2010 preserving

The last day of the year seems like a great day to post our 2010 food preservation list. This was our third year of preserving in our little homestead. We've kept lists of the past couple of years of what we preserve, the quantity, and then make note of what we actually use. We then designate if we eat the food, or if we give it away as a gift. We keep a list on our fridge and then check off boxes as each item gets used. It is a pretty good system.

Where did all of this produce come from?

• David and I joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) this year, so we got a box of produce each week from a local farmer of our choice. We decided to go with The Kretschmann Organic Farm. Much of what we preserved came from these weekly boxes.

• It may come as a surprise that David canned chicken stock this year. As part of our CSA, we broke our usually vegetarian diet to enjoy 5 pasture raised, organic chickens. Actually, we have only had 4 chickens, because we are saving the 5th chicken for a yummy meal this winter. Besides the fact that the chickens were delicious, we also loved that that we got to send our payment directly to the grower of the chickens we were eating. Here's a link of a photo of grower, Steve Misera and his family with their chicks. A description of the chickens from the Kretschmann's:

(The chickens were raised) without the routine antibiotics which are ingested with every bit of food or water consumed by a typical conventionally raised chicken. They aren’t rushed to slaughter, but allowed to mature to a reasonable weight—about 6 pounds. These are what used to be called “roasters”. You’ll find that you get far more meat per pound than you are used to getting because it’s not all skin and bones. They are great roasted whole—stuffed if you like—it’s like a mini-turkey but doesn’t take so long to cook.

• We got the apples for the apple butter the strawberries for the jam at the farmers' market. Between May and November in Pittsburgh you can find an almost daily market in one of the neighborhoods. I highly recommend checking them out if you haven't already.

• A great deal of our preserving involved tomatoes; we are pretty thrilled with the 47 quarts of pasta sauce we'll be enjoying all year. I'm pretty excited to say that most of the tomatoes we used this year came from own very own garden. We kept weighing the endless tomato harvest this year and the final count was around 316 pounds! I smile every time I think about it.

• The bushel of peaches came from David's parents, when they visited us this summer from South Carolina.

• The mulberries were from trees around our neighborhood.

2010 Preserving
Frozen:
Mulberries - 2 quarts
Greens - 2 bags
Pesto cubes (spinach, garlic, pea shoots)
Oven dried tomatoes with olive oil - 9.5 (1.5 pints)

Dried:
Mint - 3/4 cup
Oregeno - 1/2 cup
Tomatoes - 3 (1.5 pints)
Zucchinni - 1 (1.5 pints)
Apples - 2 quarts

Canned:
Strawberry Jam - 17 (8oz)
Peach Butter - 18 pints
Peaches, raw packed - 10 quarts
Peach juice - 4 quarts
Tomatoes, raw packed - 5 quarts
Pasta sauce - 47 quarts
Chicken stock - 6.5 quarts
Green Tomato Pickle Mix - 12 pints
Apple butter - 5 pints, 3 (12oz), 7 (8oz)

Ferments:
Mixed Veggies - 1 quart
Sauerkraut - 2 (1/2 gallons)


Let us know if you want to try some of what we preserved. We really enjoy giving and trading our canned goods. 2010 was an eventful year for our little homestead! We are already searching through seed catalogs for next year, daydreaming of fresh produce, beautiful blooms and dirt under our fingernails.

May you and yours have a blessed start to 2011!
Cheers!

what we've been up to

Made more sauerkraut, using cabbage from our CSA.
Baked a mulberry/apple crisp that was delicious; I modified a recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, Simply in Season. David picked and then froze mulberries from trees in our neighborhood and the apples were from the farmer's market.
Happy (early) birthday to me. Thanks Mom and Ron for the handcarders. They work beautifully.
I carded some of Godiva's fleece and started spinning. Lookin' pretty good.
Not sure if you've had any of this ChocoVine yet, but it is really tasty!
cheers!

sauerkraut

I finally cracked open our Wild Fermentation book, which is becoming a household favorite and read about making sauerkraut. When I discovered that kraut making basically involves chopping cabbage and adding salt, I knew I needed to try it.

First step- pick the cabbage. Seems like a simple step, but I actually think I could have let this cabbage head get a little larger. I'll keep that in mind for next time. We grew several heads of ruby red cabbage this year.

Second step, chop the cabbage and marvel at the beautiful patterns unfurling in front of you. I chopped the cabbage pretty coarsely. We had sauerkraut made at the Kretschmann's farm this past spring and instead of the finely grated stuff that you get at the grocery store, it was really wide and chunky, which made for a different eating experience.

Step three, toss the chopped cabbage into a large bowl, adding salt as you add more cabbage and stir it all together. In Wild Fermentation, Sandor writes to use 3T of salt per 5 pounds of cabbage.

Dump the chopped cabbage into a container. I used a half gallon jar. We do have a 15 gallon sauerkraut crock from my grandparents, but for my first batch of kraut, that seemed a bit ambitious.

Firmly pack down the cabbage into the container. We ended up adding about half of a green cabbage head from our CSA to fill up the container all of the way.

If you are using a real sauerkraut crock, you just place the sauerkraut board into the crock to cover the kraut. Since we were using a jar, we used a drinking glass to create a seal at the top of the jar. Next, we covered the whole thing with a towel and placed lots of heavy books on top to push the glass down into the jar.

And now we wait.
As an aside, sauerkraut making seems to be in my genes. As I mentioned above, my Pop and Meemaw gave us their old 15 gallon kraut crock. My mom recently told me a story of how Pop made sauerkraut once in the basement and it smelled so bad, which drove my Meemaw a bit batty - she was a very clean person. After the fermentation was complete, there was still a foul odor in the basement. Apparently in the midst of the sauerkraut making process, a rodent had died in their basement and that was what was causing the bad smell. YUCK!

But, no seriously- I remember as a kid coming home and smelling sauerkraut fermenting on the kitchen counter and it does kind of smell like an animal died. I'm sure we'll find out soon enough. Good thing it tastes SO good!

summertime bliss...

strawberry sundaes, fried green tomatoes, an abundance of peppers, the first tomatoes turn red, the perennial flowers refuse to be shown up by the annuals, and let the preserving begin...

yes, please...
david is experimenting with ferments this year...
lots of growth...

echinacea...
hungarian wax...
evening...
about to be fried...
okra is finally making an appearance...
the first of the roma tomatoes are turning red...