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Let's Talk About....
Putting It Up
Food storage for improved health, money savings and the ability to enjoy your harvest all year
As fall approaches, we turn our attention to harvesting the vegetables and fruits we've spent months nurturing. But, if we're lucky, there's way more than we can possibly eat in one sitting. What to do with the harvest, how to preserve it and keep it full of vitality and nutrients has long fascinated cooks across generations and boundaries.
"Food preservation techniques can be divided into two categories: the modern scientific methods that remove the life from food, and the natural 'poetic' methods that maintain or enhance the life in food. The poetic techniques produce... foods that have been celebrated for centuries and are considered gourmet delights today," said organic farmer Eliot Coleman in his foreword to "Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning,"
Freezing
Freezing is an obvious preservation method. In the late 1800s Clarence Birdseye discovered that quick freezing at very low temperatures made for better tasting meats and vegetables. Blanching your vegetables and fruits prior to freezing works best. Do not freeze in glass jars as the ice will expand and break the glass.
 Fermenting
Fermentation was not invented, but rather discovered. Barley is fermented into beer, fruits into wine, cabbage into Kim chi or sauerkraut, apple cider into vinegar, and much more. Fermentation preserves foods, while making it more nutritious since microorganisms responsible for fermentations can produce vitamins and probiotics as they ferment.
Pickling
Pickling is preserving foods in vinegar. Vinegar is produced from starches or sugars fermented first to alcohol and then the alcohol is oxidized by certain bacteria to acetic acid. Wines, beers and ciders are all routinely transformed into vinegars.
Canning
The most common practice for preserving food is to can (jar, or bottle). By using lemon juice or vinegar in the right containers you can have fruits and vegetables all year.
Drying
Vegetables and fruits were dried from the earliest times. Back in the day, the sun and wind would have naturally dried foods. Later cultures had more methods and materials to reflect their food supplies.A fire was used to create the heat needed to dry foods and in some cases smoking them as well. Now we have dehydrators to do this work. Dehydrators are used as well for meat and fish curing. Steaming or blanching also is recommended for vegetables to inactivate enzymes that cause vegetables to mature, or toughen during drying.
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Julie Johnson is taking the month of AUgust off from her radio show on the Valley's community radio station, KDPI 89.3 FM. KDPI will replay past shows, while she rests. Our Health Culture, can be heard on 89.3 FM or streamed live at
The Art of Fermentation by Sandro Ellix Katz provides a comprehensiv
Canning takes the reader back to the future-celebrating traditional but little-known French techniques for storing and preserving edibles in ways that maximize flavor and nutrition. 