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. The Salem Farmers’ Market takes place every Thursday from June 12 to October 23 from 3 pm to 7 pm on Derby Square. 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.
It may not officially be fall yet, but we’ve definitely entered the season for one of the most beloved symbols of fall food – APPLES. If you’re like me, your eyes are probably bigger than your stomach when it comes to purchasing apples or apple cider. Suddenly, you find yourself with three bags of apples and two gallons of apple cider that really need to be used within a week. What to do?
Confession time – I am terrible with pie. “Easy as apple pie” has no relevance to me. So here’s a list things that I find EASIER to make than apple pie:
- Apple Crisp – when it comes to the basics, I still reach for Betty Crocker first.
- Quick Pickled Apples – hint: get spice advice from SalemSpice and use maple syrup from one of our farmers
- Apple Butter – freezes very well and is a great way to deal with an abundance of apples that may be on their way out
- Baked Chicken With Cider and Apples – consider adding in some hard cider from Far From the Tree!
- Chicken with Sausage, Prunes, and Apples – absolutely my favorite savory use of apples
- Apple Cider Caramels – that’s right, I think even making caramel is easier than making pie. But really, you’ll be surprised by how easy it is.
Boxes of Far From the Tree Hard Cider ready to go!
