What do you do when someone gives you nearly a peck of (unpickled) hot peppers like these? If you’re like me, you freeze them. (Of course, you could also pickle them.)
I no doubt harmed their quality by letting them sit in the fridge for a week, but then I dug in. I washed them, lopped [...]
Pick a parcel of peppers and put ‘em up
September 29th, 2008 · 2 Comments · Cooking tips, Food preparation, local food
Tags:food preservation·free food·freezing·peppers
Top-popping pickling process gives right signal
August 1st, 2008 · 5 Comments · Food preparation, Tools, recipes
This post is for the edification of wannabe canners and for the amusement of those of you who have been pickling, canning and generally “putting up” for years.
No, I am not a canner. I am, however, foolish. Despite my awareness of the endless rules that accompany canning, I nevertheless subconsciously bought into the many professions [...]
Tags:canning·cucumbers·food preservation·pickles·recipes
Rule-breaking comes with pickles and jars
July 30th, 2008 · 11 Comments · Food preparation, Tools
Home canning has enough rules to fill a peck of pickled peppers, which is probably why:
Most canning seems to be done by people who learned it from their elders.
Most canners break the rules.
I arrived at those conclusions after years of interviewing home cooks, including some [...]
Tags:canning·cucumbers·food preservation
Preserving apples, part 2: frozen slices
July 29th, 2008 · No Comments · Cooking for one, Cooking tips, Environment, Food preparation, recipes
If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have undertaken this exercise in freezing apples. But this is how we learn, right? It started because I wasn’t of a mind to turn on the oven, so I decided to prep half my apples, freeze them and turn them into pie at some [...]
Tags:apples·desserts·food preservation·freezing
Preserving apples, part 1: getting saucy
July 27th, 2008 · 5 Comments · Food preparation, recipes
I finally got around to those apples, and my second adventure in food preservation for the year. (The dried mint was the first.) Seeing as I prefer to do things the hard way, I decided to turn some of the apples into applesauce and prep the rest for future pie-baking. Turns out I had a [...]
Tags:apples·food preservation·freezing
Freezing cherries is as easy as pie
July 2nd, 2008 · 2 Comments · Food preparation, local food
It’s been a bountiful year for sour cherries hereabouts, and I couldn’t help but notice that my neighbor’s cherry tree was still bursting with them despite being picked at by me, another neighbor, the owner neighbors and countless birds. So I picked some more—almost 2 pounds—after the tree owners said to pick as many as [...]