Summer is one of my favorite seasons, because it's that time of year when you can simply walk outside and stroll through the garden with a produce bag and pick your groceries for the evening meal. Row markers become menu entries as I go shopping in the garden for the family dinner.
Most of the time, I pick only what I need for the day, washing and cooking it immediately after picking it. Sometimes, however, a particular plant or group of plants comes due for picking in larger quantities. With the herbs, for example, we'll pick them in large quantity when the plants get big and when they get ready to bolt. Then we'll dry them and crush them to fill our spice jars in the kitchen.
Other types of produce may be frozen, dried, canned, pickled or otherwise prepared and preserved for use during the winter.
It's still early in the season so many of the crops haven't ripened yet. Nevertheless, we have harvested more than 4.5 lbs of miscellaneous produce from our small garden. In a few more weeks, blueberries and blackberries will be ripening on the mountain on which we live and we'll pick pounds of them for both immediate use and freezing.
Food Preservation Tip: When freezing blueberries, spread them out on flat baking sheets with space between each berry. Place the baking sheets into the freezer until the berries are frozen solid. Then remove them from the freezer, bag them up and put them back in the freezer. When you thaw them for use, they'll retain their shape and firmness much better than if they were initially frozen in a big lump.
Garden Produce Quality Guarantee
When we shop for produce in our backyard, we know that it has not been sprayed with whatever pesticides are legal in its country of origin, we are confident that it has not been exposed to a processing plant contaminated with salmonella or E. coli. With the prevalence of reports of widespread food-borne contagion these days, that's no small benefit.
The other thing we can be sure of when we pick produce from our garden is that it's fresh and packed full of nutrition, without the incredible amounts of sodium added to canned vegetables. With family members in the home on medically necessary low-sodium diets, that's no small benefit either.
Most of the time, I pick only what I need for the day, washing and cooking it immediately after picking it. Sometimes, however, a particular plant or group of plants comes due for picking in larger quantities. With the herbs, for example, we'll pick them in large quantity when the plants get big and when they get ready to bolt. Then we'll dry them and crush them to fill our spice jars in the kitchen.
Other types of produce may be frozen, dried, canned, pickled or otherwise prepared and preserved for use during the winter.
It's still early in the season so many of the crops haven't ripened yet. Nevertheless, we have harvested more than 4.5 lbs of miscellaneous produce from our small garden. In a few more weeks, blueberries and blackberries will be ripening on the mountain on which we live and we'll pick pounds of them for both immediate use and freezing.
Food Preservation Tip: When freezing blueberries, spread them out on flat baking sheets with space between each berry. Place the baking sheets into the freezer until the berries are frozen solid. Then remove them from the freezer, bag them up and put them back in the freezer. When you thaw them for use, they'll retain their shape and firmness much better than if they were initially frozen in a big lump.
Garden Produce Quality Guarantee
When we shop for produce in our backyard, we know that it has not been sprayed with whatever pesticides are legal in its country of origin, we are confident that it has not been exposed to a processing plant contaminated with salmonella or E. coli. With the prevalence of reports of widespread food-borne contagion these days, that's no small benefit.
The other thing we can be sure of when we pick produce from our garden is that it's fresh and packed full of nutrition, without the incredible amounts of sodium added to canned vegetables. With family members in the home on medically necessary low-sodium diets, that's no small benefit either.
