Preserving the Harvest

by Deborah Niemann ThriftyHomesteader.com 1 Now that you have grown all of these wonderful herbs, fruits, and vegetables, what do you do with them? I once mentioned eating seasonally in my status update on Facebook, and a friend commented, “The only problem with eating seasonally is that we’d be eating snow three months a year.” The ironic thing about that statement is that people who don’t eat fresh, seasonal food are eating preserved foods every day of the year. Yet they do not realize that it is possible to freeze, can, and dehydrate food grown in a home garden or purchased in bulk at the farmers’ market.

2 Tomatoes

Let’s start with tomatoes because they are the most popular crop grown in home gardens. Like most gardeners, we grow a lot of tomatoes. To preserve the harvest, we can salsa and pizza sauce, freeze tomatoes for making soup in the middle of winter, and dry slices of tomatoes for using in quiche and other dishes.

Freezing tomatoes

We freeze most of our tomatoes so that we can have peeled, whole tomatoes available for cooking year-round. We freeze them in one-pound increments for using in recipes that call for a twelve-ounce can of tomatoes or an eight-ounce can of tomato sauce. Frozen tomatoes tend to have a high water content, which is why they are roughly equivalent to smaller cans of tomato products. You will need to reduce the amount of other liquids in a recipe or cook a bit longer to reduce the liquid when you use frozen tomatoes in cooking. If you thaw the tomatoes before using them in recipes that call for tomato sauce, you should drain off the liquid before adding them to the rest of the ingredients. Two-pound or three-pound packages of tomatoes are great for making tomato soup in the cold winter months. Some people simply wash tomatoes, drop them into a freezer bag, and stick them in the freezer. However, there are a few reasons for blanching before freezing. If you don’t do a great job of washing the tomatoes or if there are some microscopic germs, blanching will kill pathogens. Food scientists also say that blanched food will have a brighter color, better texture, and better flavor than food that was not blanched before freezing. Personally, I love the convenience of having peeled tomatoes in the freezer, ready to use during the winter.

To blanch tomatoes, choose a medium-size pot unless you are working alone, in which case a larger pot is worth using because you’ll blanch all the tomatoes, then peel and chop, then package. When we freeze tomatoes, there are usually two or three of us working together. One person washes and blanches; the next person peels and chops the tomatoes; and a third person, if there is one, packs them into freezer bags. Three people can make a nice assembly line where everything continues to move smoothly. If there is a backup in one spot, there is usually a slowdown somewhere else, and we pitch in and help. The slowdown usually happens in peeling and chopping, while washing, blanching, and packaging each tend to have slow moments. So, anyone who is idle starts peeling tomatoes. This is why it is not worth using a larger pot—blanching usually goes quickly enough with a medium pot.

You need the following equipment:

• pot of boiling water • slotted spoon • kitchen timer • large bowl or pot of ice water • large plate for cutting up tomatoes • sharp knife • large bowl or bucket for peels and cores

3 • bowl for chopped up tomatoes • scale • freezer bags or containers

Most of the equipment is available in the average kitchen, but you may be wondering if you need to vacuum seal bags of produce before freezing. Although it is not absolutely necessary, food will last longer in the freezer without getting freezer burn if it is vacuum packed. So, it does not make it any safer to freeze food, but it does improve the quality over time of some frozen food. Tomatoes are one of the few foods for which we do not use our vacuum sealer. They have a high water content, which makes it easy to manually squeeze the air out of zipper-style freezer bags before freezing, and if you use the smallest bag possible for the quantity you are freezing, there is almost no air in the bag. A pint bag will hold one pound, and a quart bag will hold two pounds.

Step-by-step freezing

Organize equipment—Assemble all of your equipment and supplies and set them up in a logical order. The pot of boiling water is obviously on the stove with the slotted spoon. The bowl of ice water is next to the stove. Next is the large plate for cutting up tomatoes, and behind that is the bucket for scraps and the bowl for tomatoes. Next are the scale and freezer bags. Our counter is not big enough to include the scale, so it is usually on the other side of the kitchen or on the dining room table.

Blanch tomatoes— Wash four or five tomatoes and drop them into the boiling water. Set your timer for one minute. Some books tell you to remove the tomatoes when the skins pop, which is fine as long as it happens within a minute. If the skin pops within twenty or thirty seconds, go ahead and lift the tomato out of the boiling water with the slotted spoon and put it into the ice water. All of the tomatoes should be removed at one minute, even if the skins have not popped. The skin will be loose enough to slip off the tomato, unless the tomato is not ripe. Usually if you stab the tomato with a knife, the skin will split, and you can pull the skin off with your fingers. But, you don’t want to do that until the tomato has been in the ice water for at least a couple of minutes, or until you can comfortably handle it. I’ve heard sad stories of people burning their fingers because they were not putting the tomatoes in ice water after blanching. The other reason you put tomatoes in ice water is to stop the cooking action. You don’t want the tomatoes to cook and turn to total mush, which makes them difficult to handle.

Prepare tomatoes—When you can comfortably handle the tomatoes, pull the skins off. Depending upon how you plan to use the tomatoes, you can chop them up, quarter them, or simply remove the core, which is the firm part where the stem was attached. Don’t use a cutting board. Tomatoes are very juicy, and liquid will be running off the board, all over the counter, and onto the floor in short order. We used to put a dishtowel on the edge of the counter to absorb the liquid, and then we realized that if we used a plate, it would hold the juice.

Package tomatoes—If you have enough room for the scale to sit next to the chopping plate, and the scale is not one that has an auto-off after a minute, you can weigh the tomatoes as you chop them up. Set the bowl on the scale before turning it on, or press “tare,” so it will read zero. Put the chopped tomato right into the bowl, and once the scale reads the amount you want, the tomatoes can be dropped into freezer bags, which are labeled with the date and type of tomato. I like to keep my tomato varieties separate when freezing so that I know what kind I’m eating.

4 And I do have favorite varieties for different dishes. For example, I prefer yellow or orange tomatoes for tomato soup.

Your backyard chickens or turkeys will love the peels and cores, or you can put them into your compost pile or feed them to your worms.

Creamy Heirloom Tomato Soup

Makes 4 servings.

2 pounds frozen orange or yellow tomatoes 1 teaspoon garlic salt 1 teaspoon paprika 1/8 teaspoon cayenne 2 teaspoons oregano 1 teaspoon basil 1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup flour 1 1/4 cups whole milk

Cover the bottom of the pot with about half an inch of warm water and place it on medium heat. Tomatoes only need to be thawed enough to break into pieces. The thawing will finish over the heat. Once the tomatoes are thawed, add the spices and stir. Use an immersion blender (also known as a stick blender) to blend the tomatoes until smooth. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a separate saucepan. After it is melted, whisk in the flour until it is a smooth paste. Add milk to the pot with the tomatoes, and then whisk the paste into the blended tomatoes and milk. Mix well and continue to stir until mixture boils. Turn off heat as soon as it boils. The total time from start to finish is only about 20 minutes, which is quicker than take-out.

Gazpacho

I crave the harvest of the first tomatoes every summer for two reasons— salsa and gazpacho! While salsa is one of the most popular snack foods today, most people have never even heard of gazpacho. It is a cold vegetable soup, which takes only a few minutes to make, is incredibly nutritious, and does not heat up the kitchen on a hot August day. It gets bonus points for being really delicious, and it can be frozen for enjoying later.

Makes 4 servings.

1 1/2 cups tomato juice 2 tomatoes, chopped 1 cucumber, chopped 1 green pepper, chopped 1/2 small onion, chopped 2 tablespoons lemon juice

5 salt to taste dash of cayenne if desired

Put all of the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. Chill in the refrigerator at least a couple of hours or overnight. Garnish with minced green onions or chives if you have them. If you won’t be eating it within a day or two, freeze.

Drying tomatoes

It took me years to attempt drying tomatoes, and after I did it, I wondered why I hadn’t tried it sooner—other than the fact that I don’t own a food dehydrator. But that does not have to stop you.

Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper, slice tomatoes thinly, and put the tray on the dashboard of a car sitting in the sun. Check them daily and remove them when they are thoroughly dried out and hard. They can be stored in a jar or plastic bag and used when recipes call for dried tomatoes. Canning tomatoes

Foods that are high in acid, such as tomatoes, pickles, and fruits, can be canned in a boiling water canner. The process is simple, and it usually takes fifteen to twenty minutes to process the jars. As with freezing tomatoes, this is easier (and more fun) if you have a helper or two, but you can do it alone.

You will need the following equipment:

Boiling water canner with rack—If you don’t want to buy one yet, you can use any large pot as long as there is enough room for water to completely cover the lids of your canning jars and leave a little room for boiling. In other words, the pot needs to be about two or three inches taller than the jars you plan to use. The jars should not sit directly on the bottom of the pot. I’ve heard of people using a dishtowel on the bottom of the pot, but I tried it once, and it was a little scary because the jars wobbled during boiling. You can line the bottom of the pot with canning lid rings, and set the jars on top of those. However, a real boiling water canner makes life much easier because the rack allows you to put

6 all the jars into the canner and remove them in one fell swoop. And once you have that giant pot, you will wonder how you lived without it. We use ours for scalding chickens before plucking, boiling down maple sap, and cooking down forty-five pounds of tomatoes to make pizza sauce.

Jar lifter (canning tongs)—This is an absolute necessity. Like everything else, I’ve tried the alternative, and the jar lifter is worth every penny. What’s the alternative? There is no alternative if you don’t have a canner with a rack. If you have the rack, you can lift all the jars out of the water with it, and then handle the wet, incredibly hot jars with a pot holder, which is really scary because the water soaks through the pot holder and you are in midair with a very hot jar filled with very hot food.

Jar funnel—This is not absolutely necessary, but it makes the whole process easier and less messy. Without it, you will probably make a mess when you put the food into the jars.

Jar tool with quarter-inch markings on it—Again, this one is not absolutely necessary, but it makes life easier. You need a nonmetal implement to run around the inside of the jar and press down the fruit or vegetables, forcing air out of the jar. If you don’t do that, you will probably be surprised at how much lower the level of your liquid is after canning. (Yes, I’ve done that too.) You can also use a plastic knife or wooden or plastic chopstick. You are not supposed to use metal. I know that sounds odd since people use spoons and knives in canning jars all the time when taking food out, but according to the manufacturers, canning jars are sensitive to metal utensils.

Lid lifter (wand) with magnet—I never actually bought this, but I wound up with one by default when I bought a new canner, and I love it. I used to use simple kitchen tongs to lift the lids out of the hot water and place on the jars, but this is so much easier.

Canning jars—Buy new ones. I know it is tempting to buy boxes and boxes of them cheaply at yard sales, but if you do, you have to look through them very carefully. I assumed that if I was buying old canning jars, they had to be good. They’ve lasted for decades already; right? They must be flawless. Wrong! We have never had a new canning jar break, which is not to say that it cannot happen, but we have had far too many of the used jars break. After seeing our hard work floating in the canner for the third time, we looked at all the jars I had picked up for the bargain price of thirty dollars after seeing a note on the bulletin board in the local post office. Many of them had hairline cracks on the bottom of the jar, which is where all of them broke during processing. So, if there is a hairline crack that you can feel with your fingernail, it is probably best not to use it for canning. You can still use it for other things, like storing milk in the refrigerator or herbs in the pantry. Just keep it away from boiling water.

The other thing to be aware of when buying used jars is that many people in the past would reuse single-use jars from the store, such as mayonnaise or pickle jars. Those jars are not made to the same standards as home canning jars. Commercial jars are made strong enough to withstand the canning process once. They might be able to handle it a second or third time, but most people who have tried reusing commercial jars give up the practice after a few too many break during processing. The rim of those jars may also be narrower, making the possibility of seal failure more probable.

7 Canning lids—Buy new ones, and use them only once. They do not reliably seal more than one time.

Ladle and/or two-cup heatproof glass measuring cup—You will need one or the other when putting cooked food into the jars. I prefer using a two-cup, glass measuring cup because it means pint jars and smaller can be filled with one transfer from pot to jar, which means less chance for dribbles. I also feel like I have to do a strange wrist manipulation when using a ladle, but use whichever you find most comfortable.

Scale—Many canning recipes measure produce in pounds because accurately measuring by volume is difficult to do with odd-shaped vegetables. I resisted buying a scale for too long. Once I had it, I began using it daily for weighing milk to keep track of my goats’ production. It is also necessary for making soap. Battery operated scales are available at most discount stores and some grocery stores for twenty dollars or less.

Food mill—Although lots of things can be canned without a food mill, it definitely makes life easier when you want to puree tomatoes, apples, or pears for making a sauce. You can use a food processor, but it has a tendency to liquefy some things or whip air into others, neither of which is desirable in canned foods.

Step-by-step canning

Check supplies and ingredients— This is supposedly a cardinal rule of cooking, but how many of us do it before we start putting together a recipe? It really is important with canning, however, because you can’t simply skip the lid or vinegar, as if it were an herb in a casserole.

Prepare jars—You are not supposed to add hot food or liquid to cold jars because the sudden change in temperature could cause breakage. There are two ways you can prepare your jars. The old-

8 fashioned way is to wash them with hot soapy water, put them in the canner, cover with water, and bring to a boil. The other way to do it is to put them in the dishwasher to wash and dry, which will heat them up. In either case, you should remove the jars one at a time when you are ready to fill them with food so they don’t cool off sitting on the counter waiting to be filled.

Prepare lids—Wash the lids and bands in hot soapy water. When you think you are within about fifteen minutes of filling the jars, heat the lids (not the bands) in a pot of water heated to about 180°F. You do this to soften the sealing compound before putting the lid on the jars so you will get a better seal. Do not boil, because it could damage the seal and cause it to fail.

Fill jars—There are two ways to fill jars: hot pack and cold pack. The recipe you have chosen will dictate the method. Hot pack is for hot sauces, jams, and other food that is prepared hot before canning. Cold pack, sometimes called raw pack, is used when a recipe instructs you to fill the jars with raw food and hot liquid. After packing the jar, use the nonmetal jar tool with quarter-inch markings on it (or a plastic knife) to slide around the inside of the jar and poke gently at the food to force air bubbles to rise to the surface. I didn’t think this was important when I first started canning because I didn’t see any bubbles, and I was surprised when the level of my liquid would sometimes go down by as much as half an inch after processing. Once you have filled the jar to the level indicated by the recipe, wipe the rim so you will get a good seal, and then use your magnetized lid lifter to take a lid from the hot water and place it on the jar. Put a band on the jar and tighten until you feel resistance. Do not muscle down the band because hot air will not be able to escape during processing. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to tighten it gently. If it is not tight enough, it may not seal properly.

Process jars—Unless your recipe calls for boiling down something (like tomato sauce) until it is reduced by 50 percent, which will take all afternoon, you should have a canner about half full of water on the stove and heating up about the same time that you start working on your recipe. Even if you start with hot water from the tap, it can take up to an hour for that much water to reach boiling. Using the canner to heat up jars is one way to make sure you never find yourself standing next to the stove with a boiling pot of food looking at your empty canner. If you used the dishwasher for heating the jars, fill the canner about half full of water, and put another pot or tea kettle on the back burner and heat it for insurance. If you have too much water in the canner, it will overflow when you add the jars, but if you have too little, the food will not be processed properly. Boiling water should cover the lids by one or two inches. If you have hard water, add one-quarter to one-half cup of vinegar to the canner so that your jars do not look like they have been dusted with talcum powder after they come out of the canner and dry. There is a notch in

9 each handle of the canner rack, which is for positioning the rack above the water and hooking it to the sides of the pot. Place the rack in this position when you are ready to start adding jars. Place the jars on the rack, spacing them as evenly as possible. After putting all the jars into the canner, gently lower the rack into the boiling water. If your food has cooled down a bit, the water might stop boiling. That is not a big deal, but you will have to start your timer after the water returns to boiling. If the lids are not covered by an inch or two of water, add some of the boiling water from that pot on the back burner. Once the water starts boiling, you can probably reduce the heat a bit to conserve energy while keeping the water at a rolling boil. Cover the pot with the lid, and set the timer for whatever the recipe says.

Cool jars—After the timer dings, turn off the heat and remove the lid of the canner. Let the canner sit for five minutes to begin cooling, and then lift the rack and hook it on the sides of the pot. Using the jar lifter, pick up the jars without tipping. There will be some water on top of the lid. Try to ignore it. If you tip the jar to pour off the liquid from the top of the lid, you could also spill some of the contents from inside the jar because the lid has not yet sealed. Since it is so hot, the water on top of the lid will probably evaporate in a few minutes. Set the jars on a dry towel, at least a couple of inches apart, so air can circulate around them during the cooling process. Avoid the temptation to mess with the lids or do anything else to the jars. Your job is done. If you succumb to the temptation to tighten the lids, you could push the rim of the jar through the sealing compound, which would result in seal failure. As the jar cools, the air inside the jar will contract and suck down the lid and seal it. You will hear a pop when this happens. Sometimes it happens as soon as you pull the jar out of the canner. Sometimes it happens an hour later. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, as long as it happens. The next day or whenever the jar is completely cool to the touch, you can remove the rings and test the seal. Grasp the edge of the lid and lift. If the lid comes off, the jar will need to be stored in the refrigerator and used as soon as possible. If the jar is labeled as safe for freezing, you can also store it in the freezer. Whenever you have a seal failure, check the rim of the jar for cracks or nicks, which may have caused the problem, and don’t use the jar for canning again if you find any imperfections. You can reprocess a jar that did not seal; however, there is usually not more than one jar that doesn’t seal properly, and it seems a waste of energy to heat up the contents of the jar and go through the process with a new lid for one jar of food. If you were already planning to prepare another batch of canned food, reprocessing a single jar makes more sense because you can add it to the canner with that food, as long as the required processing time is the same for both.

Store jars—Jars can be stored without bands. Bands serve no useful purpose on a jar that is sealed, and you will have to buy fewer bands because you can reuse one box of bands day after day. Also, if bands are stored on jars, they tend to rust, making them difficult to remove and reuse. You can purchase plastic lids that fit on canning jars after they are opened, or you can reuse metal lids from other store-bought products. Do not store jars where temperatures will reach extremes of either hot or cold. Freezing could cause seal failure and food spoilage. It could also burst the jars if they are not the freeze-or-can style jars. If the storage area is excessively damp, the lids could corrode and unseal.

WARNING—If a jar becomes unsealed during storage, the food could be contaminated and should NOT be eaten.

Eat!—You can use home canned food the same way you would use canned food you buy at the store. You can add it to recipes or eat it without any further preparation. To open a jar, use a

10 bottle opener to pop the lid off. This will protect your fingers from the sharp edges of the lid, and it will protect the rim of the jar from a metal implement (such as a A note about altitude: knife) that might chip it or damage it. Once you open a Processing times in these jar of home canned food, it should be used fairly soon. recipes are for canning at We’ve all seen mold growing on a half-empty jar of 1,000 feet above sea level or applesauce or spaghetti sauce forgotten in the lower. If your elevation is refrigerator. It is a little annoying if the product was 1,001 to 3,000, increase store-bought, but it is really depressing when it was your processing time by five homegrown apples or tomatoes. minutes; for 3,001 to 6,000, increase processing time by If you skipped the last few sections with canning ten minutes; for 6,001 to equipment and step-by-step instructions, go back and 8,000, increase processing read it. Canning is not like most cooking, where you can time by fifteen minutes; and sort of follow the recipe and expect everything to turn for an altitude of 8,001 to out okay. There is a lot of important, basic information 10,000 above sea level, that will be exactly the same for every canning recipe increase time by twenty you prepare, so you need to understand that minutes. information. Doing something wrong could cause jars to break or someone to get sick.

Pizza Sauce

Makes about 8 pints (or 4 quarts).

45 pounds tomatoes 6 cups chopped onion 12 cloves garlic, minced or chopped 2 tablespoons oregano 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper 2 tablespoons salt, if desired Bottled lemon juice or citric acid{END List}

WARNING: Do NOT add additional low-acid vegetables, such as green peppers, celery, or mushrooms, to this recipe, and do not increase the amount of onion in the recipe. The amount of lemon juice or citric acid is calculated based upon how much acid is already in the rest of the recipe, so if you add more low-acid vegetables, it throws off everything. If you do not have enough acid in the sauce, it cannot safely be processed in a boiling water canner.

Wash the tomatoes, cut them into quarters, and cut out the cores. Put the quartered tomatoes into a large pot and bring to a boil for 20 minutes. The canner pot that holds seven 1-quart jars is just the right size for 45 pounds of tomatoes. Using a food mill or sieve, puree the tomatoes and remove the skins. Put the puree back into a pot, and add onions, garlic, oregano, red peppers, and salt. Cook until reduced by two-thirds, which will take several hours. If you crank up the heat too much to speed things along, the sauce will burn and stick, so you have to be patient. As the sauce approaches the desired consistency, transfer the sauce to a smaller pot to finish reducing, and get the canning supplies ready. Add 1 tablespoon of bottled lemon juice or 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid to each pint; add 2 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid to each quart. Fill the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Wipe the rims of jars clean

11 with a damp paper towel, place lids on the jars, and twist the bands until you meet resistance. Process pints in boiling water for 35 minutes and quarts for 40 minutes. Salsa

Our favorite salsa is an improvised version that we eat almost daily from the time the tomatoes start to ripen until the first fall frost. We chop up three or four tomatoes of various colors, a small red onion, and a jalapeño or two, and then stir in two or three crushed cloves of raw garlic. If you are a pepper lover, you know each type of pepper has its own unique taste, so experiment! We also love the flavor of habañeros. If the timing is just right, we add a few sprigs of chopped up cilantro, but prime cilantro harvesting time is far too brief. If you noticed that salsa ingredients also happen to be the most popular garden vegetables, you are not alone. Detractors of home gardens sometimes say that most people only grow salsa gardens and therefore cannot really feed themselves. Before I give you a recipe for home canned salsa, I will warn you that some people make salsa once or twice and then decide that they don’t like it because it is watery. The acid level is not high enough to safely can salsa in a boiling water canner without the addition of vinegar, and tomatoes are watery enough already. Although you can use a variety of heirloom tomatoes when making fresh salsa, you really should use plum tomatoes for canned salsa because their water content is much lower. The good news is that heirloom plum tomatoes do grow in a variety of colors, so you are not stuck with plain red. However, the various colors tend to blend together during the cooking process. To reduce the liquid in your tomatoes, you need to gut them, as my daughter says. If you cut them in half lengthwise, you will see the firm outer layer, the seeds and the watery part of the tomato. If you remove the seeds and the watery part, the end product will be less watery as well as less seedy. If the canned salsa is still too watery, you can drain it before using it. Do NOT, however, reduce the amount of vinegar in the recipe. Leaving out or reducing the vinegar will create a lower acid environment, making perfect growing conditions for botulism to thrive.

Canned Salsa

Makes 6 pints.

10 cups chopped tomatoes (peeled) 5 cups chopped green peppers 5 cups chopped onions 2 1/2 cups chopped jalapeños (or other hot peppers) 1 1/2 cups vinegar 3 cloves garlic, minced 2–3 sprigs cilantro, chopped, if available 3 teaspoons salt

12 Blanch the tomatoes to peel and chop, discarding the cores. Chop the other ingredients and mix them together in a large pot. Wear rubber gloves when chopping jalapeños or other hot peppers. Do not increase the proportion of peppers or onions because it would reduce the amount of acid in the recipe. Bring the mixture to a boil, and prepare the canning supplies. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour the salsa into pint jars. Leave 1/2-inch headspace. Place lids on the jars and tighten gently. Process for 15 minutes.

13 Peppers

Peppers are the second most commonly grown vegetable in the home garden. Although we love sweet peppers and use them liberally, it is tough to use them when they are no longer in season. Canning them is not popular because they become too soft and mushy, and few people freeze them, although it is possible. I’ve used frozen sweet peppers in stir-fries, and although they taste okay, they are not crunchy because freezing damages their structure. It is not necessary to blanch sweet peppers for freezing. Wash the peppers, remove the stems and cores with seeds, and then freeze the peppers whole, sliced, or chopped. They will not be easy to handle after thawing, so I suggest freezing them in the same state you plan to use them. For example, if you want to use them in stir-fries, slice them before freezing. For making stuffed peppers later, freeze them whole. Hot peppers, however, are a different story. We make hot pepper jelly, canned jalapeños, and habañero hot sauce. We also add hot peppers to some of our bags of frozen tomatoes, so when we want to make chili, we use a pound of the mixed tomatoes and peppers. The first time I canned jalapeños was well over ten years ago, but it is an experience I will never forget. I was slicing the peppers when a friend called. I told her I couldn’t talk because I was in the middle of canning, and she said, “Oh, I hope you’re wearing rubber gloves because jalapeños will really burn your hands if you’re not.” I thought she must be quite a wimp. I’d already sliced a lot of peppers, and my hands were perfectly fine. Flash forward a couple of hours, and I was in the most excruciating pain imaginable. My hands felt like they were on fire, and nothing helped. I was awake all night in pain, frequently getting out of bed to try whatever new idea popped into my head to alleviate the burning. I know someone else who assumed that she was immune to this pain because she had sliced a few peppers in the past and felt nothing. She also will never forget her first painful experience canning jalapeños. So, learn from our mistakes and believe us when we say that you are not tougher than the rest of us. Wear rubber gloves when slicing hot peppers!

Pickled Peppers

Makes about 5 pints.

2 3/4 pounds jalapeños (or a mix of hot peppers) 6 cups vinegar 2 cups water

Slice the peppers or cut them in half lengthwise if you plan to use them for stuffed peppers. (It’s fine to do some of each.) I do not recommend canning whole peppers because it is nearly impossible to get the air out of them using home canning methods. Bring the vinegar and water to a boil, and then reduce the heat. Pack the peppers into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Add the hot pickling liquid, also leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Use the nonmetal jar tool to press on the peppers and release the trapped air. Place the lids on and tighten gently. Process for 10 minutes. If you run out of the vinegar-water mixture when filling jars, do not simply pour in a little vinegar straight from the bottle. Room temperature liquid will sink to the bottom of the jar, which is already full of liquid that is around 200°F. When you add these jars to the canner filled with boiling water, the jars could break. (Do I have to tell you how I know this?) Yes, it will slow you

14 down, but you need to mix up more vinegar and water at a three-to-one ratio and bring it to a boil before adding it to the jars. Since I have hard water, I need to add vinegar to my canner anyway to avoid a white powder coating on my jars, so I start with more of the pickling liquid than I think I’ll need, and I just pour the remainder into the boiling canner water Drying peppers

Hot peppers have been braided and hung to dry for centuries. If you want your own homegrown and handmade crushed red pepper, grow cayenne peppers in your garden, and then hang them up to dry. You can use sewing thread or unwaxed dental floss and either tie a knot around every stem or thread a needle and stick it through the stem of each pepper. Tie a knot around the first one so it doesn’t fall off, or tie the two ends together, and hang it up somewhere out of the way for a couple of weeks. Once the peppers are crunchy and dry, you can take them down and store them in a jar.

15 Green beans

Green beans are one of the most popular vegetables eaten today, so it makes sense to include some in your garden. Harvest green beans when they are young and tender. It is important to know that some varieties of beans are simply stringier than others, so choose varieties identified as “stringless.” However, even those get stringy as they mature. Snapping beans is one of the few traditional skills I learned from my mother. Even then, the crop of beans my parents grew in their garden was tiny, and most of the beans I ate as a child came from store-bought cans. I’m sure my mother viewed snapping beans as one of those old-fashioned chores she was happy to give up, because I have no memories of fresh beans once I became a teenager. I’m guessing that today few people know the terms “snap beans” or “string beans,” either as nouns or verbs. If you understand that those were the original names for green beans, it does not seem so weird that some are purple or burgundy.

Whether you plan to eat the beans today or prepare them for canning or freezing, the first thing you have to do is snap and string them. A bean has two seams, one on each side, sort of like a shirt has a seam on each side. After harvesting, snap off the stem in the direction of one of those seams, and unless it is a stringless variety, a stringy fiber will come off with the stem. Continue to pull the string the full length of the bean. To string the other side of the bean, snap off the tail and pull that string off. People have been trying to breed beans without strings for at least a century and a half, sometimes giving them names to stress the ease of preparation, such as “Lazy Wife.” After washing, snapping, and stringing, beans can be left whole or cut into smaller pieces for freezing. They should be blanched for three minutes before freezing. You will need a large pot for blanching, as well as a metal basket, strainer, or mesh bag so that all the beans go in and come out at the same time. Blanching works well in one-pound increments, and this is one of those tasks that is easier and more fun with a helper or two. Just as you do with tomatoes and other vegetables, you need to stop the blanching by plunging the green beans into cold water as soon as you pull them out of the boiling water. A vacuum sealer can definitely reduce the amount of freezer burn on beans. Before we had one, our bags of frozen beans looked like bags of ice after six or seven months in the freezer.

Pickled Green Beans

You can pickle almost any vegetable. I wonder how pickled cucumbers became known as the generic pickle, because many other vegetables make great pickles, including zucchini, beets, green tomatoes, asparagus, okra, and even cauliflower. I suspect that pickled vegetables might have been the snack food of generations past, and with their almost nonexistent calories and zero fat, they still make a great snack food today.

Makes 4 pints.

2 pounds green beans, cut one inch shorter than the jars you plan to use 1/4 cup canning salt 2 1/2 cups vinegar 2 1/2 cups water

16 1/2 teaspoon cayenne or crushed red pepper 4 cloves garlic, peeled 4 sprigs fresh dill (or 1 teaspoon of dried)

Put the water, vinegar, and salt in a pot and boil. Pack the beans into jars, leaving 1/2- inch headspace. They will look more attractive and you will be able to pack more into the jars if they are packed vertically—in other words, standing up in the jar. As you pack each jar, add 1/8 teaspoon of the crushed red pepper. If you have your own dried cayenne, add a piece next to the glass for decoration as well as flavor. Also add one clove of garlic and a sprig of dill to each jar. If you don’t have any fresh dill in your garden, 1/4 teaspoon of dried dill will work also. Add the hot canning liquid to each jar, leaving 1/2- inch headspace. Push the beans around in the jar a bit with your nonmetal jar tool to release bubbles. Place the lids on and tighten gently. Process for 10 minutes.

17 Herbs

Herbs are quite easy to dry. Pick long stems of mint, lemon balm, basil, and similar leafy herbs when they are bushy but have not flowered. Once they flower, the leaves will get slightly bitter, although some people don’t mind. Lay the herbs out on a cookie sheet somewhat loosely, and put them in the oven for about two weeks or until the leaves crumble between your fingers. The oven should not be turned on. In fact, I usually put a sticky note on the oven control, so no one turns it on to preheat it for a meal without removing the herbs first. The only reason I put them in the oven is that they are out of the way and won’t get dusty. If you have an empty pantry shelf, it might work just as well, as long as it is not in a cold or humid section of your basement. You can also dry herbs by creating bouquets, tying them together with a string, and hanging them upside-down until the leaves are crumbly. When the leaves are dry, you can store them in a jar with a lid. You can crush the leaves between your fingers before storing, or you can leave them whole until you are ready to use them and crush them at that time. I prefer to leave them whole because they will be more flavorful if they are crushed just before using. It does require more space for storage, which is probably why they are not sold whole, but I don’t mind storing herbs in a quart jar. Do not try the parked car method (as described in the tomato section) to dry herbs. I got the bright idea to put my mint and lemon balm in the car to dry it more quickly than by using my usual method. It gets far too hot in a car parked in the sun. Within twenty-four hours the herbs were completely black and had no remaining scent of mint or lemon. Patience is a virtue.

Herb teas

Once you start making your own herb teas, you will probably wonder how the tea business became so lucrative. In other words, why are people willing to spend so much money on tea bags? If you think tea bags are a good deal, consider this: a box of twenty tea bags typically includes only one to two ounces of dried herbs or tea leaves. No, that is not a typo. Yes, that means that each tea bag only contains one-tenth to one-twentieth of an ounce of tea. At $2.50 a box, the herbs or tea leaves are selling at twenty to forty dollars a pound. Many of them can include such a small amount of tea because they have added flavors. When checking three different brands of “natural” lemon tea, I discovered all of them had added “natural lemon flavor,” which apparently begins with a soybean. Making hot tea from homegrown herbs is as simple as drying the herbs and adding hot water. If you don’t want herbs floating in your tea, you can get a tea ball or a tea strainer or tie up the herbs in a piece of cheesecloth. {insert photo}photo: straining tea{END Insert photo}{insert photo caption} Before the invention of tea bags, tea strainers were used to keep tea leaves out of the cup when pouring tea.{END Caption}

Iced Lemon Spearmint Tea

Mint and lemon balm (which is in the mint family) are both easy to grow. I planted a single tiny specimen of each one five or six years ago, and today I have a patch of each that is larger than a dining room table. My favorite summertime drink is spearmint and lemon balm tea. About an hour before you plan to serve the iced tea, grab a handful of each herb and bruise it by

18 squeezing and crushing it between your hands. Then put it in a stoneware pitcher, pour two quarts of boiling water over it, and add a little honey if you like it sweet. Don’t stress over the precise size of a handful of herbs. If the tea it is not strong enough, add more leaves next time. If it is too strong, use fewer. You can hold back fresh whole leaves with a spoon when pouring the tea over ice into tall glasses, so you don’t need a tea ball or strainer. If a leaf should fall into your glass, it’s garnish.

Homemade Ginger Ale

But what if you just have to have something fizzy sometimes? Well, you can make your own carbonated beverages. Modern carbonated beverages are made by forcing gas into water and adding artificial colors and flavors, but they can also be made using fermentation and real food flavors.

Makes 1 quart.

1/2 cup sugar 2 tablespoons finely grated ginger root (more if it is not finely grated) Juice of half a lemon 1/8 teaspoon yeast (the same stuff you use for bread)

Put the ingredients into a repurposed 1-liter plastic soda bottle. You should not use glass because it could burst under pressure. Fill with cold water, screw lid on, gently shake the bottle to dissolve sugar, and forget about it until the next day. The plastic bottle will feel somewhat soft initially, but the bottle will get harder as the ginger ale ferments. Once the bottle feels hard, it should be refrigerated. This usually happens within one to two days, depending upon how warm it is in your house. If you forget about it for too long, it could explode.

19 Root cellar vegetables

Some vegetables require no special preparation before storing, although they do require a special environment. With the advent of refrigeration and grocery stores, the These vegetables can be need for root cellars virtually disappeared. But like a lot stored for months in a root of old ideas, this one may have been ditched too soon. cellar: Two years after moving to our homestead, we built our own house and included a root cellar and a cheese • beets cave, which is an even more antiquated idea. The • cabbage footprint of our house is a simple rectangle, but we do • carrots have a front porch that sticks out four feet from the front • onions of our house and a porch by the kitchen door that also • parsnips sticks out four feet. Construction of the basement was • potatoes one of only three things we contracted because we • turnips didn’t own the special equipment needed to do the job. • winter squash (The other two were blown-in insulation and lightweight concrete poured over the in-floor heating tubes.) The basement contractor was going to fill the space under the porches with gravel, but we requested that he leave those spaces open so we could create the root cellar and cheese cave. We insulated those areas from the rest of the basement so that the ground would cool them and we could heat the basement in winter with our wood stove.

An unheated, uninsulated basement should stay near ground temperature most of the year, especially in winter, which is when you need it for storing your crops. Some basements will warm up a little in summer, depending upon how much exterior wall surface is exposed to the sun. Crops can be successfully stored in a corner of the basement, where there are two walls exposed to the earth. You can put the vegetables from a small harvest in a box and cover them with a blanket to hold in the coolness from the earth. Some vegetables, such as potatoes, do best when also stored in the dark. For larger harvests, you can build a room in the corner and insulate it from the rest of the basement. A corner on the north side of the house would work best because it would get the least amount of sun exposure. There are a multitude of root cellar plans and instructions for building root cellars online.

from Homegrown and Handmade: A Practical Guide for More Self-Reliant Living by Deborah Niemann (Chapter 3)

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