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.

Pictorial Tutorial

For my friend who wants cool summer rolls all the time, has the recipe, and still won't make them. LOOK, it's easy.

Everything won't always be perfect, if you're just learning to roll, for example, or if you stray from your regular brand of wrappers. But choose ingredients you like, and they'll taste great regardless. These were made late at night when I was exhausted, wrappers crumbling, and without perfect ingredients. They weren't beautiful, but we were really glad we had them to nibble on for the next couple of days.

Rice noodles, rice wrappers, veggies, and herbs equal multiple tasty lunches, done cheap and easy.

Sprout Care and Maintenance

Your sprouts have been soaked for a day and sprouted for three days. You can use them as they are, or you can use some, and continue letting the remaining sprouts grow.

To do this, rinse them in a fine strainer, make sure they are well drained, and put them in a jar or shallow tray. You can choose to keep them in a dark place, where they'll continue to expand like a chia pet for a couple of days. Or, you can put them in a bright windowsill and watch them get little green bits to add chlorophyll to your next meal. Either way, give them a rinse and thorough draining once or twice a day.

If you don't have time, keep them in a closed package in the fridge, not too wet (no standing water), and not open to dry out. They should last several days to a week.

If they do dry up, finish up the job in a dehydrator or the sun, and grind them into a fine flour. This healthful flour can be added to breads, or even hidden in smoothies or sauces.

Winter Salad

Green salads are not just for summer lunches. What goes nicer with hot soup or a hunk of fresh bread?

Way back when I was a young and going to school in Jersey, there was a snow storm that dumped something like four feet of snow, and stopped everything for days. Suffering from serious cabin fever, I hiked to a friend's house for dinner.

This was not an easy task, since plows hadn't come through at all, and drifts were taller than me. A walk that usually took fifteen minutes took me at least an hour and a half. Tired and wet when I got there, I thought it would be the soup or the tea or the whiskey that would win my heart, but it was a green salad with lime dressing, topped with avocado, pepitas, and lots of pomegranate seeds.

I grew up in the desert eating pomegranates and kumquats like they were going out of style, but I had never thought to put either of them in a salad. Nearly twenty years later I remember that salad and evening fondly. I don't remember my friend Matthew's boyfriend's name—the smart guy responsible for the salad.

Now my salads are always an experiment. If I'm craving something, I put it on a salad, or, in the dressing. (Tequila, no problem! Jicama, good idea! Flax seeds, sesame seeds, and peanuts, great! Pickles, well, all right. Peanut butter, yes, excellent with sesame oil and soy sauce.)

In winter this often means I'm putting hot foods on top of my greens: roasted beets and parsnips, wild rice, curry sauce, mashed potatoes, half burned spicy green beans, bean thread, squashes. Nuts and fruit are great on top of the hot layer. Obviously I use big bowls for these monster creations. Half of the time there's so much good stuff in there, I don't need dressing at all.

Today's salad had chopped raw fennel (the whole thing, bulb to fronds), haruki turnip, walnuts, and an apple. This sounds a little sad, but here it is anyway: It was the highlight of my day.

Extending the Season

People tend to think of covering tender plants in the spring, when they are first put out. But row covers, wrap, and cloches work well at this time of year, too. We had our first heavy frost last night, and some of my covered herbs are looking unscathed this morning. (That's peppermint in the picture.)

Once garden herbs like chives have had a tiny taste of winter, you can put a shovel full into a pot, and they'll grow vigorously on a sunny windowsill indoors, thinking its spring again.

Then you can not only enjoy this chive oil on top of celeriac soup, you can chop fresh chives onto your soups, salads, and sandwiches year round.

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.

How to Feed a Vegan

Because everything at the wintergreens market booth is non-animal, shoppers frequently come by and ask what on earth they should do with their friend/sibling/houseguest who is vegetarian and/or vegan and is coming over for the weekend/dinner/a barbeque. It's funny to be treated as the vegan authority.

For starters, when people ask, at a farmer's market, "What do vegans eat?" it is a little boggling. We're at the farmer's market, with piles of beautiful fruit and vegetables all around us. Um, they eat fruit and vegetables. and beans and grains.

Of course, I do have opinions about how to host your vegans well.

1. Ask your friend/sibling/houseguest what foods they like. Vegan tastes range as widely as carnivore tastes. Some crave processed fake meats, some hate tofu, some live off french fries, some are gourmet raw chefs, some eat quinoa for breakfast.
   
2. Don't serve your friend an iceberg lettuce salad. Don't serve them flavorless food at all. Vegans have taste buds!
   
3. Another no-no: Don't make something vegan for your guest to eat, and a pork chop for yourself. This isn't the same as, but is about as sensitive as cracking open a beer with your A.A. friend, and making gay jokes to your queer pals, expecting them to laugh. (In this scenario, you're a straight person who is not a recovering alcoholic.*) You can eat a vegan meal, and enjoy it. You probably do it all the time, and don't even notice: pb&j, miso soup, falafel platter. Don't question their choices: Are you sure you don't want just a tiny bit of goat cheese? .
   
4. Prepare something you like. Nobody's happy if there's a great big spread and the host is only picking at the food and drink. You can stick with simple preparations (spaghetti & salad) or fancy (watermelon coolers, poblano tamales with mole sauce, and coconut flan).
   • If you like pasta, prepare vegetable marinara instead of meat sauce, and skip parmesan in the pesto (yes, it tastes amazing without).
     
   • If you're a grilling enthusiast, throw on mushrooms and fresh corn. Veggie burgers are a crowd pleaser, and there a zilliion recipes for them online.
     
   • Mexican food (or Indian, or Thai, or Chinese) are easy to make vegan. Begin with warm tortillas and salsa and guacamole and a margarita! (Que normal, no?) Unless, of course, your vegan friend is in AA, in which case you should stick with horchata.
     
   • Make PIZZA with all the great produce at the market. You don't need cheese, you don't even need sauce! Just pile your crust with tomatoes and peppers and onions and basil and garlic and corn and eggplant and drizzle on olive oil and salt and pepper and it's perfect and fresh and delicious.
     
   • Dessert can be as simple as fresh fruit or sorbet. If you bake, there are fruit tarts and pies.
     
   • For breakfast, make scrambled tofu the same way you'd make scrambled eggs: dress up mashed tofu with mushrooms, scallions, herbs, or your favorite hot sauce. Or pretend you're British, and have beans on toast with tea.
   
   
5. Don't be offended if your guest doesn't taste the tree nut cheese you got especially for them. Any vegan has likely tasted scores of disgusting soy and rice cheeses, and may not be enthusiastic to try anything called "cheese" ever again.
   
6. Instead of pestering your guest, use the internet to answer your every vegan question. Need to know what brands of margarine are vegan? Google search. Need something to replace eggs in baked goods? Look to the pros.

This barely scrapes the surface of what you can feed the vegan or vegans you're hosting, so please put books or the web to good use. Remember to enjoy yourself while you try something new and host people you love.

*Did anyone else notice the guy at the market this past week wearing the "Straight" t-shirt with the grey "rainbow"? What's with that?

Hot Tip

Just because a jalapeño happens to be gigantic, don't assume that it'll be mild. And certainly don't rub your nose after you've chopped it into your lunch.

My whole face is on fire!