“Playing With Your Food” is a weekly post highlighting a few of the many great uses for the wide range of produce and artisan food at the Salem Farmers’ Market, a Salem Main Streets project.  While we can never predict exactly what our farms will be able to bring each week, we do our best to reflect some of the fun items we’ve found recently and what’s likely to be available for the upcoming week.  Hopefully this will give you a few new ideas to play with, and inspire you to try some new things at the market.

The true summer market season is most definitely here!  The trucks arriving at the market each week are chock full of goodies, the tables are almost sagging under the weight of all this beautiful produce, and if you have a vegetable garden of your own, chances are you have one culprit that’s producing faster than you can handle.  Chances are it’s a vine-based plant, like squash.

Cucumbers and Squash at the Clark Farm stand

Me, I’m drowning in cucumbers.  Everything I purchase at the market and every meal I plan must somehow incorporate cucumbers.  At the market, they’re incredibly affordable and can be found in several different varieties – check out the “Tasty Jade” cukes at Maitland Mountain Farm! Here are just a few of my favorite uses for cukes:

• Tzatziki – easy and healthy, we have used this on practically EVERYTHING – salads, sandwiches, burgers, you name it!
• Cucumber Avocado Soup – light and decadent at the same time.
• Cold Rice Noodles with Peanut-Lime Chicken – or other similar cold noodle salads.
• Quick Pickles – this slightly fancy take is very easy and extremely adjustable – use basil instead of shiso, rice wine vinegar in place of mirin or omit entirely, and use any cucumbers you like so long as you slice thinly.  And honestly, they’re still delicious if you can’t stand to wait 4 hours.
• Gazpacho – ok, so I use canned tomatoes rather than fresh.  You can use fresh if you feel offended by that.
• In cocktails, especially with gin, like the Eastside.
• Tip – if you grow at home, try using cucumber blossoms as a garnish!  They’re absolutely edible and have an interesting cucumber-y taste.  Aim for the male blossoms, or just use the female blossoms if you’re concerned about having too big a crop.

But what about jar pickles?!  Don’t worry, we’ll discuss pickling at a later date.  For now, just enjoy the fact that the cukes are green and fresh and everywhere.