Y’know what? I’m just going to stick this on the top of the site and keep editing it. That way I won’t have a grillion little posts about how I dried another cup of tomatoes.
Dried: rather a lot of celery; about a pint of prunes; apple rings; raspberries; eggplant; peaches; cauliflower
Froze: roasted and froze some sweet peppers; made veggie dumplings out of homemade dumpling wrappers and CSA veggies and local eggs; about 1 gallon of sweet corn; kale; assorted greens; more greens; purple cauliflower; chopped broccoli and cauliflower stems
Canned: 4 quarts pickles; six quarts and 2 four-oz jars applesauce (half raspberry, half spiced); a little over 1 quart watermelon-peach-applesauce; 1 pint and 4 10-oz jars green tomato apple chutney; almost 3 pints barbecue sauce; 4 oz etrog-orange-ginger marmalade
Bulk storage: 5 pounds macaroni, 1 pound egg noodles, 2 cans blueberries
Root/Squash Inventory: 2 buttercup, 1 sweet dumpling, 4 acorn, 2 delicata, 1 butternut
Updated 10/15
Weeping Sore said,
September 25, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
Do you raise your own food? I had a terrible crop this summer, not worth preserving,
although it was good to eat.
How did you learn how to do the canning, drying etc? I’d like to do more preserving
especially with farmer’s market produce, but I don’t know where to start.
limesarah said,
September 25, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
I don’t grow my own food except for a few potatoes this year — we’re in an apartment, so we only have a tiny little lawn. All of the veggies I talk about come from our Community Supported Agriculture farm or from the farmer’s market. I’m mostly self-taught with food preservation, but there was a canning demo at the farm last summer. With drying and waterbath canning, if you follow the instructions carefully, there’s not a lot that you can do seriously wrong. The Ball canning book is one of the best, but there’s also a lot of good stuff online available through agricultural colleges and places like that. To dry, cut food into 1/4 inch slices or smaller, put on a baking tray, and put in the oven on 200 degrees or lower. An actual dehydrator helps a *lot*, and is more energy-efficient, but it’s not actually necessary if you’re drying meaty things like tomatoes or apples. For herbs, just tie in a bundle and hang from the ceiling. That can be hit or miss in humid weather, but at least it’s easy :-)
risa b said,
October 8, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
Hey! I really like hearing about cups of dried tomatoes …