Guesswork

An important part of local eating in a temperate-zone area is putting up food for the winter. We're doing our best to eat fruits and vegetables from Colorado, and when winter arrives, they will no longer be available. So it's up to me to put them into jars, dry them, or freeze them.

The guesswork comes in: how MANY jars? what kinds of food? Besides that, every harvest season is different. It's a lot of expense and work to put up things that nobody wants to eat. And you really would like to finish off 2008's jars or freezer items before you start putting 2009 crops away.

What you should NOT guess at is when you preserved something. Every every jar gets its own label: what it is, month and year. I was pretty much amazed in the winter, as we went through jar after jar marked 8/09, 9/09, 10/09.... I must have been in a food-preserving frenzy last fall.

I put the dried goods into jars too, labeled with item and date. I mark the freezer bags with dates too. Rotating stock is SO important.

RESULTS:
--The green beans and snap peas I froze last year must have been blanched too long, because they came out kind of mushy. We weren't very interested in eating them, and they are mostly still in the freezer. Too bad.

--The nectarines and peaches in light honey syrup were WONDERFUL. I did a load of them, and then another load. Box after box. We enjoyed them all winter long, and I still have 16 pints left. Overshot just a little, but we'll eat the 2008s first. I did a few plums too, which were nice.

--The tomatoes were fabulous. I made stewed tomatoes, tomato juice, chopped tomatoes, and tomato sauce. We used them as pizza topping, in soups and casseroles, and tomato juice for drinking. I'm down to one quart juice, and 1 half-pint sauce. Turned out just about right, since the tomato crop is VERY late this year. I've got tomato sauce simmering on the stove right now. I'd like to find another box of tomatoes to put up, while they're still available.

--I still have some dried fruit left. I haven't dried any more this year, since we have so much. I'm drying more herbs this year: basil and dill from my CSA, mint from the garden, celery leaves from a head of celery I found at the Farmer's Market. This is not prime celery-growing territory, and I was happy to see it.

--We polished off all the lactofermented (pickled) cucumbers (6 half-gallons), in short order. They were followed by the (3 jars) lactofermented green beans, and we got through most of the (2 jars) of lactofermented salsa. I still have a few jars of mixed lactofermented veggies; I seem to lose interest in them in the summer. For this year, I've made three jars of wax beans, and one jar of cukes finished, with another three sitting on the counter now. And I've just put 2 jars of kim chee in to ferment.

I'd like to do a jar of salsa if I can get the tomatoes. And a jar of sauerkraut. Lactofermented pickles stay happily in your frig for months, sometimes even into the second year, if you don't eat them in time. Overshot just a bit on the lactofermented veggies. Or, perhaps we're not eating enough of them?

--I dried some green beans last year, forgot about them most of the winter, then discovered them in time to add to winter soups. They really come out well. I also have dried bell and banana peppers; I used some but not enough.

Some vegetables have gone to waste this year, because I have not gotten to them either in cooking or in putting up. You shouldn't try to put up old stale, wilting veggies, but plan ahead and put those veggies up when they're fresh.

--This year we have apples, loads of them. We haven't had a crop for the last two years. I'll be doing applesauce and apple rollups, so I don't think I need any more peaches and nectarines this year. We'll pick through the apples, choose the nicest ones and store them in boxes in the garage for the winter. These apples keep pretty well until March in a cold place. The rest will go into the kettle for applesauce.

--This winter I plan to do more sprouting. The fresh foods taste so good in the middle of winter. It's easy to do in a jar on your counter.

So, in general, my guesswork of last year worked out pretty well. I'm fine-tuning this year: what do we need more of, what less? What worked, what didn't? Where do I need to work harder at finding recipes and using the foods that we have?

To sum up, the rules of thumb for food storage are:
****Label Everything, with the date.
****Store what you eat, eat what you store.
****If you have a bounty of something, put it up while it is still fresh.