Ahh… December 1. With the gardens put to bed, the cupboards full of preserves and the root cellar stocked, the food action committee has finally had some time to reflect on the growing season. Here’s a short slide show of some of our favourite photos from the season:
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For details from any of our workshops, search this blog and our sister blog at the Halifax Garden Network.
Yours in food,
Marla
Thank you to everyone who submitted a story and/or photos to our “Preserving the Harvest” Contest! All the names were entered in a draw. And our lucky winners are… (Drum roll please)
Grand Prize: Elisabeth Bailey
Runners up: Cory Mooney & Jennifer Naugler
Enjoy your preserving books, ladies!
The stories and photos I received were too good not to share. Here’s a smattering of what I received:
(More to follow in the coming weeks.)
From Elisabeth
Here are a few preserving pics to share–drying a variety of heritage tomatoes from the Lunenburg Farmers’ Market, and blueberries packed in lemon syrup for the freezer. Enjoy!
From Jennifer
This is a photo from the first time I made jam. Strawberry jam. I was so proud of myself…that lined the jars up on the kitchen windowsill….and stared at them all day. 
I would never dream of buying jam again.
From Georgina
Around this time last year, three of my friends and I decided that we would try canning tomato sauce. One of us had canned with other people once before, one had made jam, and the other two of us were complete newbies. We figured that by doing it together we could combine our collective knowledge, help each other, and learn how to do it together. Little did we know that we’d learn most lessons the hard way.
Lesson 1: Don’t Over-Do It.
We also figured that we’d save money: the greater bulk we purchased, the cheaper the tomato sauce would be. We all wanted to walk away with enough tomato sauce to last us through the winter. During one of our planning sessions, we sat around my kitchen with a calculator, price quotes from various local farmers, and an Excel spreadsheet open. We made lists that would have been incomprehensible to anyone else, with things like:
Tomato Sauce – Pare (4.5 lbs – 3.5 pints) (40 lbs for 7 jars each)
(6.5 lbs – 12 cups 3 L 6 pints)
(1 L 2 pints 6 lbs)
Stewed Tomatoes
Roasted Tomato Sauce – Small Batch
When my roommates wandered into the kitchen and saw the mathematics and heard our conversation, they looked at us like we had lost our minds. But we were sure we weren’t crazy; in fact, it would be crazy NOT to buy a massive amount of tomatoes and can them ourselves! We continued crunching the numbers and finally settled on an amount: we would buy 50 pounds of tomatoes.
We made arrangements with a farmer at the market, and on the designated Saturday, we took my station wagon down to the market to pick up our tomatoes. It was only then that we got an idea of what 50 pounds of tomatoes looks like. This was the first time we wondered whether perhaps we’d gone a little overboard.
Lesson #2: Know Thy Tomato.
We had four large boxes of tomatoes. And they weren’t exactly the tomatoes we wanted. We had ordered plum tomatoes: solid, oval-shaped tomatoes that have fewer seeds and are ideal for making sauce and packing. But when we went to pick them up, the farmer told us that those tomatoes weren’t ready yet, so instead he’d brought us 50 pounds of field tomatoes. Field tomatoes are rounder and juicier, with more seeds and liquid. We should have turned down the tomatoes right then and there. But it’s hard to say no to somebody who has boxed up 50 pounds of tomatoes for you and is carting them out to your car. Plus, we’d all set aside this weekend for doing the canning; when would be able to align our schedules again? So we decided to carry on and make the best of our field tomatoes.
Lesson #4: Don’t Over-Do It. I repeat: Don’t Over-Do It.
We got back to my place and started working: boiling water, dropping the tomatoes in the hot water and then submerging them in cold water; cutting up vegetables; measuring herbs. We had picked three different recipes to use, so we’d have a variety of sauces to enjoy.
The first recipe was from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and was designed for large quantities. The other two recipes were from a book on small-batch preserving. Since we weren’t preserving a small batch, this meant we had to multiply the recipes by 16. One of them called for balsamic vinegar, and while it seemed like 16 times the amount called for was just too much vinegar, we were afraid of botulism, so we went for it. The other recipe called for roasted onions, peppers, and garlic, so we had to rotate trays and trays of vegetables through the oven to roast.
The hours wore on and soon it was past dinner time. My roommates had to snatch whatever morsels of prepared food they could get from the fridge or cupboards before escaping the kitchen. Squashed tomatoes and puddles of tomato juice were everywhere. The kitchen looked like a war zone. We had finished the first batch earlier in the day, and it had turned out pretty well: it was Kingsolver’s recipe, and though the herbs were very present, it wasn’t bad. We named it Herby. It was the most basic of the recipes, and we had high hopes for the other two. But when the second batch was finished, it had an overpowering flavour of balsamic vinegar. The tomatoes were very juicy, so the sauce was a watery, vinegary liquid. We tried to see the vinegar flavour as a positive, and brainstormed ideas for a name – things like “zesty” and “tangy.” In the end we settled on Zingy. Everything was now riding on the final batch: the roasted vegetable sauce.
Lesson #5: Work in a Good Space.
Before we knew it, it was past two o’clock in the morning. We’d been roasting vegetables for hours, and the sauce was finally simmering on the stove. As we sat exhausted and drooping around the kitchen, one of us suddenly perked up. “Does anyone else smell burning?” It turned out that our spoon wasn’t reaching the very bottom of the massive pot, and a thick layer at the bottom – about 3/4″ – had burned. We were so exhausted, we weren’t in a good mental space, and so we began stirring strenuously, trying to scrape the burned bits off the bottom. When we sampled the sauce, we realized that now the entire pot tasted of burn. “It’s like eating a cigarette,” I declared, despondent. Exhausted, we decided to can it anyway and figure out what to do with it later. We named it Smokey. One of my friends, too tired to bike home, slept on my couch that night. We finished at around 3:30 am.
It was several months before any of us tried our sauces – not because we were saving them for winter (we’d canned enough for 18 jars each) – but because we could hardly bear to even look at them. But eventually we started trying them, and finding creative ways to use them. “Zingy is great as a base for a stir fry!” someone would email. Surprisingly, Smokey became a favourite, as a base for chilli.
A few weeks ago, we got together to enjoy one of the last jars of sauce. Loaded up with black beans and veggies and seasoned with cumin and paprika, it was a pretty delicious chilli – with that distinctive smokey flavour. Sure, we hadn’t produced the most tasty batch of sauces ever canned, but we had fun and certainly learned a lot along the way. This year, we’re taking a different approach to canning. We’re sticking to basics, like whole tomatoes, and we’re doing our canning independently. In very small batches.
Thanks for sharing your photos and stories with us…
(More to come!)
Yours in food,
Marla
There’s more than one way to say tomato and there’s more than one way to preserve a tomato. Freezing, canning, and dehydrating are all great ways to preserve tomatoes.
I recently posted about oven roasted tomatoes, and in the same post I mentioned the 60 lbs of tomatoes my friend and I can as stewed tomatoes and the additional 60 pounds we can as tomato sauce. I’ll be posting my stewed tomato recipe, along with tips for peeling tomatoes, next week. In the meantime, if you have a hankering for tomato sauce, here’s a link to the recipe I like to use: Family Secret Tomato Sauce. It’s from the book Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. If you haven’t read this book, you should stop reading this blog post right now and run to the library. It’s great. It’ll make you want to start growing all of your own food, or at the very least, it’ll make you want to spend all of the harvest season in your kitchen preserving delicious foods. I blame 23% of my canning obsession on this book.
But, I digress. I’ve been experimenting with tomato preservation this season, because I love tomatoes and use a lot of them in my cooking and I never have quite enough to last me the whole winter. Enter the dehydrator. This weekend, I turned 10 cups of grape tomatoes into less than 4 cups of tomato-raisins
Before you say, “Well, that’s sounds great, but I don’t own a dehydrator”, I must tell you that I don’t own one either. But I have a co-worker who does and was kind enough to lend it to me. I’m a big advocate of sharing tools and appliances, especially things that you only use a few times a year. ask around – you’ll be surprised what people have in their basements. You can also dehydrate tomatoes in your car, as Keltie did last year.
This was my first time using a dehydrator, and I will admit that I’m not completely confident in my skills. I wasn’t exactly sure how dry the tomatoes had to be. Does anyone have any advice? I may have erred on the side of over-dry, as they were a little crispy. It also took a long time to dehydrate them. To dehydrate the tomatoes, I cut them all in half and laid them cut-side up on the trays. I did all the tomatoes at once, which is probably why it took so long. Then I started the dehydrator. After about 12 hours, some seemed done, and I removed them. Every couple hours, I checked on it and removed the dry ones. The last ones were finished around the 20 hour mark. Then I put the dehydrated tomatoes in an air tight container on the shelf.
So, I have the following tomato preserves tucked away for the winter for my household:
(weights are for fresh tomatoes)
-15 lbs tomatoes, oven roasted and frozen
-30 lbs of stewed tomatoes, canned
-30 lbs of tomato sauce, canned (to be done the first weekend of October)
-10 cups of grape tomatoes, dehydrated
I thought I was done with tomato preserving for the season.
And then we held our salsa canning workshop on Tuesday night (post to come next week!) and I started to think about how great it would be to make a batch of my own salsa.
And then I happened to pop into a farm market when I was in New Glasgow for a presentation. The orange Roma tomatoes called out to me…
Long story short – it’ll be spending my weekend in the kitchen.
Yours in food,
Marla
~~
PS We still have a couple spots in our Tuesday Sept 27 tomato canning workshop and the Oct 4 pear workshop. For details: http://adventuresinlocalfood.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/2011-fall-preserving-workshops/
There are but 2 weeks left to enter our Preserving the Harvest Contest!
To enter, send in a short anecdote or a photo of your experiences preserving the harvest (canning, freezing, dehydrating, fermenting or whatever else you’ve tried) and you’ll be entered to win a preserving cookbook! Deadline: Sept 30
(And a little secret: There have been very few entries, so the odds are REALLY good.)
For more details: http://adventuresinlocalfood.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/preserving-our-harvest-contest/
Entries can be sent to: preservingtheharvest@ecologyaction.ca
Building on our busy summer preserving series, we are offering three more preserving workshops: salsa, stewed tomatoes, and pears. Tomato canning has been a particularly popular request, so we are offering both a salsa class and a stewed tomato class. As the fundamentals of tomato canning are the same for salsa and for stewed tomatoes, we’d recommend taking one or the other (and not both) of the tomato classes. During the classes, we will also discuss techniques for freezing, dehydrating or generally preserving the produce for the winter. In each class we will can enough of the ‘produce of the week’ for you to bring home a jar or two. No prior experience is necessary for these classes.
Where: Local Source Market, 5783 Charles Street, Halifax
Schedule:
September 20 – Tomato Salsa
September 27 – Stewed Tomatoes
October 4 – Pears canned in Apple cider
All classes start at 6 pm and will last about 3 hours depending on recipe.
Cost: $25 per class
Method of Payment and Cancellation Policy: Participants must pay upon registering for the class. We can accept cash, cheque or credit card. We require a credit card number or payment to secure your spot. Please note that we can only refund your registration fee if you cancel a minimum of two business days prior to the class. If you are unable to attend, you are welcome to invite a friend to come in your place.
Let us know if you are interested in bringing your kids – our space has a room off to the side of the kitchen and we can try to arrange someone to keep them occupied while you’re in the kitchen. Our space is accessible for mobility-reduced folks.
The #7, 42, 80 and 81 buses have stops along Robie Street and the #2, 4 and 52 buses have stops along North Street. We will also attempt to match participants interested in car pooling if possible.
To register, please complete the information below and send it along to foodaction@ecologyaction.ca.
Registration Form
Name:
Daytime phone:
Email:
Address:
Which workshop(s) are you signing up for?
Are you interested in car pooling? If yes, from which area of town are you traveling?
__ Driver __ Passenger __ Either
Do you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions?
Method of payment (cash, cheque, credit card):
(Cash or cheque can be dropped off at the EAC office. Cheques can also be mailed to the address below. Please make cheques payable to ‘Ecology Action Centre’. To pay by credit card, please call Marla at 442-1077.)
–
Food Action Committee
Ecology Action Centre
2705 Fern Lane
Halifax, NS
B3K 4L3
www.ecologyaction.ca
Phone (902) 442-1077
I have a little herb garden in my backyard, perfect for snipping a little basil or parsley or oregano when I’m cooking dinner. What it’s also great for is growing herbs for tea. Mint is one of the easiest things to grow (and one of the hardest to contain) and it’s also really simple to dry and use for tea all winter long.
A lot of herbs can be dried. I generally dry mint, lemon balm, and lavender. Some herbs (such as basil and parsley) do lose their flavour when dried at home. (I like the book Your Backyard Herb Garden by Miranda Smith for advice on how to preserve which herbs.)
Because you are preserving the leaves, herbs like mint are best cut before they have flowered. Once they have flowered, the plant is putting its energy into the flowers and seeds, and the leaves will taste less intense.
Once you’ve cut the stems, tie them in bunches and hang them upside down in a dark, warm place. Within a couple weeks, the leaves will be crunchy and crumbly. At this point, strip the leaves from the stems and store them in glass jars out of direct sunlight.
Enjoy your tea all winter long!
For more on herbs, check out our post from the Herbal Vinegar and Honey workshop.
Yours in food,
Marla
Update:
We had the following question over on our facebook page:
“Do you have a recipe for tea. How many leaves for a cup and is it possible to make it from fresh leaves too?”
Here was my response:
“I don’t really measure the dry leaves, I just fill up my tea ball. It’s probably just under a tablespoon of dried leaves. Yes, you can use fresh too. Sometimes I’ll make an iced herbal tea. Pick 2-3 stems of mint, and pull the leaves off. A little lavender or sage is good too. Stuff into a tea pot and “bruise”the leaves with the back of a spoon. (Helps release the flavour). Pour boiling water over the leaves. Let sit for a little while and then chill. (If you’d like iced tea.)
“I’ve also been meaning to try sun tea, but haven’t gotten around to making it yet: http://www.designsponge.com/2010/07/small-measures-with-ashley-herbal-sun-teas-simple-syrups.html”.
What do you like to do with your herbs?
Since preserving foods and herbs in honey or vinegar is one of the oldest methods of preservation, it was great to start our 2011 Preserving the Harvest classes off for the year with a class dedicated to the method. Clinical Herbalist, Oren Hercz was on hand to discuss the ways herbs can be used for their medicinal qualities in addition to enjoying the fresh flavours of summer all year round.
We started off the evening by learning some herb preservation basics. Herbs need to be dried slowly to maintain optimum flavour – even some dehydrators will use too high a heat to maintain the colour and full flavour of herbs. It is a good idea to dry herbs like summer savoury, sage, and other robust plants by hanging up the plant or branches upside down and letting them dry in room temperature. Freezing is a better option to preserve delicate herbs like cilantro and basil.
Oren then guided us through the process of making a mineral-rich herbal vinegar that would be a great way to support healthy bones. We used different combinations of oatstraw, nettle, dandelion leaf, raspberry leaf and peppermint and covered them all up with organic apple cider vinegar. These will sit in a warm place for a month or so until the vinegar has leached out the mineral from the herbs. At that point, the herbs will be carefully strained from the vinegar.
Making herbal honey was a similar process – in our class we had a choice of ginger, local garlic, sage and a variety of mints to infuse the honey, but other suggestions were to use basil, rose petals, lavender or lemon balm. This method involved filling a jar with honey and then poking our herbs deep into the honey to make sure there were no air bubbles. The honey will sit on a warm counter for about a month before warming and straining.
Update: I wanted to add in a book recommendation from Oren: The Complete Illustrated Holistic Herbal by David Hoffman. A great book for learning more about herbs.
Remember that we also want to hear YOUR stories about your own experiences with preserving the harvest! This can include photos, stories, memories, or other artwork related to canning, dehydrating, pickling, fermenting, berry picking, bumper crops of zucchini, bad growing seasons that left you with buckets of green tomatoes -we want it all! Check our our blog post on contest details: http://adventuresinlocalfood.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/preserving-our-harvest-contest/
We still have some spaces in our upcoming classes! Check out the link for the full list of classes: http://adventuresinlocalfood.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/2011-canning-and-preserving-classes/
Our blog post today comes from Food Action Committee volunteer extraordinaire, Katrina Ross. You can check out her blog at www.happybodyfoods.wordpress.com.
~~
In my limited experience with preserving fruit, the only way I know how to do so without using a sweetener is by freezing or dehydrating. I guess there are a few exceptions such as preserved lemons in which salt is used. Both methods are very simple and easy to do – you are only limited by the space in your freezer.
Freezing Berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, cranberries & raspberries)
1) Clean and hull berries
2) Place berries on a tea towel or between paper towel until dry
3) Lay berries on a cookie sheet in a thin layer, making sure that berries are not clumped together as they will freeze this way.
4) Freeze for 1- 2 hrs. Some people layer their baking sheets with parchment paper. I have not done this in the past and have not had a problem.
5) Put berries in a large freezer ziplock bag (make sure it is suitable for the freezer) and try to get as much air out of the bag as possible.
6) Label with the date frozen and what the item is
Tips for non seasonal fruit
There are many times when organic fair-trade bananas are 50% off at the grocery store. Bananas can either be sliced into thin disks and dehydrated or peeled and frozen.
Dehydrating Berries
The only berries I have had success dehydrating are strawberries and cranberries. Any berry with lots of seeds like raspberries & blackberries will not dehydrate well at all (you end up with a bunch of seeds) and wild blueberries end up so small it is not worth it. High bush blueberries, which are much larger, may work but I have not tried them.
Strawberries should be rinsed, hulled and sliced. I usually slice the strawberry in about 4 slices. If they are sliced too thin they will be impossible to get off the dehydrating rack. You could leave the berry whole or sliced in half; it will just take longer to dehydrate.
Cranberries should also be rinsed and then put into boiling water until the outside skin “pops” or cracks. This requires more time than just blanching. I have tried this method once and the result were ok but not all the berries cracked and they took forever to dehydrate. The second time I dehydrated the cranberries I just cut them in half which decreases dehydration time. I do not soak the cranberries in apple juice or honey as I don’t mind the tartness of the berry.
Lay berries in a thin layer and set temperature to 135F and dehydrate for 12 – 24 hrs checking several times. I have found that it is better to lay the strawberries on a teflex sheet as in the picture as the berries are easier to remove. If you don’t have enough sheets parchment paper can be used.
Miscellaneous items that I have recently dehydrated:
Cherries – clean and slice cherries in half and dehydrate
Kale – wash remove thick stem and dehydrate (spices and tamari can be added for kale chips). I usually just grind up the dried leaf and use in powdered form
Stevia Leaf – Dehydrate and grind into a powder
-Katrina Ross
This weekend, I sat in the sun and hulled strawberries for over an hour. I bought a flat of them at the farmers’ market to freeze for the winter. I’m not a big jam or jelly person, but I do love frozen berries for smoothies.
Last year's tomatoes
As I was hulling, I started to daydream about all of the delicious foods I was planning to put away for the winter. I always do canned tomatoes and peaches with a friend – last year we did 120 lbs and 40 lbs respectively. Last year I acquired a bucket of plums from a coworker with a plum tree in his backyard and I canned those also. I also like to dry mint from the garden and freeze blackberries picked at my favourite spots around town. I generally also freeze some cooked pumpkin for muffins, and grated zucchini for mid-winter chocolate zucchini cake.
Every year I add a couple other things to my preserving plan. Maybe some more dried herbs this year? A canned salsa? Some dilly beans? Hmmm…
While preserving can seem daunting to newbies, I assure you, it’s not that hard. I didn’t grow up learning this from my mother or grandmother. The first time I canned anything was three years ago. One very hot Labour Day weekend, 4 friends gathered in a small apartment to can 40 lbs peaches in honey syrup. We had 40 lbs of peaches, it took most of the day and evening, and we scared ourselves silly reading about botulism. Only one of us had ever canned before, and we had several canning books and websites open in the living room to compare techniques. But, the canning process worked (just like the books said it would), the peaches were delicious, and no one ended up with any food borne illnesses.
Prepping Peaches
My advice (aside from following up to date food safety standards and following the recipe to the letter, especially if you’re a beginner) is to start small. It’s really tempting to buy 100 lbs of tomatoes and try to can them all at once. But (and I speak from experience) canning is generally less fun at 2 am than it is at 2 pm. Also, preserve foods that you like to eat, in quantities that you would realistically eat. (Maybe this is obvious. But, as someone who made large quantities of sauerkraut last year, because it’s easy and makes a great farmers’ market demonstration, perhaps it’s worth mentioning. And perhaps I need to follow my own advice. )
Anyway, we’re curious to hear your preserving tips and questions and we’ll be blogging about preserving all summer and into the fall. So, let us know what you’re thinking about. (And don’t forget to enter our preserving contest!)
In the meantime, here are some of my favourite resources and those recommended to me by others:
Foods of Spry’s Field: Cooking and Preserving Then and Now by the Urban Farm Museum Society
Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food by Janet Chadwick
Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods by Sandor Ellix Katz
Putting Food By – by Janet Greene
Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardener and Farmers of Terre Vivante
Preserved by Nick Sandler
Bernardin’s website
National Center for Home Food Preservation website
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We are also offering preserving workshops this summer. There are still some spots available, so register soon!
(Update: We added a post called Canning 101. Check it out if you’re looking for some canning basics.)
Hopefully you’ve all heard about our ‘Preserving the Harvest Contest’ that we launched yesterday! (If not, click here for details.)
If you’re feeling like you’re left out of our contest because you don’t yet know how to can or pickle, even though you’ve always wanted to learn how – or even if you’re looking for ways to put away your veggies when they’re locally plentiful in order to eat them all winter, we want to help!
We’re offering an ambitious set of classes this summer that will focus on canning, pickling, dehydrating, and freezing local veggies and fruits when they’re in season. (More classes will follow in September and October when tomatoes and other fruits and veggies are at their peak!) We’re going to focus on a specific vegetable per class, in order to give you suggestions for a variety of ways to put it away for the winter. In each class we will also can or pickle the ‘produce of the week’ and will make enough for you to bring home a jar or two. No prior experience is necessary for these classes. You can sign up for one class or multiple classes.
Where: St. Andrews Church, corner of Robie and Spring Garden Road/Coburg.
Schedule:
July 27 – Herbs – Herbal Honey & Vinegar
August 3 – Beans – Dilly Beans
August 10 – Zucchini & Cucumber – Pickles and Relish
August 17 – Blueberry – Jam
August 24 – Stone Fruits (peaches or plums) – Halved in syrup
August 31 – Cabbage – Sauerkraut/Kimchi
All classes start at 6 pm and will last about 2 hours depending on recipe.
Note: Classes are based on seasonal availability of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. We don’t anticipate needing to change the schedule, but Mother Nature may have other plans.
Cost: $20 per class
Method of Payment and Cancellation Policy: Participants must pay upon registering for the class. We can accept cash, cheque or credit card. We require a credit card number or payment to secure your spot. Please note that we can only refund your registration fee if you cancel a minimum of two business days prior to the class. If you are unable to attend, you are welcome to invite a friend to come in your place.
Let us know if you are interested in bringing your kids – our space has a room off to the side of the kitchen and we can try to arrange someone to keep them occupied while you’re in the kitchen. Our space is also somewhat accessible for mobility-reduced folks – there is an elevator, but it is not able to handle heavier mechanized wheelchairs.
The following buses stop near St. Andrews Church: 1, 7, 17, 18, 42, 58, 80, 81.
To register, please complete the information below and send it along to preservingtheharvest@ecologyaction.ca .
Registration Form
Name:
Daytime phone:
Email:
Address:
Which workshop(s) are you signing up for?
Are you interested in car pooling? If yes, from which area of town are you traveling?
__ Driver __ Passenger __ Either
Do you have any food allergies or dietary restrictions?
Method of payment (cash, cheque, credit card):
(Cash or cheque can be dropped off at the EAC office. Cheques can also be mailed to the address below. Please make cheques payable to ‘Ecology Action Centre’. To pay by credit card, please call Marla or Alison at 442-1077.)
–
Food Action Committee
Ecology Action Centre
2705 Fern Lane
Halifax, NS
B3K 4L3
www.ecologyaction.ca
Phone (902) 442-1077
