Sunday was a super busy farmin' day. Like a little bee in a hive, I was. And all I could think about was-- what is it? That fable about the ant who worked and toiled all summer to get ready for winter, and then she rested while the other ants worked and fretted?
When you get your food from a year-round, full diet CSA, you eat local, organic and very, very well. What I did not realize when I joined at this time last year was that saying "no thank you" when they asked me through August and September if I wanted to take extra veggies to "put up" results in a lonnnnnnnggg winter of meat, eggs and root veggies. Period. I mean, don't get me wrong, we ate really well and got really creative but let's just say I regretted all my "no thank you" statements. So far this year, I have made three kinds of jam, pickles, and have frozen 10 lbs of delicious blueberries (hope they aren't gone before it snows!), a bushel of green beans, some corn (with lots more to come) and canned some tomatoes. Canning tomatoes was a lot less fun that I had envisioned (read: pain in my rear). I am thinking that if there is a tomato bounty again this week, I need to make sauce or salsa, because a full flat of tomatoes + 90 minutes of my time ended me up with 3 quarts + 1 pint of canned tomatoes and it didn't give me the fufillment that I had hoped it might.
All in all, I felt a lot like Carolyn Ingalls! It's really rewarding to be putting fresh, yummy organic pieces of summer away for our long, dark, mountain winter! I just bet that Ma Ingalls didn't end up losing her broccoli before she could blanch/freeze it because she went on a 14 mile long run for marathon training and waited to long too get to it, or that she ever had to worry about how to get this week's bounty "put up" the weekend of the Xterra 10K trail run (with friends in town to do the Xterra Tri)????
What is your experience with canning, freezing, and "putting up"? Have you ever considered it?
I have a CSA and have been debating how best to save my goodies for winter. I'm a little intimidated by the idea of canning (and botulism), but am also worried that one good power outage would erase any work of freezing. Any step by step ideas you have would be appreciated.
ReplyDeletep.s. was an "LHOP" junkie as a kid. Ma Ingalls would be proud.
Hi Paj-
ReplyDeleteLooking through your blog was almost creepy! Making caprese salad? Check. Picking a bunch of blueberries alone as a means of relaxation? Check! A tiny bit addicted to healthy living blogs? Check! Check! We are indeed in parallel universes! If I had developed the addiction in time to pull it off, I might well have crashed the HLS Summit in Chicago!
Though I, as well, love LHOP, I was totally new to freezing and canning, and yes, a little nervous, but went for it. Do you lose power a lot? Because the bottom line is, if you can get these veggies in your CSA share without paying extra, it's worth trying to freeze them. I searched online (found pickyourown.org to have a lot of helpful info) and am using a vacuum sealer after blanching the veggie according to online directions. I figure I can't kill anyone blanching and freezing. As for the canning, I followed directions again, and all the lids sealed down and made the little noise when they sealed, so I'm hoping you can smell botulism when you open a can?? In any event, I won't feed them to the kids first :) And how much research did the pioneers do back in the day? They all lived....mostly. :) Go for it! What do you have that you could "put up"?
ANFQ-
ReplyDeleteSo glad I found your blog and my parallel life apparently (minus the kids).
Thanks for the motivation to get moving on canning my CSA stuff. Will definitely have to try. Wouldn't usually have worried about the freezer, but in the past year we have had really random power outages.