By Tere Dunlap
tdunlap@themonroetimes.com
MONROE - The Monroe farmers narket opened a week earlier than usual, but without a bang Wednesday.
Despite the threat of rain, Phyllis Perrin of Albany, with her jams, salsas and fruit butters, sat on the south corner; right where she was located last year.
Perrin and her husband Richard turned a profit last year for the first time, and she was delighted.
Fresh produce was in short supply at the market, as Bill Didire of Didire Green County Honey Farm in Monroe pointed out.
"I wish the people who picked the dates (for the market) would plant a garden," he said.
Cannas sets and tomato plants were available for those planning a garden. Fresh foods for family tables were limited to items such as rhubarb and chives.
After 60 years of cooking experience - much of it learned from Grandma Caroline - Perrin is experimenting with low-sugar and sugarless products - including sugar-free elderberry jam.
For Perrin, freshness comes in a jar at her stand, named after her grandmother, Caroline's Old Tyme Products.
"My grandmother taught me how to pick elderberries, wild plums and wild grapes," she said.
As a retired nurse, a diabetic, and a survivor of open heart surgery, Perrin is fussy about what goes in to her products. None of them contain preservatives.
"If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it," she said.
Her watermelon pickles taste different than store brands, because she uses cider vinegar, not distilled vinegar.
"Because I don't know where distilled vinegar comes from," she said.
Only the "good stuff" of those natural Wisconsin fruits goes into Perrin's jams and butters. She won't use the stems, often squeezed with the berries by mass produced jams. She even will tell you on which roads she picked the fruit.
She is a certified food handler for acidic and low acidic foods.
Perrin uses the Lions Club kitchen in Albany, a commercial-grade kitchen, to produce her jams and butters. She is anxious for a community, commercial kitchen to be built, a project being led by Green County's UW Extension.
Perrin also works with apples, crab apples, peaches, raspberries, pineapple, chokecherries, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, beans and corn. She produces a wide variety of preserves, marmalade, salsa - both hot and sweet/hot - sauerkraut, pickled eggs, pie filling - the unusual list seems unending as she speaks.
tdunlap@themonroetimes.com
MONROE - The Monroe farmers narket opened a week earlier than usual, but without a bang Wednesday.
Despite the threat of rain, Phyllis Perrin of Albany, with her jams, salsas and fruit butters, sat on the south corner; right where she was located last year.
Perrin and her husband Richard turned a profit last year for the first time, and she was delighted.
Fresh produce was in short supply at the market, as Bill Didire of Didire Green County Honey Farm in Monroe pointed out.
"I wish the people who picked the dates (for the market) would plant a garden," he said.
Cannas sets and tomato plants were available for those planning a garden. Fresh foods for family tables were limited to items such as rhubarb and chives.
After 60 years of cooking experience - much of it learned from Grandma Caroline - Perrin is experimenting with low-sugar and sugarless products - including sugar-free elderberry jam.
For Perrin, freshness comes in a jar at her stand, named after her grandmother, Caroline's Old Tyme Products.
"My grandmother taught me how to pick elderberries, wild plums and wild grapes," she said.
As a retired nurse, a diabetic, and a survivor of open heart surgery, Perrin is fussy about what goes in to her products. None of them contain preservatives.
"If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't eat it," she said.
Her watermelon pickles taste different than store brands, because she uses cider vinegar, not distilled vinegar.
"Because I don't know where distilled vinegar comes from," she said.
Only the "good stuff" of those natural Wisconsin fruits goes into Perrin's jams and butters. She won't use the stems, often squeezed with the berries by mass produced jams. She even will tell you on which roads she picked the fruit.
She is a certified food handler for acidic and low acidic foods.
Perrin uses the Lions Club kitchen in Albany, a commercial-grade kitchen, to produce her jams and butters. She is anxious for a community, commercial kitchen to be built, a project being led by Green County's UW Extension.
Perrin also works with apples, crab apples, peaches, raspberries, pineapple, chokecherries, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, beans and corn. She produces a wide variety of preserves, marmalade, salsa - both hot and sweet/hot - sauerkraut, pickled eggs, pie filling - the unusual list seems unending as she speaks.