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Michael talks about what he does to preserve the harvest so he can
serve local food at his restaurant throughout the winter and shares some
tips for freezing, canning, and making stock.
Michael's tips for freezing:
Look for an old chest freezer - people are always giving them away.
Keep the freezer outside or in your unheated garage. Older
freezers have heavy duty compressors that enable them to run well even
in freezing temperatures. Newer freezers don't have strong
compressors and should not be kept in the garage or outside.
Energy efficiency shouldn't be that much of a problem since it will be
out in the freezing cold anyway - it shouldn't really need to run that
much.
Corn: Parboil the corn on the cob for a couple of minutes
(parboiling is essential to slowing down enzymes that will deteriorate
your frozen vegetables giving them a funky texture and flavor).
Remove the corn from the boiling water (don't throw the water out!) and
let it cool. When you can handle it, cut the kernels off the cobs
(don't throw the cobs out!). Package the corn in ziplock bags.
Frozen corn usually separates easily once it is frozen providing it is
not too wet when you put it into the bag. This enables you to
package it in a large bag, but remove as much as you need for a recipe
throughout the winter. A dozen ears of corn will typically fill
two quart sized ziplock bags. Now...for the water and the spent
cobs...Put the cobs back in the pot of water and simmer it for a couple
of hours until all of the flavor has been cooked out of the cobs.
Now you also have a delicious corn broth to freeze as well. The
broth will make your corn chowder extra special!
Winter Squash: The type doesn't really matter. Ask the
farmer for the squash they are trying to get rid of (because of
overabundance) and maybe you can get it for a good price. Cut the
squash in half and place cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with
parchment paper. Roast in a 350degree oven for an hour or until
the squash is soft and scoopable. When cooled enough to handle,
scoop out the squash and package in ziplock bags in the amounts you will
use in recipes.
Michael's Tips for Canning:
Tomatoes and Tomatillos: Do tomatoes separate from tomatillos -
but both are done using the same technique. Lay the whole fruits
out on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with olive oil. If you want,
add some whole chili peppers to the pan as well. Roast in a 350
degree oven for a couple of hours. Remove from the oven and
process through a food mill (pick one up at a yard sale or you can often
find them at hardware stores at a reasonable price) into a large
stovetop pan. Cook over medium heat until the sauce is at the
consistency you want. Can and process the tomatoes according to
manufacturers directions. Michael processes tomatoes and
tomatillos in a water bath and doesn't pressure can them. He says
that there is enough acidity in the tomatoes that pressure canning is
not necessary.
Randy tells us about how he got into making bread for a living and
updates us on sources of Local Wheat in Vermont. Red Hen makes
many different types of delicious hearth-baked breads. Red Hen
bread is sold in stores and served in restaurants throughout central
Vermont.
Saturday, October 14: Mason Wade "Cloud," Professional
Landscaper (Terra Sanctus)
and Rootswork Co-Founder on The Procrastinator's Guide to Eating Local
in the Winter
Make-shift root cellar: While a full underground root cellar is
great, if you don't have one it doesn't mean that you can't store
vegetables over the winter. Find a cool, dark area in your
basement and you should be able to keep winter squashes, carrots,
onions, and potatoes for quite a while. Grow your own veggies in the
winter: Sprouts are a crisp and delicious vegetable that you can
grow at home in the middle of the winter. You can sprout seeds,
nuts, and beans. Click
here
for instructions on growing sprouts.
Getting a jump on the spring garden: Most seeds actually like
to go through a period when they freeze. Once they begin to
defrost and warm up they will be ready to burst. So, why not
sprinkle some seeds on your garden before the winter. You want it
to be fairly cold because you don't want them to actually start
sprouting until the spring. If you have any leftover seeds from
this past year, sprinkle them around your garden and see what happens in
the spring. You might be rewarded with super early lettuce!
Mary's Inside Out German
Chocolate Cake was featured on the cover of Gourmet Magazine March
2000 and is one of the top 10 ever requested cakes for Gourmet Magazine.
If you don't want to make the cake yourself, go down to the Three
Mountain Cafe in Waitsfield and you can buy/order one there as well as
sample Mary's other goodies. Mary is now also making pies that are
featured at the Schoolhouse Market in East Warren Vermont.
Mary is also an artist. See
her most recent work of art. Here is information on the website that
Mary and I talked about at the University of Michigan:
Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project This is a
totally cool website! The Michigan State University Library and the MSU
Museum have partnered to create an online collection of some of the most
influential and important American cookbooks from the late 18th to early
20th century. The goal of this project is to make these materials
available to a wider audience. Digital images of the pages of each
cookbook are available as well as full-text transcriptions and the
ability to search within the books, across the collection, in order to
find specific information.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006: A Very Scary Halloween Show Indeed
Halloween is about scary and creepy things, so it is only appropriate
that we dedicate this show to scary and creepy things about our food
system!
Salmonella Outbreak - more problems with industrial farmed
vegetables.
The Vegetable-Industrial Complex - an article by Michael Pollan,
author of The Omnivore's Dilemma
Why solve a problem when you can apply a technological band aid?? ARmark
Authentication Technologies claims
their technology can help trace food back to its original source
(this would have been beneficial with the e-coli spinach contamination
issue in September 2006) by spraying tiny digestible markers tinier than
specks of dust, but that can hold up to 16 lines of text.
Puff the
Magic Preservative SmartFresh Gas to keep your apples crisp for
months! Hey, it is "most likely harmless to humans!" Whew!
Cultured Meat -
how about a nice juicy steak that was grown in a petri dish and all of
the bad fat has been replaced with fat from petri dish grown Omega-3
Fatty acids from salmon. Sounds just yummy! Can I have some
mushrooms with that?
The Organic Myth - an article in Business Week about the state of
organics today. |
