Dawn Troutner Toledo Market Master

Market Report for August 19, 2016

It was a busy night for the Toledo Farmers’ Market. With the threat of rain Kristi only did a small portion of her baking. She still had pies, twisty’s, kolaches, rolicky, bars, cookies, and rolls.

Rod and Cindy brought the big trailer in with flats of round, red tomatoes. They also had watermelons, cantaloupe, and taters. Penny and Jim had different sizes of honey, honey comb, lip balm, solid lotion bars, bees wax, and honey stix. They have the cutest little jars of honey for $4, great gifts. Vernon and Wilma had eggs. Caryn was there with jams, jellies, snack mixes and her caramel corn. Darold had beautiful gladiolas at a dollar a stem, tomatoes, egg plant, okra, jalapenos, bells, and green tomatoes.

Shirley and Michael brought, rolicky, kolaches, buchty, bars, kuchen and muffins.

Chuck and Ginger had a table full of pies, breads, kolaches, onions, taters, French fingerling taters, green and red cabbage, spaghetti squash, pink banana squash, peppers, summer squash, cucumbers, okra, leeks, popcorn, and eggs. Nancy and Tom had an assortment of buffalo meat, tomatoes, peppers, plums, and watermelons. Dawn had jams, green peppers, hot peppers, onions, tomatoes, fresh and dried herbs, cucumbers, taters, rhubarb, French long beans, popcorn, and dried beans.

Cheryl had her ceramic’s, hand made towel sets, scrubbies, potholders, hot and cold bowl holders, pouches for microwave cooking. The hot item this week was the awesome team football lights.

Lois, Marie, Brenda, and Ethan brought tomatoes, bells, green beans, egg plants, and cucumbers. Vicki was back with jams, brownies, cookies, hand made potholders, quilts, and giraffes. Jim was under the pine tree with hand made leather items. If you need something special made Jim is the guy to ask.

Joe and Barb had bread, rolicky, granola, mini pies, okra, onions, hot peppers, egg plant, taters, and leeks. Karen had a table full of her soy candles. And Red Earth Gardens on the north end of the market had tomatoes, kale, sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers, pasta tomatoes, and ground cherries.

There is still plenty of fresh produce at the Toledo Farmers’ Market. Be sure to get out and make your purchases before it’s too late.

As you can read there were plenty of tomatoes at the Toledo Farmers’ Market. If you’re a canning person there was flats and boxes to be purchased. If you prefer single tomatoes there was plenty to pick from. And if you like a cherry tomato for your salad there was plenty of them.

Roasting Tomatoes

If you’re like me there is never enough time in the day to can all you’d like to preserve. So, I am going to try roasting tomatoes and throwing them in the freezer for another day when I have time to can.

It’s so easy, just wash and quarter tomatoes, place on a large sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Place in an oven at 350 degrees for about one to one and a half hours. Watch them get caramelize.

Use a hand held blender or food processor to puree. Then place in containers and freeze.

Pull them out to make soup, marinara sauce, salsa, stewed tomatoes. They are so delicious and flavorful.

If you would like to make marinara sauce, roast your fresh tomatoes, about five pounds, cut in quarters, and place on a baking sheet pan with 6 to 8 garlic cloves roughly chopped. Sprinkle all with salt, pepper and drizzle with olive oil.

Bake at 350 degrees in your oven for one to two hours. Place roasted tomatoes in a crock pot; add one 14 ounce can of tomato sauce, 3 tablespoons of tomato paste, 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, one chopped onion, half cup of dry red wine you can use half of cup of chicken broth or vegetable stock instead of wine, one tablespoon of sugar, and two teaspoons of fresh oregano, if you use dried its one teaspoon.

Cook on high in crock pot for one hour, and lower temperature to low for an additional two hours.

Let your sauce cool and then add in two to three tablespoons of chopped fresh basil. Basil becomes bitter when cooked so always add at the end of any recipe.

Puree this in a food processor or hand held blender until smooth and creamy.

If you need some tomatoes come on out to the Toledo Farmers Market, I am sure you can find what your looking for.

See you at market.