Harvest Season

frozen peaches

This time last year was a flurry of activity in preparation for the winter C.S.A. We'd been working hard since March, but the first touch of cold kicked us in the pants and made us very aware that we had limited time to prepare and store food for all our member families. This winter, the C.S.A. won't be operating, but all that means is that people who've had a taste of what it's like to eat local food through the winter need to take a few steps to make that happen. Saving food for a bunch of families is a challenge, but it's really not that hard to do it for just one.

I recently led a fermentation workshop with the Putnam County Holistic Moms, which was great fun, and we also had a discussion about easy things to do to extend the harvest. Cold mornings may make you think the growing season's all over, aside from a winter squash or two, but that's far from the truth. Here are some quick (and incomplete) lists I shared with the mothers:

Top 10 Tips to eat local year-round

1. Befriend your freezer.
2. Rig up your own root cellar.
3. Cover your crops.
4. Dehydrate.
5. Learn about wild food.
6. Plant edible perennials.
7. Ferment.
8. Can like granny.
9. Sprout.
10. Plant in sunny windows.

There's nothing complicated in that list, and detailed information online about all of it. Type "solar dehydrate onions" (for example) into search and you've got everything you need.

If you're thinking you're done in the garden and that its time to sit by the fire with soup, you're wrong! (Save that for January.) For now, there's work to be done.

September has passed, but I'm including some Sept. chores because there are some that still apply:

September

• Freeze & can peaches
• Freeze raspberries
• Freeze red peppers
• Freeze zucchini
• Freeze greens
• Dehydrate tomatoes
• Dehydrate beans
• Make hot pepper sauce (I'm doing this today!)
• Ferment everything

October

• Can pears and apples
• Freeze cooked squash & pumpkin
• Dehydrate herbs
• Freeze pesto
• Freeze greens
• Peel & dry black walnuts
• Eat pawpaws & kiwis (they'll make you feel like you're in the tropics)
• Pickle wild grape leaves
• Ferment everything

November

• Cover garden
• Make sauerkraut
• Root cellar apples
• Root cellar potatoes
• Freeze greens
• Root cellar turnips, radishes, etc.
• Move mushroom logs to basement
• Ferment everything

December

• Root cellar carrots
• Eat last covered garden vegetables
• Prune perennials
• Can fancy, time-consuming recipes with frozen produce
• Visit winter farm markets
• Ferment everything

If, like me, you find yourself with a gazillion berries or apples or tomatoes all at one time, preserving makes great sense. Nothing goes to waste, and with a little effort now, winter is far, far tastier.

Officially Salsa Season

The glut that was cucumbers and squash is now tomatoes and peppers and peaches and eggplants. Cherry tomatoes are literally dripping off the plants, and cayenne bushes look like Christmas decor. I feel like a [nonviolent] pilgrim I'm so grateful for the excess of the nightshade season. Its excess and its fleeting nature are both great arguments for employing some basic preservation methods. Along with fermenting, canning, oil pickling, and dehydrating, though, it's great to revel in the fresh stuff.

• Tomatillo Salsa Verde
• Cilantro Salsa
• Smoky Peach Salsa Obviously you'd use loads of fresh peaches in this recipe—it's August! And the ginger may seem odd to you, but it works.
• Salsa Cruda
• Canned Salsa for winter fiestas
• Zucchini & Rasberry Salsa

Slime & Broth

Regardless of the weird cool spell, it's the time of year that long-growing produce becomes available, and a very good reason, in my book, to turn to Vegan Soul Kitchen for some inspiration. When I look at what I've got (okra, watermelon, corn corn corn, the most delicious tomatoes), I know Bryant Terry is the right guy to figure out my next meal. And it's working out between he and I: he's not afraid of spice, of a sweet tooth, a foofy cocktail, or even of extreme simplicity.

When I read the "recipe" for sweet corn broth, essentially cobs with the corn cut off for other purposes, boiled in water with a dash of salt, I thought it might be too zen for me, but I did end up sipping some corn broth eventually, and I found it to be quite nice for those times that you want a little something but aren't full on hungry. (Since then, I've come to the realization that I might be a real broth/infusion fan, having sipped mint water, ginger water, pickle brine, bean broth and the like in just a handful of days. Oh miso, oh mushroom broth and seawood broth, oh oh oh.) And I'm not one of those wilting in the heat kinda gals who can barely lift her head for a sip of broth. I love summer heat, and I love food, but these simple (watery) foods are somehow extremely satisfying.

Broths aside for the moment, here's my favorite dish of August so far: lemon jalapeno okra. Terry mentions that he's a slime-phobe, and approaches okra carefully. I've never had a problem with the slikity-slime, but when I once complemented a chef on the best okra I'd ever eaten, he assumed I had the slime block, and shared his secret from Caribbean cooking: citrus kills the slime.

Have at it!

Lemon Jalapeno Okra

- 1 lb fresh, small okra pods, cut in quarters lenthwise
- 1 diced jalapeno
- 2 T olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- Juice of one lemon
- Salt & fresh ground pepper to taste

I don't fry a lot, mostly because I hate cleaning up spatter, but this crispy okra is worth it. Throw everything in a pan and fry it until crispy! I start with half of the oil and half of the lemon, add the rest of the oil when the pan gets dry, and use the last half of the lemon in the last minute of cooking.

And, before August is through, can, dehydrate, and freeze some things, would ya? It's tempting to laze about in a hammock, but those of us who want good food from around here through winter need to get to work!

Redux: Distribution - February 28, 2010

We've just gotten the internet back after the big storm! I hope that all of you have power and water restored, and didn't lose all your beautiful trees. The storm was interesting in a lot of ways, testing how everyone would fare if the services we take for granted slowed or ceased. We were lucky to have our wood burning stove to keep us warm, and to cook biscuits on. It did make me realize we need to bust a move on our rainwater collection system.

I did get to try out some natural cooling methods I'd been thinking about not so long ago. wintergreens did not lose any produce during the four days without power—burying coolers in snowbanks kept everything intact! We were actually appreciative of our deep and tall snowbanks since we had lost produce in summer power outages.

Back to business as usual: Some of you have contacted us to ask, "What are those white things in the jar?" Here's what your last distribution contained:
- Dried red beans from Cayuga Pure Organics
- Dried white whole wheat berries from Wild Hive Farm a.k.a little white things in the jar
- Canned applesauce, made with apples from Liberty View Farm (no sugar added!)
- Root cellared potatoes from Huguenot Street Farm
- Root cellared red onions from Morgiewicz Farm
- Frozen sweet peppers from Huguenot Street Farm
- Frozen peaches from Glorie Farms
- Fresh sprouted black French lentils
- Some of you randomly scored raspberries, red currants, or concord grapes, for a sweet kick

Wheat berries can be cooked and eaten in place of grains you regularly use, but use twice the water and cook for a full hour. They can also be sprouted, or ground and included in recipes. When things are made with "whole wheat," this is what they're talking about.

12 Days of Ignorant Bliss

I wasn't interested in canning at all. I discover that I'm really kinda into it, and bam, twelve days later I learn that the canning jars available to me are toxic. Yup, there's BPA in the lids. I'd admired those beautiful German jars with glass lids, but found that they were pricey, and I'd have to get them shipped. (Turns out you can get them from Illinois, which is a tad closer than Germany.)

Though I sometimes like being forced to use a better product (obviously glass lids are better for food), I'm still trying to dig up all my Sigg bottles to trade in by Halloween, since they, too have BPA in the liners. Ug, as if we don't absorb poison enough without this!

Pear Honey

First things first: pear honey has no honey in it. It is named for its color and consistency. I'm not going to give you measures, because every recipe varies, and the key is really just to cook the mix down until the consistency is right. You'll need:

• Peeled and cored ripe pears, run through the food processor to a chunky slush. (I use a pull peeler for pears, and it's very easy. I struggled with a straight handled peeler for years, and found a nice sharp pull peeler to be great for many things: watermelon rind, squashes, anything firm.)
  
• Sugar
  
• Pineapple juice, or fresh pineapple, crushed, or even frozen concentrated pineapple juice.
  
• Lemon

Put the pears in a heavy bottomed pan with an enormous amount of sugar, over medium heat. Most recipes call for pretty much equal parts pears to sugar, but if you want to put in less sugar, I don't blame you. Squeeze lemon into the mix, and add some zest, too, if you like. While we're talking tools, a citrus reamer is by far the most straightforward way to get the most juice out of your citrus. And who doesn't love good old wooden hand tools? Add just enough pineapple to give the mix additional liquid and tang, probably in a 1/6 ration to the pear and sugar amounts. When the mixture starts to bubble, turn it down to a simmer and stir often. The more you've made, the longer it will take to thicken.While we're waiting for our mixture to thicken, let's talk about the blatant use of very non-local ingredients. Here's my take on this: pretty much everyone uses some stuff that's traveled far and wide. I say, pick your battles. Eat as much local food as you can, eat less and less meat, drive less, turn down the heat in your house, collect rainwater, don't be a super consumer. And then any guilt you might feel over using lemons doesn't feel like much. Me, I couldn't really operate without lemons and limes. Should I probably live in a warmer climate, where lemons and pomegranates and figs and nopal and avocados grow? Yes. But I don't. And pineapples are from even further away! Here's a secret: I often buy pineapple juice concentrate to use in my recipes. It tastes pretty great used to sweeten curries. Hopefully those little cans take less fuel to ship from around the world. I'm ok with these guilty pleasures, because they're helping me use up a tree full of ripe pears from right here in the Hudson Valley. (If pressed, I'm sure a version of this recipe would work just fine with no traces of pineapple.)
Wow, this is turning into a confessional. Sorry, but here's another: I had no interest in canning. When you're super into the aliveness of fermentation, canning seems like a bit of a bummer, since everything has to be heated to death. But pear honey (remember to stir, now!) is changing my attitude. After all, freezer space is tight, and canning has turned out to be so extremely easy. There is an appeal to having all those pretty jars lined up in the root cellar. Proper processing calls for boiling the jars in water for 10 minutes, then cooling upside down. Is your pear honey thick yet? If yes, I found that pouring it into the jars when still boiling hot, sealing them tight, and inverting them, is plenty to create a strong vacuum seal. If you're worried, or if the lids don't get super stiff, put them in the bath.

These jars will last for at least a year, and the pear honey can be used as a straight sweetener, instead of marmalade, or as an ingredient. The pear flavor is delicious. And if you're like me, your canning craze will have begun.