Saratoga Farmers' Market

Anna Mae Clark

Onion & Caraway Bread

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Recipe by Anna Mae Clark, founding market member and owner of Clark Dahlia Gardens & Greenhouses and Anna Mae’s Homemade Jam
Makes 1 loaf


Ingredients
*Ingredients currently available at the Saratoga Farmers’ Market
● 1 cup cottage cheese
● 1 T butter*
● 1 T sugar
● 1 tsp. salt
● ¼ tsp baking soda
● 1 package yeast
● ¼ cup warm water
● 2 ½ – 3 cups flour
● 2 T onion*, minced, or onion flakes
● 1 T caraway or dill seeds

Instructions
Combine the first five ingredients. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and add to the combination. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. Add the onion (sauté briefly if using fresh onion) and caraway or dill seeds and knead 8-10 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl and turn so greased side is up. Allow to rise until doubled in size. Knead 3 minutes and make into a loaf. Allow to rise another 20 minutes while the oven heats to 350°. Bake about 35 minutes until the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes one loaf.

The Farmers’ Market Cookbook: Rich in Recipes and History

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By Catherine Morba

Since its original publication in 2002, the Saratoga Farmers’ Market Cookbook has existed on shelves as a piece of market history. The cookbook pays homage to the founding of the Saratoga Farmers’ Market in the late summer of 1978, when a small but determined group of vendors began selling in the Spring Street parking lot. It’s a treasure trove of favorites gathered from vendors and shoppers and written in their own voices, many of whom are still selling at or supporting the present day market.

Over the coming weeks, the cookbook will be digitized and posted on the Saratoga Farmers’ Market website (saratogafarmersmarket.org) for all to enjoy. In the meantime, here is a sneak preview in time for the holidays. Jars of pickled beets or loaves of onion and caraway bread could be made in larger batches for homemade gifts, or enjoyed midwinter for a bit of cheer long after the festivities have passed.

Sweet Potato and Cranberry Sauté, Recipe by Liza Porter, cookbook editor and former owner of Homestead Artisans & Longview Farm

Pickled Beets, Recipe by Sandy Arnold, owner of Pleasant Valley Farm

Onion & Caraway Bread, recipe by Anna Mae Clark, founding market member and owner of Clark Dahlia Gardens & Greenhouses and Anna Mae’s Homemade Jam

Jam Makers Preserve a Sweet Tradition

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By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

Homemade jams are a longtime staple of the Saratoga Farmers’ Market. These treats – made from fruits grown and harvested spring through fall – gleam like jewels in glass jars. They are rich in fruit flavor, and thick with sweetness. They fill holiday stockings, they sit on breakfast tables, and they work great in holiday recipes.

Two vendors – Laurie Kokinda of Kokinda Farm and Anna Mae Clark of Clark’s Dahlia Gardens & Greenhouses – offer jam. For both, jam-making runs in the family.

“My mother taught me how to make jam as a young child,” says Kokinda. “We would go picking fruit at ‘pick your own’ farms and gather wild huckleberries in Luther’s Forest.” 

“Then,” Kokinda recalls, “as a teen, I started making it by myself.” Her mother had had a horse accident and had broken her wrist.

Kokinda joined the farmers’ market in 1997. Since then, she has sold jam under the name of Laurie’s Jams, alongside produce, eggs, and handmade items.

She makes jam once a week, in between driving a school bus and caring for horses, chickens and dogs. She grows raspberries, currants, gooseberries, blackberries, apples, pears, rhubarb and grapes. She obtains other fruits such as cherries, plums, blueberries, and apricots from other local growers. Of particular pride is her favorite, peach jam, made from peaches from her own trees.

Clark was a Saratoga Farmers’ Market vendor when the market started in 1978. She began selling jam around 1998 when, she recalls, she had “a freezer filled with fruit that wasn’t being used.” But she has made jam for 50 years. She inherited the tradition from her mother and grandmothers. “We all made jam,” says Clark. “We had to at the farm, or you wouldn’t have any.” 

Clark perfected her jam-making through 4-H and Cornell Cooperative Extension classes. She grows most of her fruit, though relies on others for products she cannot grow herself such as oranges and cranberries. She goes through a pallet of sugar a year. Jams, insists Clark, need sugar. Sugar brings out a fruit’s flavor in a way that other sweeteners cannot.

Many of Anna Mae Clark’s recipes come from her mother and grandmothers. They create “older flavors” that people enjoy, and can’t always find outside of farmers’ markets.

The Saratoga Farmers Market is 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays at the Lincoln Baths Building in the Saratoga Spa State Park. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and on the FreshFoodNY app.

Move to High Rock Begins Cycle of Seasonal Growth

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By Himanee Gupta-Carlson

 

Eggs and ham sizzling; vendors in flannel cupping cups of coffee; a ribbon cutting and the clang of a bell. These sights, smells, and sounds are markers of the Saratoga Farmers’ Market outdoor season at High Rock Park.

The market celebrates the start of its outdoor season at 9 a.m. Saturday, with a short step back to the past: acknowledgment of a City of Saratoga Springs commemorating the market’s 40th anniversary, welcomes from Mayor Meg Kelly and State Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, and introductions of some of the market’s original vendors.

Then the ribbon will be cut and the season will begin.

Going outdoors for farmers, home food producers, and other local creators of artisanal foods and crafts is like a seasonal ritual, transitioning the farming cycle away from the stored foods of winter and moving toward the new growth of spring and bounty of summer and fall.

“Farmers feed us,” says Anna Mae Clark, one of the market’s original vendors. “That’s something people sometimes forget.”

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is about feeding the body as well as the senses. The market is a producer-only market that ensures at least 70 percent of its vendors will be purely agricultural while also creating space for other local businesses to thrive.

The result is a community fest every Saturday morning and Wednesday afternoons that involves eating alongside entertainment and education about living in sync with the seasons.

This week, check out the big bags of spinach from Owl Wood Farm, $1 off. Visit Grandma Apple’s Cheesecakes and pick up two individual sized cheesecakes for $8, or $4.50 for one. And for your garden stop by Scotch Ridge Berry Farm, which will be among the vendors offering vegetable starts.

The market will have community tables and a free children’s activity as it does every week. Running the River will perform, as it does on the first Saturday of each month, helping to make music also a market staple.

“Knowing other is a means of helping one another when possible or when necessity occurs,” says Clark. “May we see 50 years, then 75 years and 100 years of operating as a farmers’ market.”

The Saratoga Farmers’ Market is 3-6 p.m. Wednesdays and 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays at High Rock Park. Look for us on the new FreshFoodNY app. For volunteer opportunities, contact friends@saratogafarmersmarket.org.