The Coppell Farmers Market hosts the Market to Kitchen Chef Series during each season. This Saturday, September 13th, at 10:00 am, Dave Blair will demo okra patties and jalapeno poppers and and serve tasty samples. His demo will be featuring market products while teaching cooking techniques and sharing the history of CFM neighbor Hard Eight BBQ. Hard Eight believes in the importance of locally sourced foods when possible as shown in their Go Texan designation, a restaurant recognized by the Texas Department of Agriculture as an eating establishment using local products. Temperatures are cooler just in time for this free demonstration. Find a chair under the canopies on the south side of the Pavilion by 10:00 Saturday morning and be ready for an entertaining, informative presentation with nutritious sampling included.
What’s fresh? Melons are still around. Tomatoes in different sizes like grape and heirloom varieties continue. Squash includes yellow summer, zucchini, butta zucchini, butternut, and spaghetti. Sweet, hot, and bell peppers were still found last week. Okra and cucumbers are still producing. Root vegetables include red potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yellow onions. Greens might include spicy summer salad mix, Swiss chard, arugula, and both Malabar and water spinach. Herbs and seasonings are garlic chives, basils, mints, borage, oregano, and rosemary, plus bottles of dried seasonings. The CFM farmers use various growing methods. Some produce is sustainably grown, certified organic, and conventional. Just ask the farmers and also check their farm description on the website. Non-produce items feature pastured beef, pork, and chicken raised on a natural diet, free range eggs and Gulf of Mexico seafood.
Artisan cheeses, butter, honey, a large variety of small batch prepared foods, breads, pasta, snacks, pies, cookies, scones, baking and soup mixes, whole grains, coffee, tamales, doggie biscuits, olive oil, vinegar, chocolate truffles, macarons, fresh squeezed lemonade, crafted fruit popsicles round out the edible offerings. Recent goat milk cheese choices included chevre (plain, herbed, and mango), plus both plain and Kalamata feta. Granola flavor of the month for September is cinnamon apple, just in time for cooling temperatures.
Interesting facts: spices sold at the Coppell FM are prepared in small batches from vegetables or citrus fruit dehydrated and mixed by the seller. Taste the vibrant flavor difference. Unique to the Coppell FM, jars of pickled beets, fruit preserves, salsas, pesto, and pasta sauce are prepared by the vendor. Reselling of these products made by others isn’t allowed. Crafted goat milk lotions and soaps, herbal bar soaps, lip balm, and fresh baked doggie biscuits are in the “inedible to humans” category.
The Coppell Farmers Market is open every Saturday, 8 a.m. to noon at 768 W. Main Street in Old Town Coppell. Lone Star Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) and bank ATM cards can be used to purchase wooden market tokens (market cash) at the CFM info booth in the center of the pavilion. For the most current market news and events, join the Coppell Farmers Market on Facebook and Twitter and subscribe to a weekly email update at http://.coppellfarmersmarket.org..