Better Life through Canning

So, this past weekend I got invited to a local canning swap and trade party. I know it sounds a bit weird or, well, domestic maybe, boring to some, old to others,.... dated maybe... but, this is the kind of gathering I've been wanting to join for some years. The idea is that you can things during the harvest season, either by yourself or in canning parties, and then bring a bunch of canned goods for others to taste. At the end of the event, all the unopened cans are laid out and folks fill their baskets with roughly what the number they brought in. There were six of us on Sunday. I took ten jars and came back with ten jars, only two of which were mine. Not bad.

The reason these types of trades are so intriguing to me is, aside from the whole aspect of socializing with others who do arcane things, the sheer variety you get without being overwhelmed. If you are canning alone in your kitchen, just you and your pot of boiling water (I'm cheap and don't own a pressure canner), even with small batch canning, you'll end up with 4-8 jars of whatever you make. Let's say eight. So if you make six half pints Apple Ginger Chutney, that's actually a lot of chutney to consume over the year. Of course, you can gift these things, and sometimes I do. But, let's be honest, the vast majority of folks have no appreciation of the amount of work that went into making that unusual chutney. Some will avoid opening it, instead waiting for the right special occasion where chutney calls out to them and they have all the right guests and all the right china on the table. Or, in all likelihood, they have no idea how one would eat chutney; isn't that some weird foreign food? So I'm leery of gifting unusual recipes even though I might just love to try a jar myself.

I'm quite generous, I think, with my canned goods and other things I make, as long as folks will appreciate them. I can see my little Golum coming out, though, when I recognize that's not the case. This year life interrupted, and I was unable to get many sour cherries. The result: two pints of sour cherry jam. Nothing else. No frozen cherries. Nothing. My sour cherry jam rocks. And I know it's totally sad and selfish, but when folks who like Smuckers just as much are digging in, I have to hold down my inside voice... "it's mine, my precious".... and I might just be guilty of sliding that one to the back of the fridge and bringing my less-than-favorites to the front. The sins of a canner.

On the other hand, my hot pepper jellies are usually a big hit, particularly with folks who haven't paired them with cream cheese. I had so many request for jars last year that I made double this year to give to whomever wants them. Pepper jelly is so unique and one of the coolest ways to make a quick Real Food appetizer, I'm delighted that folks like it and glad to share.

In any case, when you make unusual recipes, you are often, well, I am often, stuck then with jars of unusual recipes. Luckily, last year my son absolutely loved the spiced blueberry cherry preserves in his yogurt. These were Fall spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg stewed into blueberries and sour cherries. It tasted good, I though, but four quarts good? Not for me. It took the year, but we did eat them all. Still, this year I went back to tried and true things.  Which means, when I got invited to this party to share, since I wasn't quite expecting it, I wasn't quite prepared either.

I brought garlic dill pickles, apple sauce, and pepper jelly. The first two are things most everyone makes. Most everyone makes a lot of. Not too exciting to swap. I also had one jar of lemon basil jelly, which was interesting.  The great thing is that these kind of parties usually involve generous people who are willing to try other folks stuff and appreciate the work involved, so I did pretty well.

For my part, I got to take a home a jar of Blackberry Lime jam, pumpkin butter, cranberry jam, pickled watermelon rind, a different pepper jelly, apple chutney, and bay leaf infused plum jam. Plus, I got a bit of pineapple sage butter. We tasted various breads that others made, and an apple cobbler. Not too shabby. And the group was all knitters, so we sat around, talked, and did that too...Bonus!

It's Berry Pickin' Time Again

With our stores from last year nearly depleted, we headed to Larriland Farm in Woodbine this morning to do a little berry picking. Well, ideally, we would have done a lot of berry picking. The blueberry, raspberry, and sour cherries were all picking "good", according to the farm's website. The weather here for nearly two weeks has been a daily dose of grey punctuated by a little rain and a little thunder. This morning was no different, but we decided to head out anyway. Midweek mornings are certainly the best time to pick at a large pick-your-own place like Larriland.... last Summer we met a friend a few times around noon on a Saturday for picking. Wowza. The only thing you get is a little perspective of the life of an immigrant farm worker. My goal this year is to stick to mornings and whenever I can, midweek.

blueberries look great

The blueberry bushes looked absolutely fabulous, spikes of grey-blue berries filled each bush. Unfortunately, it was deceiving. Many, if not most, of the berries were still a bit underripe. I'd guess in two or three days - like Saturday ! - they'll be fabulous and easy picking. There were lots of ripe berries but separating them from underripe ones by eye or feel is something I find difficult. Luckily, we don't mind a little tang. Still, I picked only 7lbs of blueberries, where I would have gone 15-20lbs if the picking were "excellent". Frustrated, we moved on after time to the black raspberries.

They were, on the other hand, picking "excellent". Black berries hung in huge bunches from every vine in row after row of berries. This leads to an almost impulsive picking frenzy, I think.... you say, I've got plenty, but then, making to leave, you see another beautiful bunch and, naturally, have to take that one too. So, we ended up with nearly 3.5lbs of raspberries, which have a much shorter lifespan than blueberries.

Black raspberries were plentiful and easy to pick

We like picking at Larriland. They have a mob of very courteous high school students working at each station and it's clear that it's a family business. They use Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which for the fruit means, there is definitely spraying going on, but hopefully through the expensive consultants they use, the chemical usage is minimized. We'll head back in the next few weeks to get more blueberries and stock up on tart cherries, then we'll go back again at the end of July or early August for peaches. Now that I've kept track of how much we stored and what we consumed (everything), I have a pretty good sense of what we should buy.

Folks picking at Larriland Farms

Larriland Farms

Given the pile of berries I had, I decided to try making some freezer jam this afternoon. Ok, in all honesty, I saw these cool looking freezer jam containers at the store and now I needed to use them. Besides, I was curious how we would like the taste of fresh jam, when we are so used to the cooked fruit jams. Hands down, the freezer jam wins on time. From start to finish, it took me 15 minutes (!!) to make and jar two half-pints of blueberry jam. Another 15 minutes for the black raspberry. And included in that time was running the fruit through the food mill to remove the seeds and skins. So, I actually made black raspberry jelly.  I never make jelly; way too much work. 

In this case, all you do is crush your fruit. I ran through mine a food mill... the blueberry with a large opening to remove the skins and the raspberries with a fine opening to remove seeds. A few minutes later I had the requisite 1-2/3 cups crushed fruit. In a bowl, mix 2/3 cups sugar with 2 Tbsp of instant pectin. Add the fruit and mix by hand for three minutes. Pour into containers. Let set. Ta-da! Jam. It took about 30 minutes for a light set of the jam, and a few hours later, they have a nice thick consistency, better than I tend to get with canning.  You can probably do 4-6 jars at once, but I wanted to check this all out first, so I just did a few. Absolutely fabulous.

blueberries in the food mill

The food mill separates the pulp from the skins

Add the pulp to the sugar and pectin, mix, and you are done !

This post is part of Simple Lives Thursday !

A Trip to the Olney Farmers Market and the Season's First Canning

Music at the Olney Farmers Market

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine invited me to accompany her to the Olney Farmers Market. This Sunday morning market boasts live music and cooking demonstrations, with a location not too far outside of Washington, D.C.  I am hoping to visit a variety of markets in the area this Summer to see what is out there. The Olney market is larger than the Westminster market I'm used to, for sure. In addition to produce, there are vendors for a variety of ethnic foods, olive oil, bread, super-fancy baklava, and a handful of other handmade items. It has a nice vibe to it. The location is larger than Westminster, and on a nice green area. The music was good, and the Indian curry I had was outstanding. My friend's mother watched a bit of the cooking demonstration, and was impressed by the chef. All of those extras really provide a lot of life to the market and entice people to stay a bit longer. I even ran into friends I hadn't seen in a long time, who encouraged me to buy some of the bread. Zeke's Coffee vends there, as well, which was a yummy surprise.

I was less impressed by the produce vendors.There were only two local organic farms at the market that day and two or three large farms from Virginia, which were conventional. I was surprised to find this and disappointed, given the proximity to D.C. Doing more web investigating, it looks like the Olney market does indeed have a larger set of local farms, including Kayam, a Jewish organic farm near Finksburg. I think it was just too early in the season, and so they were not there. I'll have to check the market again at the height of the season and see what it is like.

The cooking demo at the Olney market - you can see the market in background

I did buy spinach from the organic Sligo Creek Farm and I really wanted to buy garlic from another small vendor, AvianMead Produce, but they were sold out. Both farms are in Brookeville, Md. Sligo Creek looks like a great place to try and visit -- 12 acres is farmed on the 140-acre property. I was very impressed with their salad greens. According to their information sheet, they also sell at the Crossroads Farmers Market in Takoma Park on Wednesdays (3-7pm) and Silver Spring Market on Saturday mornings.

There was also nice cheese from Palmyra Farm near Hagerstown. Like Bowling Green Farm nearby in Howard County, Palmyra Farm is a dairy farm that had decided to reinvent itself as a cheese company in order to sustain its business. Most cheese from Maryland is made in Pennsylvania, but Palmyra has hooked up with a cheesemaker in Hagerstown to produce their cheeses.  Palmyra is also selling at several local restaurants and markets, including the Common Market in Frederick.

Prepping the strawberry haul for freezing - sugar helps preserve taste and texture

On the way home from that outing, we decided to stop by TLV Tree Farm, in Glenelg, Md. on the chance that they still had some strawberries to be picked. I had picked there on Memorial Day weekend this year and found the picking slim, so our hopes weren't too high. Lucky for us, the picking was great and the strawberries sweet and juicy. TLV uses Integrated Pest Management (IPM) on their farm. We ended up picking probably six quarts or so, enough to make a strawberry tiramisu-like dessert - our standy favourite - and freeze some. This week, I converted about six cups of the frozen strawberry slices and some fresh rhubarb into jam. In a total of 45 minutes, I had 8 jars of strawberry-rhubarb jam. Every two weeks, in about 30 minutes, I make two quarts of whole milk plain yogurt for the family. Throughout the year, we mix in various jams and jellies, either made or acquired, to create our fruit flavored yogurts. This is actually the first year making strawberry jam for us, but it turned out most excellent.

This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday and Simple Lives Thursday blogrolls. Please check them out and their host sites for what's going on across the country and internationally in the Real Food world.

It's Raining Peaches

Can you ever have too many fresh local peaches? It turns out, maybe you can. Last weekend my son and I headed out to the local pick-your-own farm to stock up on peaches. They had a few varieties of white and yellow peaches in season, and they listed the picking as being excellent.  The perfect time to grab a bunch to preserve for the winter season. This is our first summer picking and preserving fruit on any scale. Last year we made a wide range of pickles, and our cans of pickles lasted us exactly through the year. We are on the last one now. And, in years past, I have made various jams or jellies on a small scale.

But this year, as I've tried to stretch myself further in living locally, I decided to pursue fruit. In late June, we picked and froze forty pounds each of sour cherries and blueberries. The picking was abundant, but still  very time consuming. I think we spent two sessions in excess of three hours picking all those berries. And then, thank goodness for young children, my son spent several hours pitting each and every cherry. But, overall the cherries and blueberries weren't too much of a challenge. We canned a few batches, and froze most of them. It was clearly time to try peaches.

So, the thing about picking abundant peaches is that they are abundant. And quick to pick. So your bag fills fast. We picked on the order of 70-80 lbs of fruit in one and a half hours. That's good in saving your time, but it means you have a lot of fruit to deal with quickly. Still, this is what we were looking for. Peach hoarding. Our other challenge was getting the right fruit. At Larriland farms, they have staff at each field eager to help you identify the right things to pick. We stared at examples of good fruit and bad fruit. But in the heat of the sun, bent under the dense branches of the tree, those images seem to vanish. I kept asking myself, is this yellow (good) or pale yellow (bad) ? It's not got green undertones, has it?  I was lulled into a false sense of security by deep red tones covering many of the peaches. So, in the end, maybe three-quarters of our pickings were mature peaches, and the rest were not. And though the immature peaches will  soften (read: bruise) off the vine, but not sweeten, this didn't bother me too much. I figured, they have more natural pectin and are great for preserves in that fashion. and you can always add sugar.

In any case, we arrived a few hours later back at the house with maybe two bushels of peaches. We promptly moved on to other activities. The next day I decided I better get cracking and start saving the peaches for the season. I figured I would mostly freeze them, but also do some canned preserves for quick desserts and breakfast foods. Then I looked at the peaches. I'd left them in their bags and neglected to think through the consequences of that (in-)action. By the end of two days, they were already showing signs of distress with squishy parts on many and a few being reshaped into cubes. Ack! My hard work and money vanishing, we decided to spread them out onto a surface until I could start working on them after work. They took up our large dining table and the kitchen island entirely. That's a lot of peaches.

Before dawn that morning, I had also begun blanching, peeling, and pitting the peaches for the freezer. This really wasn't that bad. I could blanch about eight at a time in my large stock pot, and without too much difficulty then, peel them, roll them in ascorbic acid to keep them from browning, and drop them in a bowl. Still, eight peaches took probably ten minutes to process from peach to bowl. I began working again in the evening, and after what seemed like hours, I looked up and saw peaches still covering the table. And I thought to myself: you've really gotten yourself in over your head this time. I kept at it: boil, chill, slice, peel, crack open, remove pit, roll in fruit saving goo, toss in bowl, repeat. Fill bowl, grab freezer bag, fill bag with single layer, remove as much air as possible, toss in freezer. repeat. And I thought again: You've really gotten yourself in over your head this time.

A few of the frozen peaches - Yellow, white, and whole

At some point, I came to realize, there simply was no way I was going to peel and freeze all of these peaches fresh. Something had to give. I ended up trying a bunch of things. First, with the white peaches being so mild in flavour, I had already decided they would best be used for fruit sorbet. I don't think they'd cook out that well in a pie or anything. (tell me if I'm wrong). So, with several pounds of them, I blanched them for a minute, chilled, and tossed them unpeeled, whole, into freezer bags. We'll see how that goes. I expect the pit to start imparting an almond flavour soon, but I'll also use them soon.

Next, I moved to compote. Halve and pit the peaches, add a bit of lemon juice, cranberry juice, and cook  until soft. Most of the skins just fell off themselves then into the sauce. I could separate them, cover the cooked peach halves with the red sauce, and freeze the beautiful looking peaches for fancy desserts. That was actually quite easy. But I only had so much cranberry juice around. I looked at the table: peaches. I looked at the clock: coming to ten pm.

Peach compote in cranberry juice

Plan C. Peach mash.

Plan C. Slice the peaches, don't peel, don't pit, don't really halve them even. Shove them into a giant stock pot, add a little lemon juice, and go upstairs. Come down later, remove the fallen skins and pits. Smash the peaches. I now had a chunky mass of yellow and white peaches. A large mass. While the freezer is huge, I decided I really should can these. So I shoved them in the fridge and finished the canning last night. The mash yielded six pints of peaches for snacks and desserts.

But, naturally, that's not all ! I had grilled twelve yellow peaches with the plan of making peach salsa and  either freezing or canning it. So last night I scrambled to finish that up, combining the peaches with tomatoes and hot peppers. Freezing had worked well a few weeks ago, but I decided with this much acidity to try canning. The canning part worked fine; they are all sealed and cooked a long time. Whether canning them as a fresh salsa was the right thing to do, I'm not sure. We're going to have to wait and try it.

Grilled peaches for salsa

But now I am done. We have plenty of peaches to last us through the winter. They are local. We picked them ourselves. All cool things in my book. Next year, I'll try and do it in stages.

Canned Peach Mash and Peach Salsa

If you are interested in getting organic peaches in Maryland, I think that is tough. I've done a little research and been unable to find anyone who grows peaches, or most any other fruit, chemical-free in or around the state. I think the humidity here causes serious problems with disease. Of course, you could grow your own and that would be much more manageable. But i don't have the right land for that. And personally, I prefer buying local than getting organic fruit that was carted half way across the world. I am as concerned, personally, about the carbon footprint of the transportation and the local economy as I am about chemicals. So, I do what I can. In small batches, I buy from farmer's who only spray trees before they fruit. But to preserve for the season you need scale, and that means pick-your-own to me. There are lots of places to do that. I've chosen Larriland Farms in Howard County because they use Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a service that uses chemical control only as dictated by an expert who inspects the fields every 7-10 days for oncoming issues. You can find them at www.pickyourown.com.