 Visiting your favorite farmers market with your friends and family creates meaningful relationships with your local community and food, and also gets everyone involved in meal times! Going to the market with a specific recipe in mind can help increase your savings and cut down on food waste. From appetizers to full meals, the farmers market is a great place to utilize your Double Up Food Bucks and get to know your local vendors and farmers. Take a look at this recipe for inspiration, and for tips on how to best utilize your Double Up Food Bucks! This recipe makes a great appetizer, and can also be a healthy snack. Many farmers grow indoors in Arizona, so the ingredients in this recipe are usually available year-round. Bruschetta is vegetarian-friendly, too. The ingredients also last long, so they can be used in other dishes throughout the week. Bruschetta also makes a great party dish, especially during the holiday season!  We stopped by the Phoenix Open Air Market to provide a step-by-step guide to purchasing the ingredients for this delicious dish! Using your Double Up Food Bucks to make the recipe:Purchase the bread with your SNAP/EBT card, and get the produce with your Double Up Food Bucks. The farmers, vendors, and in-season options influenced our choices, and the local produce took a shining role. For the bread, Arizona Bread Company’s kalamata olive bread made the perfect bed for the desert bruschetta mix. This bread is a great base for the dish, and also adds a pop to other meals like sandwiches. Next, we used our Double Up Food bucks to purchase the produce and herbs for the recipe. We stopped by the Abby Lee Farm’s booth to look for tomatoes. They grow their tomatoes indoors, so they are available all year long. This bruschetta used 8 of their sweet and savory dark red cherry tomatoes, providing a balance to the lemon basil from Maya's Farm. Lemon basil grows very well in Arizona, and the flowers have a zesty sweetness. Asking your farmer for recommendations on ingredients can be extremely helpful for any recipe idea! Maya recommended the lemon basil and an onion called I’itoi, which was brought over from Spain long ago but now grows wild in the Arizona desert. All of these products combined make a wonderful market-style bruschetta. Everyone at the market is helpful, and they are happy to share their ideas and recipes. If you don’t have a dish in mind before your trip, ask the farmers for their favorite recipes and seasonal produce. If you tell the farmers what you plan on making, they will point to ingredients that are unique and affordable so you can Double Up on quality and quantity! Watch the video below to learn more about using your Double Up Food Bucks:
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