This weekend I have a date with my kitchen. It’s time to preserve some of the summer’s bounty from the vegetable garden.
We don’t have a vegetable garden at our house. My husband and I have grown weary of trying to keep the deer from the neighboring 450-acre government forest from eating any vegetable we plant. For the last several years, we have bought a share from one of the CSA farms in our area letting them raise our vegetables for us.
The summer has been exceptionally dry, but our CSA has kept us in peppers. So this weekend, I’m planning to dice up the last of these peppers and tuck them in the freezer for winter.
I like freezing peppers. Wash them. Chop them. Package them and then pop them in the freezer. No blanching required. No pressure cooker needed.
In a month or so, I expect I’ll be back in the kitchen when a friend drops off the usual bushel of apples. Those will become apple sauce and will be stored in the freezer as well.
I grew up helping my mama preserve the bounty of my daddy’s garden. Freezing, canning and jelly making were all part of the summer’s work in the kitchen.
With the growing interest in locally grown produce as well as raising your own vegetables, more people want to put up summer’s goodness for later.
This week on Backyard Wisdom Janet Johnson, a regional Extension food safety, talks with me about making jams and jellies with sugar substitutes as well as other safety issues about home-preserved foods.
There are more rules of freezing and canning than we have time to cover on Backyard Wisdom.
The Home Food Preservation Handbook is an excellent resource from the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. There are a number of free publications also available from ACES.
The manufacturer of Ball canning jars also has excellent information on its Web site.
You can also contact your county Extension office for more information on food preservation or to purchase the Home Food Preservation Handbook.