucks & Concessions:
Big City Sandwich 
Bully Food Truck (gourmet comfort foods like mac & cheese, poutine, turkey burger, salad, pulled pork grilled cheese sandwich) 
Fat Franks (gourmet hot dogs, smokies & drinks) 
Original Canadian Kettle Popcorn (kettle corn, cotton candy, soft drinks) 
The Pink Kernel (mini donuts, cotton candy, shaved ice, kettle corn, lemonade, water, yo yo balloons)
Sailin' On (Vegan)

Fruits And Vegetables:

*** Note... many of our vegetable producers will be bringing plant starts, stored potatoes and garden plants to the first few market days until their produce is ready. Only greenhouse operators will have fresh vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, long beans and cucumbers at the early season markets. Fruit vendors do not start coming until mid June.

Dargatz Family Farm (produce, bedding plants, eggs, pickles)
Holden Colony (vegetables, pickles, salsa, garlic powder)

Riverbend Gardens (vegetables)
TR Greenhouses (veggies, jellies & salt)

Prepared Foods:

Back to Basics (frozen lasagna using fresh pasta including gluten free and vegetarian versions, homemade soup, homemade ice-cream & icecream sandwiches)

El Mercado Tortillas (2 types of corn tortillas) 

Fruits of Sherbrooke (jams, jellies & condiments)

Good Morning Honey (packaged honey in various sizes, beeswax candles, beeswax, lip balm, night cream)
The Mallow Fellow (gourmet marshmallows in 20 flavours)

Melodi's Kitchen (Turkish food)
Mini Kitchen (frozen, prepared Thai & Indian Food)

Phil's Fudge Factory (Fudge, fudge dipped apples)

Simply Supper (burgers, ribs & ready to go meals)

Theo's Greek Kouzina (prepared Greek food... like amazing tzatziki, humus & red pepper feta dips!!)

A Few Reminders:

Don't forget that the market has moved slightly to a new location... no longer hidden to the west of the rec centre, you will find the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market in the first parking lot, bordered by 23rd Avenue on its south side. Look for the signs, inflatable slide, flags and tents... you can't miss it.

Remember that there is always overflow parking to the west of the Terwillegar Recreation Centre, just follow the signs. Many of the parking lots between the west doors of the rec centre (down the arena hallway) and the Catholic High School (Mother Mary Margaret) are often virtually vacant.

Please drive slowly when visiting the Farmers' Market. Leger Road and the parking lots surrounding the Terwillegar Recreation Centre will have lots of people on foot at market time. There are 2 crosswalks that lead to the market location. Please be mindful of our traffic patrol volunteers.

Volunteers will be on site doing everything from answering questions, manning the Community & Info Tents, entertaining kids and directing traffic to schlepping things and directing people within the rec centre itself. Please be sure to give them a smile and thank them for helping to make our market such a community driven, friendly & inspired place to be.

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee

Fresh Sheet: May 29th

Garden Festival

Another market day is just around the corner and it's a special one! It's our Annual Garden Festival! You will find lots of fun filled, informative and delicious things to do at this week's market. Here are the highlights:

This is our annual kick off for Plant A Row, Grow A Row, our partnership with Edmonton's Food Bank that is designed to collect fresh fruits and veggies and deliver them to the food bank in the fall. It is our opportunity to make a difference in a really important way, contributing "real food" to the Food Bank's storage vaults: food that is fresh, nutrient dense and ever-so-healthy! To find out more about this important initiative, read these old blog posts:

• Plant A Row Grow A Row: A Unique Partnership
• Plant A Row, Grow A Row: What Do I Plant?
• A Tour of the Food Bank

The Edmonton Food Bank and its volunteers will be onsite collecting donations of:

• Sealed Bags of Rice
• Empty Egg Cartons
• Boxed, Canned & Bagged non-perishable Food Donations
• Any used shopping bags

Help us Grow A Stack of egg cartons at the SWEFM Info Tent for Edmonton's Food Bank... how tall can we make it??? The food bank is always in need of empty egg cartons.

Help us Fill our Wheelbarrow to overflowing with sealed bags of rice for the food bank. Rice is something simple, nourishing & easy to store that many food bank clients would love to see in their hampers regularly. A familiar staple the world over, our food bank doesn't see enough to meet its demand. Please consider bringing a bag of rice to our Garden Festival event... after all, a grain of rice is a "seed!" There are many ways to GROW a donation!

Servus Credit Union will be holding a penny drive, collecting old pennies that we can no longer use here in Canada, converting them into "real" cash and donating the proceeds to Edmonton's Food Bank. They have actually been collecting them for the food bank for the past 2 weeks at their local Rabbit Hill Rd. & 23rd Ave. branch! WIN BIG! Swap your old pennies for a draw ballot: you could win market bucks to use at your next visit to the market!

Our veggie growers will have plants ready for your gardens and hanging baskets all set to beautify your front porches, balconies and backyard decks. Most importantly, there will be little vegetable plants ready to put in your gardens and patio pots for Plant A Row, Grow A Row.

A number of organizations will be on site to answer any questions you might have and to help you take your gardening to the next level. 

Master Gardeners will be on site in our Community Tent... ask them any questions you have about gardening! They will have the answers! At the same time, they have a children's craft for your kids to do to help them participate in Plant A Row, Grow A Row. Stop by and have them make a newspaper pot and plant a seed or a seed potato for the food bank. Then take it home, plop it directly into a pot or your garden and.. voilà!... your kids are growing a donation!

Master Composter will also be at our market this year, teaching us all how to compost our kitchen and yard waste easily, efficiently and effectively. Stop by their booth to see for yourself how easy it can be to turn your garbage into valuable, nutrient-dense goodness for your garden!

Sustainable Food Edmonton focuses on ways to make our local food resources support our community, lessening our dependence on food trucked and shipped in from afar. Eating local food decreases the environmental cost of our food system, and increases the nutrient density of our food... find out more by stopping at their booth.

Here's what else you can expect to find at your community market this week.

For The Kids

Baring 25km/h winds (or greater... keep your fingers crossed!), kids can come and have a blast on the giant inflatable slide! It's 16 feet wide, 30 feet long and 22 feet high!! Just think how much energy your kids will expend racing up and down this slide... and how well they'll sleep at night! Rides will be $1 each, or $5 for unlimited slides. Remember that the slide will only be set up if, by noon Wednesday, the winds are & are forecasted to be 25km/hour or less.

Once again, wee ones can be transformed into butterflies and tigers when they get their faces painted with wonderfully creative and vivid designs by The Dolphin Lady that will be sure to spark their imaginations and instil a little wonderment into their lives... her hair has been blue, her hair has been pink... who knows what crazy colour it'll be this week! Pretzel will be there as well, creating amazing balloon figures in fabulous designs and colours as only he can, sure to amaze the inner child in all of us!

For Your Kitchen

Fresh veggies are finally trickling in... expect to see rhubarb for sure, and possibly spinach, this week! Dargatz Family Farms, The Holden Colony and Riverbend Gardens will have their over-wintered potatoes, carrots and squashes on hand. And you'll find herb plants, ready for your kitchen garden. There will be farm-fresh eggs as well. And of course, Good Morning Honey will have their bee-made products on hand. 

There are other staples available as well, such as... fresh bread at Prairie Mill Bakery or gluten free bread at Celebrate, Gluten Free. There are wonderfully buttery croissants & crunchy arlettes at Raspberry Cocoa for your breakfast or for your afternoon/after dinner tea. And decadent cupcakes at Sweet Stuff. There are intriguing homemade icecreasm at Back To Basics. And there are prepared jams, jellies and savoury sauces at Fruits of Sherbrooke.

Do you have a hankering for something Mediterranean (think Italy, Greece & Turkey)? There are pre-made items like dips at Theo's Greek Kuzina and Turkish food at Melodi's Kitchen. There are pastas... both regular and gluten-free at Back To Basics.

How about something Indian or Thai? Mini Kitchen will be here each week from now on selling frozen Indian and Thai food, prepared for your home table with favourites like butter chicken, coconut chicken and naan bread for dipping.

There's plenty of fresh produce available from our local greenhouses! TR Greenhouses and The Holden Colony will have cucumbers (large, long English and small sized, great for snacking & packing in lunches for the kids), tomatoes (including small, sweet tomatoes on the vine and my personal favourite... the incredibly chewy, meaty & unbelievably flavour filled zebra tomatoes) and peppers (sweet & hot).

Plenty of options are available for meat for your weekday meals, from whole chickens, lamb, cuts of beef and bison through to prepared sausages, deli meats and jerkies. Be sure to check out what is available this week... and remember, vendors like Greenstein Farm (lamb), Red Tractor Meats and Sunworks Family Farm all accept pre-orders which make your market shopping very simple.

Just go to our website (http://www.swefm.ca/meat-vendors.html), find their profile (in alphabetical order on our list) and click on their links to connect to their websites to place your order. Then, show up on wednesday and make your last stop at their booths, pick up and pay for your order, and head straight home to your fridges and freezers. There are also frozen fish items and bottled sauces to enhance your fishy meals at Food Direct.

For Your Wednesday Night "Dinner at the Market"

The food trucks are back again! Once again, expect to find delicious comfort food from the food trucks, those gourmet kitchens on wheels. Bully will be back, serving great, inventive foods that feature meat, bread, fruit  & veggie vendors at our market. Sailin' On will be back this week, and we'll have a new food truck with Big City Sandwich on site, introducing us to one more take on the whole food truck scene. Little Village will be on hiatus one more market, returning next week.  Fat Franks will be on hand serving hot dogs and cooked smokies & sausages. Desserts can always be found at Pink Kernel (ice cream, mini donuts, cotton candy), Sweet Stuff (cupcakes), Phil's Fudge, and soft icecream cones at The Butchers' Bus.

This Week's Line-Up

For information on these vendors, and the ones listed below, be sure to go to our website Browse Vendors By Category. There you will find excellent descriptions & eye catching photos of the vendors that come to our market & the products that they bring. Browse by category to find out more about the personalities behind the creations, the produce & the food items, and to find out what each vendor will be bringing to market. Please note that not all vendors you see here will be at EVERY market as some come part time (like when their items are in season, or once or twice a month, etc.).

You will be amazed when you see the wealth of creativity, the level of inspiration and the amazing quality of goods that will be at the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market... your neighbourhood market where communities, artisans and farmers all come together .... this season.

Artisans & Crafts People:
Ada's Soap Shop (natural products that do not irritate eczema: olive oil soap, soap shapes)
Expressions by Lori (custom fit women's clothing)
Hemperial Fidelis (soaps, lotions, natural bug spray (body/bath stuff), soy candles, 1/4" twine, raw hemp, hemp seeds, organic and pressed hemp oil)
Mod Shop Tots (Crocheted children's items, booties, cotton hats, hair accessories)
Orange Avocado (jewellery)
Jewels by Amy (crystal & silver jewellery)
Traveling Author, Lynn Link 
Vicki Sather Design (hats, lampshades, pillowcase covers)

Baked Goods:

Celebrate Gluten Free (gluten free; flax bread, cheese buns & bread, multi grain bread, banana & lemon loaves, cookies, cupcakes, cinnamon buns, brownies)

El Mercado Tortillas (2 types of authentic Mexican corn tortillas)

Inked Cakes (sweet breads & loaves, brownies, bars & squares... formerly Robert's Loaves from Alberta Beach)

Moonshine Doughnuts (gourmet doughnuts in various flavours... formerly Heritage Baked Goods)
Prairie Mill Bread (organic, preservative-free bread)

Raspberry & Cocoa (Tea cakes, puff pastry, croissant, green tea)
Sweet Stuff Cakes (cupcakes)

Meat & Dairy:

Butchers' Bus (Sausage, smokies, pepperoni, pork or turkey jerky) 
Food Direct (fish)

Greenstein Farms (lamb, biweekly)

Red Tractor Family Farm (fresh, frozen meat) 
Sunworks Organic Farm (chicken, beef, prepared sausages)

Food Trucks & Concessions:
Big City Sandwich 
Bully Food Truck (gourmet comfort foods like mac & cheese, poutine, turkey burger, salad, pulled pork grilled cheese sandwich) 
Fat Franks (gourmet hot dogs, smokies & drinks) 
Original Canadian Kettle Popcorn (kettle corn, cotton candy, soft drinks) 
The Pink Kernel (mini donuts, cotton candy, shaved ice, kettle corn, lemonade, water, yo yo balloons)
Sailin' On (Vegan)

Fruits And Vegetables:

*** Note... many of our vegetable producers will be bringing plant starts, stored potatoes and garden plants to the first few market days until their produce is ready. Only greenhouse operators will have fresh vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, long beans and cucumbers at the early season markets. Fruit vendors do not start coming until mid June.

Dargatz Family Farm (produce, bedding plants, eggs, pickles)
Holden Colony (vegetables, pickles, salsa, garlic powder)

Riverbend Gardens (vegetables)
TR Greenhouses (veggies, jellies & salt)

Prepared Foods:

Back to Basics (frozen lasagna using fresh pasta including gluten free and vegetarian versions, homemade soup, homemade ice-cream & icecream sandwiches)

El Mercado Tortillas (2 types of corn tortillas) 

Fruits of Sherbrooke (jams, jellies & condiments)

Good Morning Honey (packaged honey in various sizes, beeswax candles, beeswax, lip balm, night cream)
The Mallow Fellow (gourmet marshmallows in 20 flavours)

Melodi's Kitchen (Turkish food)
Mini Kitchen (frozen, prepared Thai & Indian Food)

Phil's Fudge Factory (Fudge, fudge dipped apples)

Simply Supper (burgers, ribs & ready to go meals)

Theo's Greek Kouzina (prepared Greek food... like amazing tzatziki, humus & red pepper feta dips!!)

A Few Reminders:

Don't forget that the market has moved slightly to a new location... no longer hidden to the west of the rec centre, you will find the Southwest Edmonton Farmers' Market in the first parking lot, bordered by 23rd Avenue on its south side. Look for the signs, inflatable slide, flags and tents... you can't miss it.

Remember that there is always overflow parking to the west of the Terwillegar Recreation Centre, just follow the signs. Many of the parking lots between the west doors of the rec centre (down the arena hallway) and the Catholic High School (Mother Mary Margaret) are often virtually vacant.

Please drive slowly when visiting the Farmers' Market. Leger Road and the parking lots surrounding the Terwillegar Recreation Centre will have lots of people on foot at market time. There are 2 crosswalks that lead to the market location. Please be mindful of our traffic patrol volunteers.

Volunteers will be on site doing everything from answering questions, manning the Community & Info Tents, entertaining kids and directing traffic to schlepping things and directing people within the rec centre itself. Please be sure to give them a smile and thank them for helping to make our market such a community driven, friendly & inspired place to be.

Visit our website at http://www.swefm.ca
Like us on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/swefm.ca
Contributed by Sheri Hendsbee