Salsa Fest gets cranberry kick from reigning champ

By Chris Swords Betts

With Maricopa’s 13^th annual Salsa Festival approaching, Stacy Leonard is gearing up to make 20 gallons of her award-winning – albeit unorthodox – Crazy Cranberry Salsa.[quote_box_right]If You Go
What: Salsa Fest
When: March 25, 2-8 p.m.
Where: Copper Sky Regional Park, 44345 W. Martin Luther King Blvd.
How much: Free entry; $1 salsa tasting kit
Info: Maricopa-AZ.gov/web/Salsa-Festival[/quote_box_right]

Leonard will be selling her salsa at the festival this year. She said her quantities for sale will be limited, but she will not run out of free samples.

“If you make the trip out,” Leonard said, “you’re going to get salsa from me.”

Crazy Cranberry Salsa took home the Best Overall title at last year’s festival, along with its $1,000 prize. Leonard said she spent about half of her winnings on ingredients for the competition, including 128 cans of cranberry sauce.

“The people that come now, they come to her booth for her salsa,” said Judy Draves, Leonard’s mother.

Leonard’s husband, Jase, said it’s more than just her special recipe that wins the awards.

“How she presents it and talks to the people is really what sells it,” Jase said.

“It’s such a simple recipe,” Leonard said. “It’s just fresh vegetables and cranberry sauce. There’s no spices.”

And no tomatoes either.

“We have to convince some people to try it,” Leonard said. “I myself hate cranberries. I love the salsa.”

Maricopan Angela Soliz said she was intrigued to try it at the Salsa Festival, despite her distaste for cranberry sauce.

“I loved it from the first bite,” Soliz said.

Soliz, a friend of Leonard since that first festival, said she uses the salsa in many ways, including with cream cheese, with Thanksgiving dinner and even in mini sandwiches.

“People say it’s like Frank’s Red Hot,” Leonard said. “You put it on everything.”

Leonard said the idea to use cranberries came about at a potluck among friends. Leonard ran with the idea, experimenting with different ingredients and entering competitions along the way.

“We didn’t win the first one,” Leonard said. “We didn’t even win the second one. It took a few years off and on.”

The recipe remains the same since her first year at Maricopa’s Salsa Festival in 2014, when it won Best Overall in addition to winning the Unique Salsa category. Leonard has experimented with different ingredients, but she said nothing has beat it yet.

“We make it for parties and potlucks,” Leonard said. “And we have some people we make it for regularly.”

Leonard said she would like to start selling her salsa locally.

“It would be absolutely amazing to sell at farmer’s markets,” Leonard said. “To join the Phoenix food culture.”

Leonard is working on getting approvals and licenses to start selling outside of the Festival.

“It’s a very difficult process,” Leonard said. “I really wish that was part of the prize – helping us map what to do to sell it.”

Leonard and a tight-knit crew of a few friends and family members work together to create the salsa on-site, as per the competition’s rules.

“They are a support system that carries the entire day,” Leonard said of her crew. “If I didn’t have them, it wouldn’t be possible. They give everything they have every single year.”

This year, Leonard will have six or seven people helping, each with a specific job, to finish in the three hours they’re allotted before the crowds come in.

The first year she entered, Leonard had only four people on her crew.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into,” Leonard said.

“It’s very fast-paced,” said Draves, a regular volunteer.

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This story appears in the March issue of InMaricopa.