Preserved

This methodical march through the dictionary in search of a word-of-the-day seemed like a good idea on the first day of #The100DayProject.  Now it's just a pain in the rear.  (Good grief, it's snowing hard again.  Just when I think we'll top out at 85 inches of new snow the skies reopen.)  Today is the 'M' section, and in following my already-adjusted procedure I opened to a page full of boring, readily known words.  The best entry I could find was modesty panel: a board so placed as to conceal the legs of a person seated behind a desk.  Really.  You realize what this means, don't you?  That we have such a part on desks, with the word "modesty" in its title, indicates the necessity of this object.  That there became a need to block the rest of the world from seeing what was on display beneath desks.  That sometime in history an office staff took casual day a bit too far too often.  Anyway, when the most unique word on a page is "modesty panel" it's a clear sign that A) I need to rethink the procedure for finding words, and 2) I need a better dictionary.  I guess these odd thoughts jive pretty well with yesterday's post about the pig-brain drug.

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What better way to spend a snowy weekend than making this -

- cute little stack of containers.  Took me most of Saturday.  Not sure how long it would have taken without my advanced education degree.

No, no, no.  It's strawberry jam....arranged in a cute little stack.  Strawberry freezer jam, to be more precise.  Last July I had more berries than containers so I pureed (Why does that look so weird?  Maybe that should have been my word-of-the-day!) enough berries to fill a couple of quart containers and froze them.  Along with several gallons of whole berries.  I love berries.

Actually, what I love is processing and preserving fresh foods.  It was a little odd to make jam while the snow was falling outside; ordinarily, jam making is a hot, sweaty ordeal....which sounds just disgusting enough to keep most readers from wanting to sample my wares.  And while turning frozen berries into jam doesn't really have the same feel as the picking-cleaning-crushing-cooking process, not to mention the same fresh flavor, going through the motions to end with a tasty end result was still pretty fun.  And a really good reminder that I'd wanted to write this post for months.

Strawberry time (late June/early July) is usually the beginning of the food processing season, for me anyway.  If my parents' berry patch has even an average year of production there are enough berries for me to make freezer jam, canned jam, strawberry/rhubarb jam, and freeze some gallons of whole berries to use throughout the year.  Making jam really isn't that hard, not as hard as so many people seem to think it is.  Like any other cooking, making jam takes time and requires trial and error to find just the flavor you're looking for.  And it's messy.  And hot.  And the preparation of containers and ingredients and utensils is tedious.  Hang on, I've changed my mind - it IS hard!  But worth it.

Green beans are next (late July-ish) and can be either frozen or canned.  I usually can 6-10 quarts every other year; we don't eat the canned variety quite as often as frozen....and canning is a bit more work.  This year was a freeze-only year.  Freezing beans is pretty quick and simple, and to be honest the canning process isn't that bad.  It's picking beans that is pure torture.  Not sure why, but bean picking is absolutely devastating to the lower back and hamstrings of this picker.

Eleven quarts of beans, ready for the freezer.

In early August my favorite gathering/processing activity begins with the ripening of the chokecherries.  Chokecherry picking is one of my favorite pastimes, and if I haven't blogged about why yet you can bet I will someday.  (Ok, now the snow is falling sideways from the west after falling sideways from the east for the last 24 hours.  Does that mean it's all coming back?!?)  The chokecherry berry is pretty much worthless as a food for humans - in fact, it'll kill you if you eat too many; their pits have a compound similar to cyanide.  It's the juice from these berries that I treasure, juice that makes a flavorful purple syrup that has been called "liquid gold" by those lucky enough to taste it.  On a good year the wild blueberries are ripening at the same time as the chokecherries; I have developed a recipe for a blueberry/chokecherry sauce that might be the most flavorful concoction on the planet.

20 quarts of chokecherries waiting to be cooked down.

Liquid gold!!

This past summer I was able to, for the first time, make plum syrup from wild plums.  My parents' yard (Yes, I'd starve if I couldn't go back home to my parents' farm to gather all this stuff.) is full of, and surrounded by, thickets of wild plum bushes.  Last summer was a banner year for plums and I happened to be there when they started to ripen in mid-August.  The full bucket you see below could have been three or four more had I been able to get back the following week.  I thought picking plums would be similar to picking chokecherries and faster, since they'd fill a bucket quicker.  I discovered, though, that the ripest, sweetest plums weren't on the bush - they were on the ground.  So after crawling in circles around each bush I would gently shake the trunk to remove any last ripe ones....and then crawl around the bush again.  All the crawling, and that bucket, resulted in four small jars of syrup that tastes decent, but not great, although its tart taste seems to have mellowed a bit over the winter.  The syrup man is always learning......

Tomato season rolls around in late August or early September, depending on how the growing season has been, just in time for me to have almost no time to do anything with them.  I've never been a fan of eating a tomato as just a tomato.  A slice on a sandwich or burger is fine, but I could live without it.  But as a varied processing food it can't be beat!  Raw salsa, cooked salsa, pizza sauce, pasta sauce, diced tomatoes for the freezer.....I've done a lot with tomatoes.  This year I turned most of the tomatoes I could get into salsa and pasta sauce, though I did manage to freeze a couple of quarts of diced tomatoes for making chili during the cold months.....that never end. (Yup, still snowing.)  The one negative of processing tomatoes is the amount of work involved - holy cow, the work.  Everything I make with tomatoes involves slicing and dicing and cutting and mixing.  The results are worth it, but geez, the work.

Black bean and corn salsa...with a zucchini for no reason.

Pasta sauce that is not from the store - I reuse store jars which works just fine.

The work of tomato season is just a warm-up for apple season in late September.  My apple producers  (who are NOT my parents, believe it or not) usually have a bumper crop to give away every other year, and last fall was the year.  So I made applesauce.  Usually I try to freeze some sliced apples to use for baking, but a lack of time kept me from making one more trip to my source, so applesauce was it.  And it was enough.  Apples, like tomatoes, are ready when I'm not, so to process them into anything means lots of late evenings.  Thankfully I now have an apple corer, pictured below, which has been a huge time saver compared to peeling and slicing dozens of apples by hand.

I like to can some pints of unsweetened, unflavored applesauce to use as an oil substitute in some baking recipes.  But most of my apples become quarts of sweet, cinnamony applesauce.  I'll add a dash of nutmeg to some batches, but usually just brown sugar and cinnamon.  The great thing about applesauce is there isn't really a recipe to follow; just cook the apples, mash 'em up, and dump stuff in until it tastes good.  In fact, it was applesauce that got me started in the food processing biz.  Tried making it, turned out decent, figured if I could do it with apples I could do it with anything.  Turns out I was right.

Plain in the front, flavored in the back.

As I watch the snow continue to fall - and for cryin' out loud I'm pretty sure it's falling UP now! - and think about all the tasks I've written about here I feel excited - no, wait, I don't get excited....I feel cautiously enthused about the coming summer months and what they might provide for my cupboards and freezers.  Will this late start to spring push back the timing of my favorite garden and natural foods?  Will a late frost wipe out the blossoms of fruit crops?  Will the 32 feet of snow we've had this winter translate into a wet and generous growing season, or will we have to perform rain dances come mid-July?  I look forward to answering those questions in this blog in the coming months, rather than one long, rambling entry on a snowy April day next spring.