Throughout this process of growing my own food and sourcing out fresh, homegrown veggies and fruits, one question pops up more than any other:
How can you possibly eat all those vegetables?
But, I think that's missing the point. Truthfully, if you only look at the present, I'm not! I have a rather large area of my yard devoted to edibles, a weekly CSA box of locally farm grown vegetables, weekly orders placed with the foodshed buying club, and several trips a week to farmer's markets or farm stands. That, my friends, is a whole lotta veggies! But, I'm not just growing them to eat right now. My goal is to be eating as many of my foods from local sources year round. For those of you who don't know, I live in an area of the country with an extremely short growing season. We more than make up for that with the quality and quantity of varieties that we can grow here, but it does make for seasonal challenges.
So, to make my goals just a little more clear, I'm working double overtime during this short time period to make sure we have food to eat when that blanket of snow reaches the ground and refuses to melt.
Right now, if you open my refrigerator, you'll find a tiny bit of dairy mixed in with a few leftovers from earlier this week and produce galore! So, the challenge is to find ways to preserve all these yummy treats before they lose any flavor or nutrients. Most of the time, the work isn't too hard. I go out to the garden or unload my purchases, and get to work. I have to admit, though, that the problem comes when I have an unexpected harvest at a peak time in my busy schedule. This can mean hauling in bowl upon bowl of freshly picked goodies and prepping them all in one day. If I had to recommend anything to you, it is to be prepared ahead of time. I can verify this: your life won't stop just because your garden hands you a heaping bowl of beans.
I also have to admit, that just because I am heading toward a simpler life, that doesn't mean I am running from technology. In fact, most sunny days you will find me in the garden with my i-phone in hand. I am able to take picture of mystery plants and share them with other gardeners. I can search for pest and disease problems online and find healthy solutions to them. I also have two well used apps on my phone that make life a little, well, simpler. IGarden is an app that I use to track planting and harvesting times. This better prepares me for an abundance of kale to hit my chopping block. Most useful, though, is allrecipes. There is a website online to look up recipes by ingredient, in case you find an alien-looking kohlrabi in your CSA box and aren't quite sure how to cook it. There is also a recipe spinner in the app itself, to make meal planning a snap.
But, back to the subject: what do I do with all those vegetables, especially the ones I know I won't be able to eat fresh? I'll be honest, even after my fabulous canning class, I mostly freeze. Even though this uses a bit of continual energy to store, I like the fact that is is in its more natural state. For those who have never frozen veggies before, though, you can't just chop and bag most varieties. Again, I consult the internet here, because most veggies need to be blanched before freezing. This process of plunging them into boiling water, waiting a few minutes, and then plunging them into ice water to stop the cooking keeps their natural enzymes from turning them bitter or otherwise less appealing. Most veggies are washed and chopped first, and then dried and bagged after. Some veggies need to be flash frozen in a single layer, and others are just loaded into zip-lock bags with the air squeezed out. Only a few veggies, like onions and peppers, are a quick chop and bag. If you want to take the frozen approach, like me, do your research first. Some veggies only need a 1-2 minute dip, while others need a nice long 7 minute bubbling. Also, some veggies, like cucumbers are better preserved in vinegar brine and canned.
Some days it's just a handful of beans that need a blanch and freeze, but others, like this weekend are more labor intense. This weekend, I found myself with eggplants, carrots, heaps of heirloom beans, beets, 3 varieties of kale, swiss chard, onions, green peppers, and cucumbers to spare. This is in addition to the veggies we plan to eat this week, like arugula, salad greens, green garlic, summer squash, cherry tomatoes, and fennel. So, out came this big pot of water and all my cutting boards. I had to make a quick trip to the wholesale store for the jumbo pack of freezer bags, too! In addition to all that, I also flash froze 2 more quarts of fresh blueberries and have yet to tackle the unstoppable rhubarb!
I am not saying that it wasn't a lot of hard work, but I can tell you that the sight of all those bags of goodness in my new energy saving deep freeze is quite lovely! So, this winter, when the ground is frozen and the stores are selling those bags of vegetables shipped in from across the world, I'll be shopping in my own basement from the fresh picked and quickly preserved produce grown in my own hometown. I'll be reminded of the hot sun beating down on me as I took my kids to the strawberry farm in June. I'll be swooning over the sweetness of the blueberries from the farm on my way home from work. I'll remember talking with the farmer about how she prefers to cook and store her corn.
What am I going to do with all those vegetables? Spend the next 12 months eating them, of course!
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