farmersmarket365

June and July brought us the greens and buds of the vegetables, but in August the fruits and roots are what fill the bins.  This is the time when my kitchen is most crazy with jars and lids as well as freezer bags. My love of “putting up” grew to this point because I really like doing it.  I didn’t grow up on a farm but I do have many memories of time spent on farms in the summer; more importantly I have memories of kitchens.

Conserving food for the winter, otherwise known, in our house, as “squirreling” can be as big or as small as you want it to be.  There is no shortage of information about how to fill your pantry shelves, root cellars and freezers. It is very easy to feel over whelmed if you feel the need to dug your root cellar in your back yard or you don’t have a pressure cooker for the canned tomatoes.  It’s easy to feel you have to buy 50# of cucumbers for the pickles you want to make when in fact a few pounds will do just fine. Lastly, there is the fear factor associated with food that might go “bad” before you can eat it. So here is my guilt free, just have fun, suggestions for putting up food.

Choose just one thing to start: I started with strawberries. With no shortage of pick your own farms it is easy to spend time picking what you think would be a good amount for you.  Sometimes I would try to pick a full flat, but other times I would give myself a certain time, 45 min.  But for you this might just mean picking two quarts instead of one.

The strawberries would come home with me and I would slice them into 2 cup and 4 cup portions.  The 2 cup is perfect for strawberry shortcake, the 4-cup is perfect for jams.  I would put them in freezer bags, lay flat and freeze.  Yes, I do have a chest freezer and I started with just a small one.  What about jams, well I do make jam but when I picked I might not have had the time so I freeze the berries to make jam later.

The lesson:

• It feels really good to be able to pull out a bag of strawberries for jams or desserts later in the winter; some of these might just live in my refrigerator for use on yogurt or an afternoon snack with honey.
• Pick or buy only the amount you feel you have time for.
• Freezer bags are your friend.
  • NOTE: I do still use the plastic bags as I have not found a suitable substitute for freezing that is not plastic and that can be purchased in a large enough quantity. If anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them.  I do however reuse my bags many times over.

Buy just a little bit more:  You don’t need to buy the farm’s worth of anything to be successful.  I happen to have the time and love of spending a whole day in the kitchen but not every day; therefore, I employ the slow and steady approach.  Cipollini onions are some of my favorite, as are leeks and spring onions.  When I buy for the week, I buy one or two more.  Then when preparing dinner, I will roast or cook up a double batch and freeze the extra.  This method also works for summer squash, winter squash and other veggies that can be roasted.  This past week I bought a few more tomatoes and as I was waiting for dinner to finish, I chopped them up, put them in freezer bags.  Do this once a week and you will have a decent amount of tomatoes for the winter.  Notice that I didn’t do anything to these tomatoes, and that’s the point, you don’t have to I have even been known to cut out the stem area of the tomato and freeze it whole. Last week I bought a few more cucumbers, sliced them, added a simple pickling brine and I now have refrigerator pickles. Another trick- I bet you have a jar of pickles that are almost gone, if so just add the cukes the that pickle juice.

The lesson

• Think just a little bit at a time.
• Cook up a double batch and freeze.

You aren’t perfect in fact it’s better not to be: I do what I do because I love it, enjoy it and maybe am a bit crazy.  But I do make mistakes and I don’t strive for perfection-it is just a waste of time.  So my pickles are not perfectly cut, nor are they the same size.  I don’t always have time to blanch my veggies, and there are freezer bags that lose their tags giving a whole new meaning to a pot luck dinner.

I do pickle, make fruit jams and butters and relishes, recently I have even gotten into fermenting. It is easy to be intimidated by these processes because of the going “bad” factor.  I have a healthy respect for what can happen to food but I also am thankful for my sense of sight, smell and taste.  If I open a jar and see that there is mold, or smell something not right, or notice a bitter taste when it should be sweet, I throw it out in the compost- it is that simple.

A change of perspective.  Food doesn’t go bad, it decomposes with the help of bacteria and other organisms.  So, if mold or bacteria enjoys your food before you do, see it as a compliment that they found what you made to be to their liking. They will in return recycle the nutrients to the soil.   

The lesson

• Just try it, and if it doesn’t work, learn how you might do it differently.
• We are part of a very diverse world, so even with the best methods sometimes our efforts are enjoyed by organisms we didn’t expect- but rejoice in the fact that they give us back what we need to grow more.