We've gone into our annual fruit preserving mode. Compiling the quick list of what's in the pantry & freezer helps me understand why I feel busy sometimes. I've been really happy with the amount of food we've been able to get locally the last few months and we're working hard to take advantage of what's available. It's amazing how many dishes you can come up with that revolve around peppers & zucchini (and still enjoy them!). Tomorrow morning we'll hit the farmers market again and come home with loads of whatever seems to be in season. I'll be watching for garlic to stock up on and we'll pick up some locally roasted, organic coffee beans.
I'm not sure why I didn't dry more fruit this year, I hope to do more tomatoes though as we use them all winter in dips & sauces. We managed to grow beans, beets, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, onions, dill, lettuce and broccoli in the garden although generally not a lot of any one thing. We have carrots coming yet but they're puny from being way overcrowded.
Here's the tally as it stands now with full credit given to Dianne for much of the jam, drying the tomatoes and generously donating the blueberries. Thanks also to my mom for canning cherries, freezing cilantro and keeping the garden happy while she was here.
Cherries - 16 pints & one cookie tray frozen (and then bagged)
Peaches - 7 quarts & one tray frozen
Blueberries - two giant freezer bags
Nectarines - one tray frozen
Jam - about 3 dozen jam jars (apricot, blueberry, plum, peach, raspberry and Jeremy's pride - yummy batches made from wild chokecherries and saskatoons)
Apricots - dried one batch, didn't turn out as tasty as I'd hoped
Salsa - 13 pints canned and another 6-ish pints fresh frozen
Tomatoes - several bags frozen and a big bag dried
Basil & Cilantro - frozen bag of each
Peppers - 1 huge bag, chopped and frozen sweet peppers
Pears - ??? we'll find out in the next week
Phew...I'm not sure if all this counting makes me hungry or tired but I know it makes me feel incredibly rich. We are so lucky to live in a country with resources like this and have the means to grow & buy them. I'm starting Thanksgiving early, it has definitely become my favorite holiday and I think we should draw it out. Maybe all year in fact.
11 comments:
We were at the farmers market today too. It was lovely, stocked up and have been munching on it since then.
I've been freezing some fruit, but we eat it too fast, so all our YUMMY organic blueberries from the coast are already gone. They were SO GOOD!
Good luck in stocking up Mama bear!
Tanis, how do you go about freezing basil and cilantro? I have a huge crop of organic basil in my garden.
Wow! I'm soooo impressed. Sounds like your winter will be full of goodness!
Michelle, I'm pretty lazy about the freezing. I take the leaves off the stems, wash, pat them dry and throw it into small freezer bags (double bagged is even better). When I'm ready to use it I just take out as much as I need and throw the rest back in quickly. I also have to crumble it immediately when it's still stiff or it turns into a mushy mess. I think it retains a lot more flavour when I freeze it compared to drying. Good luck!
Doubled the peaches this morning...7 more quarts and another tray frozen. Also did two trays of nectarines, just to keep the record straight.
Just found you through that 'babyblogorama' site ... our kids were born the same day, it seems. And we are about to preserve some pears as well ... will be interested to hear what you do with them. We're thinking drying them? We always get more than we can use from our tree.
I've never dried pears but it sounds good, I might have to try that. We peel the pears which is the most labour intensive part, then slice them into wedges, put them in jars, pour boiling syrup over them (usually about 1 cup sugar for every 4 cups water), then process in a hot water bath (canner) for 20-25 minutes. It's not an exact science over here but they've always worked out.
We eat them as a dessert on those dark winter evenings. One year we got into making what we called "compote" which was basically a sauce made from canned pears and whatever other fruit we had lying around. We put it in a saucepan with some of the syrup from the jar and added a bit of malibu (coconut flavoured) rum. We boiled it down to thicken it and then spooned it over ice cream. Not sure why we haven't done that lately, it's sounding good.
Thanks for keeping me honest Jer, I lost track of a few of those. We wouldn't have gotten much done at all this year if you hadn't taken ownership of some of the projects - so thanks again.
It's been fun. Better add 14 pints of pears and ___ jars of that awesome nectarine/plum chutney. So yum.
8 quarts of grape juice and __ jars of grape jelly...
Six more (I think) jars of fresh-frozen salsa using the last orangey tomatoes of the season...yum.
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