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Zucchini, a summer squash, was gaining in popularity at a recent Farmers Market in Luverne, thanks to Rock County Master Gardener Dawn Sandager.
Sandager spends up to five weeks each summer at the market as part of her community outreach work as a Master Gardener, a title she earned five years ago.
This year each Thursday since Aug. 4, Sandager has unfolded a table and prepared a dish on site featuring produce from her garden. The Aug. 18 market featured dish was “Zucchini Caprese Salad.”
“Everyone thinks zucchini is only for baked goods,” she said.
Using a spiralizer Sandager cut several pattypan squash, a variety related to the zucchini, into long spaghetti-like strings that she later cut into bite-size lengths for the salad.
She topped the zucchini with cherry tomatoes, garlic cloves, basil and mozzarella with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.
The process took about 10 minutes amid answering questions about what she was making.
A common response from her audience was, “I don’t like zucchini.”
Sandager urged reluctant consumers to try the small samples she handed out, explaining it’s OK if they don’t eat everything in their half-cup-sized serving.
Many of Sandager’s taste testers were children or reluctant senior citizens who were at first skeptical of eating zucchini but eagerly emptied their sample cups after the first bite.
“They are very good,” was the response from most.
Before each of her informal presentations, Sandager gives market vendors a list of vegetables so they can stock the fresh items for sale.
The veteran gardener has learned vegetables can be used in a variety of dishes.
She plants hundreds of vegetable varieties in the two gardens she maintains on the farm where she and her husband, Charlie, live west of Hills. Annually Sandager said she cans 800 jars of fresh produce.
“I love vegetables and helping people know what to do with them,” she said.
That love and enthusiasm for vegetables wasn’t always there, however.
As one of six children growing up on the family farm near Tyler, Sandager admitted she hated tending the family garden. Days spent doing one vegetable such as green beans, corn or beets weren’t pleasant memories from her youth.
That changed when Sandager began experimenting with a variety of vegetables that includes Jerusalem artichokes, bardock and turnips that she fed her own family of six.
Sandager’s final presentation is scheduled for Sept. 8 at the weekly Farmers Market, which is open from 4 to 7 p.m. near Redbird Field in Luverne.
To connect with a Master Gardener for help, or to become a Master Gardener, contact the county coordinator, Lynette Jauert, 507-283-8539, or email: ljauert@vastbb.net.
The state’s Master Gardener Program began in 1977 through the University of Minnesota Extension Service.