Now that the Christmas decorations are, more or less, put away for the next 11 months and we're all struggling to remember to write '08 on our checks, let's talk about resolutions. Not *my* resolutions, mind, but yours. You know, the ones that you actually made a few months back rather than those from just the other day (perhaps forgotten already) and which involved getting organized for this year's gardening and canning seasons. I know that there must be lots of these resolutions out there because I see the referrals which read along the lines of "is it too late to start a garden" (in August, in the northeast of the U.S.) or "making strawberry jam at home when strawberries out of season" (in October) or even "what canning equipment do I really need" (this one and its varients happen all the time). Now that the garden catalogs are starting to arrive - I don't know about you, but I find these infinitely more tempting than any pre-Christmas gifty catalogs - we've got a good time to talk about the whys and wherefores of the whole business.
Gardening and canning are, of course, two entirely separate activities although they have a significant overlap for some people. Then there are related topics like dehydrating and freezing and u-pick and subsets such as container gardening and vertical gardening and seed saving and on and on. So what I thought I'd do is sort of lay out my system, the equipment I use and how I organize things and then try and get a bit of a conversation going about your methods and maybe we can all share a bit and come away with more info than we started with. Sound good? I'm not an expert in these matters, but someone needs to go first and seeing as this is my blog it may as well be me.
I'll start with canning and other food preservation stuff, because for me this part drives the gardening (for others the reverse may be true). In the coming week I'll touch on canning equipment, garden prep and how I choose what to grow, and some of my favorite garden and canning hacks.
Freezing: Our regular old top-of-the-fridge freezer holds the day-to-day stuff like yeast, unflavored gelatin, meats I intend to use within two or so weeks, roasted garlic, and gallon ziplocks of corn kernals, green peppers and peas. Our stand-alone freezer keeps flours, farm- and bulk-purchased meats, some bulk baking supplies, broths, tea and coffee, and veggies frozen for the longer-term (green beans, bell peppers, peas, cut and sauteed mushrooms, among others).
In addition to the freezers themselves, I use (and reuse and reuse and...) a good number of ziplock-type freezer bags and glass canning jars (be sure to leave expansion room in the jars, otherwise they WILL crack). For the jars, a cleaned used flat lid can be used inside a ring - you never want to reuse a flat lid when canning but I routinely use them for freezing purposes where the seal isn't as important as just keeping air away from the food.
Freezer season starts in the spring, when I start to mash up strawberries for frozen puree. By the time strawberry season ends I try to have several quart bags of puree for muffins, waffles and smoothies. Then we move onto cherries, blueberries and raspberries - each of these can be individually frozen on a cookie sheet before sweeping into a freezer bag for storage. Cherries do well if you can pit them (a cherry pitter is one of my few specialty kitchen gear possessions) but it's not necessary.
By the time I'm well into fruits, veggie freezing begins. Shallots can be peeled and stored in a large Mason jar and trimmed snow peas are easy to freeze. Corn is sheared off the cob and frozen on a cookie sheet before storage in a gallon freezer bag (it's then a simple matter to pull a cup or two out of the bag for cornbread or chili or whatever) while other ears are quickly simmered and then cut in half for freezing on the cob (the kids love this), peppers are cored and sliced, green beans trimmed and cut. Hot peppers are sliced before freezing. Roasted eggplant puree, smooshed pumpkin and shredded zucchini round out the freezer storage.
Dryer: The dryer is a new addition to my food preservation repertoire, one that I'm rapidly coming to appreciate. This year we dried cherry and plum tomatoes, cherries and apples. They've been very useful for quick preparation (one appetizer I adore: dried cherry tomatoes rehydrated in warm balsalmic vinegar and skewered with slices of chorizo and cubes of manchego cheese - bliss!) and products I'm hoping to continue this year. It would be cool to experiment with dried corn and mushrooms, so they're on my list as well.
Canning: At the moment, I focus strictly on water bath processing. This method is suitable only for food products with an acidity sufficient to render them safe for storage, a concept that is constantly evolving as the natures of food items change along with our understanding of food-borne pathogens. I've written before about my approach to risk management in this area - some will not agree with my take on, say, tomatoes. I'm o.k. with that. Differing thoughts on risk management will result in differing canning lists, too.
I usually have three or four kinds of jam on hand (strawberry, blueberry, peach and mango are favorites), as well as crushed tomatoes and roasted tomato sauce. Pickles include dilly beans and carrots, marinated mushrooms, kosher dills, jalapenos and occasionally brussels sprouts. Then there are sauces and condiments: tomato and tomatillo salsa, jerk sauce for marinades, chocolate sauce and preserved lemons. Fruit products include applesauce, pear sauce, whole cherries and diced peaches.
This is about it in terms of that I try to "put up", as they used to say. Things are slow right now with only jerk and chocolate sauce and preserved lemons to pay attention to. Then there'll be a break for garden prep (which I'll cover in an upcoming post) before the strawberries come in, after which things move faster and faster until September and October when I'm a quivering mess of tomato- and apple-based canning stress.
No matter how busy I get, though, I don't seem to be able to make "enough" of anything. This time of year I look around on the shelves and realize that we're out of so much already - and I don't like it. My own resolution is to try and do more - to not crash out on the sofa after six consecutive nights of canning crushed tomatoes, to go for the seventh and eighth and ninth if I can and the tomatoes are available. I resolve to not sleep in on Saturday mornings in August when corn is abundant at the farm market, knowing that come February I'll want it for chili and cornbread to warm a long, dark night.