Summary: Putting up the Harvest - Whether you are growing more food at home than you can eat, bringing it home from your CSA, or purchasing in bulk from your local farmer's market, you'll need to preserve it if you want to enjoy during the fall and winter months. Today we're discussing four methods of food preservation: freezing, canning, dehydrating, and fermenting. Freezing is a quick and simple method appropriate for fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, cheeses, breads, and prepared food. There are several articles on freezing methods at the University of Georgia Extension Service website. We enjoy using a nifty kitchen appliance called Foodsaver. You can find it and other food preservation supplies at our Amazon e-store. Please check these out and consider shopping here for your food preservation needs. The Foodsaver is a vacuum-packaging system that saves time, preserves food quality, and makes putting up your food very easy. We keep ours out on the kitchen counter for frequent use. Canning may be more unfamiliar to some of our listeners but is not mysterious or difficult to do. You will need a bit of equipment to get started (see food preservation supplies). Canning is a great way to put up tomatoes and tomato products because instead of losing nutrients and flavor, it actually improves flavor and increases the lycopene available. For more on the benefits of lycopene in your diet, visit this website. In order to best utilize this powerful antioxidant, be sure to eat some healthy fat such as extra virgin organic olive oil with your tomato sauces. A great description of canning and a tomato sauce recipe can be found in Barbara Kingsolver's new personal narrative, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Cathy just finished reading this book and it is a great read, inspirational, and full of great information about sustainable food and eating locally. The UGA website has pdf files on canning, as well. Canning of low-acid vegetable such as green beans requires a pressure canner. We prefer these foods frozen to retain texture and flavor. Dehydration of food can be accomplished by the sun in less humid climates, in a warm oven, or in a dehydrator dedicated to that purpose. Dehydrating is effective for making your own sun dried tomatoes (another recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle), sweet or chili peppers to add to soups or stews, herbs, figs, liver treats for your pets, or crispy nuts (recipe pp. 513-516 in Nourishing Traditions. We use a 4-tray Excalibur dehydrator for our dehydrating. It has a fan to keep the drying even and does not heat up the kitchen like a warm oven. It's easy to use and clean and can be used to make yogurt. A good reference for dehydrating is Mary Bells Complete Dehydrator Cookbook. The UGA website sited above has pdf articles as well. Fermentation has been used for thousands of years by traditional cultures to preserve food long before the advent of freezing or canning. Fermentation has 5 benefits: preservation of food, removal of toxins present in some foods, improving nutritional value, making food more digestible, and promoting the growth of healthy flora in the human intestine. Ancient Greeks referred to these chemical changes as alchemy. Fermented foods are an acquired taste and largely absent in the Standard American Diet. Fermented foods and beverages include saurkraut, miso, tempeh, Korean kimchi, Japanese umeboshi, cheese, kefir, yogurt, sour doughs, kombucha, wine, beer, vinegars, and traditional chutney, ketchup, and pickles. The definitive book on this subject is Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. Other traditional methods can be found here and in Nourishing Traditions. Sandor's website at www.wildfermentation.com will give you more information and resources. Cathy recommends Sally Fallon's fermented ketchup recipe on page 104 in Nourishing Traditions for taking care of a surplus of paste or Juliet tomatoes. More resources for fermenting are available from the Grain and Salt Society.
