That brought back memories of years when I had whole beds of basil ready to pick but didn’t know how I could use it all. Since then I’ve found a number of ways to preserve not only basil but also other greens. 

One of the tastiest ways is to make pestos from basil, spinach—even cilantro!  The basic ingredients are simple enough—greens, garlic, walnuts or pine nuts, salt, lemon juice and olive oil. I add nutritional yeast for that bit of cheesy taste. Homemade pesto should stay fresh in your fridge for up to a week. 

But—did you know???  You can freeze pesto!  There are two ways. Make up the pesto as in my recipe below, transfer the mixture to a freezer container, cover with a nice layer of olive oil, and then freeze. 

Or—for an even fresher variation of freezer pesto—process just the basil and olive oil in your food processor. Transfer to a freezer container, cover with a good layer of olive oil and freeze. When you’re ready to serve the pesto, remove from the freezer, thaw, transfer to your food processor and then add the garlic, nuts, salt and lemon juice. I read an article by a person who used this method and came upon a container in her freezer that she had made up 7 years earlier!  She decided to try it—and was amazed to find that it still tasted fresh and very delicious after she added the other ingredients to the thawed greens/olive oil mixture and whizzed it all up in her food processor! 

Another way to preserve greens is to dehydrate them, just as you would dehydrate herbs. Done this way, you can make up green smoothies and other super healthy green drinks easily in the wintertime using your dried greens. 

Probably one of the most delicious ways to preserve greens by dehydrating is to make kale chips!  They’re expensive to buy but not when you make them at home from your own garden greens!  Here’s the recipe below along with my recipe for pesto:

Kale Chips

Ingredients:

• Fresh kale leaves
• Olive oil
• Coarse sea salt 
• Nutritional yeast flakes (optional—but tasty!)

Method:

Wash kale leaves. Remove stems and ribs, and tear large leaves in several pieces. Place on cookie sheet covered with parchment paper or in dehydrator. Spray kale leaves lightly with olive oil and sprinkle sparingly with coarse sea salt and nutritional yeast (if desired). Dehydrate at 115 degrees for several hours until crispy/crunchy or dry in solar dehydrator. Store in an air tight container. 

Basil Pesto

Ingredients:

• 4 C. basil leaves
• 1/4 C. walnuts or pine nuts
• 2-4 cloves garlic, depending on size
• 1 t. sea salt
• 2 T. lemon juice
• 2 T. extra virgin olive oil
• 1/3 C. nutritional yeast (optional)

Method:

Place all ingredients in food processor or blender and process until smooth. To store for up to 1 week in refrigerator, immediately put in a small glass jar and pour 1/8” olive oil on top to prevent discoloration. Keep refrigerated. Or to freeze the pesto, follow my directions in the post above. 

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I hope you’ll consider making your own homemade sauerkraut with organic cabbage fresh from your garden or farmer’s market!  It’s easy, cheap, and actually fun to make!  Did I mention they're really delicious too?!  

My favorite variety of cabbage for sauerkraut is called “Glory of Enkhuizen”. I get the seeds from Baker Creek Seeds, my favorite seed company. 

Harvest the cabbage mid-morning for the best flavor and make the sauerkraut as soon as possible after harvesting. Be sure to have on hand wide-mouth pint or quart-size jars, Saran Wrap, coarse sea salt, and regular-size canning lids. You’ll use the regular-size lids to gently weigh down the square of plastic wrap used to loosely cover each wide-mouth jar during the fermentation process as described below.

 Here’s the method I use:

Homemade Sauerkraut - Method:

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The equipment needed can make canning more expensive than dehydrating, but some foods just taste better when preserved this way. Our family likes canned homemade applesauce, salsa, spaghetti sauce, and just plain tomatoes! Not many things can compare with our canned wild huckleberry jam on toasted whole wheat bread!  

So why not diversify—and along with eating fresh from your garden and orchard, storing produce in your root cellar, and dehydrating fruits & veggies—learn to can your produce too!  

You’ll need glass jars (half pints, pints, and quarts are what I use). You’ll also need lids and rings, a jar funnel, jar lifter, a tall water bath canner and a pressure canner. There are two basic canning methods:  the “Boiling Water Bath Method” and the “Pressure Canning Method”. An excellent and inexpensive resource book that teaches both methods, step by step, is the Ball Blue Book. I couldn’t can my fresh produce without using this book!  The first few pages are like a short but very thorough safety course for canning. It’s a must!!

If you plan to can homemade applesauce, salsas, spaghetti sauce or seedless raspberry jam, a real timesaver that makes short work of these time consuming processes is a Victorio Strainer. I’ve seen a similar tool called a Roma Strainer in Lehman’s catalog and also I’ve seen one that looks very similar called a Norpro Sauce Master. 

You can run your fresh pears, cooked apples, and raw tomatoes through this non-electric strainer without having to peel or core them and voila! the strainer sends out a smooth sauce into a bowl below and discards the cores and peelings etc. through a separate opening. 

I like to preserve my red raspberries as seedless jam and this strainer works fabulously to remove most of the seeds! 

So, once I’m ready to can my fresh produce, I use the rationale in the Ball Blue Book to determine whether I need to use the “Boiling Water Bath” canning method or the “Pressure Canning” method.  Fruits and tomatoes can be processed using the “Boiling Water Bath” method. Vegetables need to be processed by the “Pressure Canning” method. But check the Ball Blue Book to make sure, as there are a few exceptions. For instance, by pickling certain vegetables you can water bath them because you’ve changed the acidity factor. But—for safe canning, always check the Ball Blue Book and follow the instructions given there. 

The pressure canner that I’ve used for years and highly recommend is the All American Pressure Canner*. It has a metal-to-metal seal so does not require lid gaskets.

Once canned, it’s important to store your jars correctly. This has a lot to do with shelf life. Store your canned foods at a temperature of less than 70 degrees and away from direct sunlight if possible. The canning process itself decreases the nutrition in your foods, so the closer you get to storing your jars at 40 degrees, the longer your canned produce will retain its nutritional value. 

If you need or would like a visual demonstration of canning (not to take the place of the instructions in the Ball Blue Book*) check out our “Preserving the Harvest” DVD or video download where I show the actual process for both methods. 

*May be an affiliate link which helps support the mission of this blog without costing you a single extra penny.

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If you’re still on the electric power grid, Excalibur is a well-known brand of electric dehydrator, but there are many others that work very well and are probably less expensive. If you’re off the grid, you may want a solar dehydrator. You can actually build your own if you want to. Just check online for free info and plans for solar dehydrators. 

Info on the actual process of dehydrating is also available online and in books, and I recommend a small inexpensive booklet from Storey Publishing called “Food Drying Techniques” (Country Wisdom Bulletin A-197). This booklet is also available on Amazon and from Barnes & Noble. 

Once your produce is properly dehydrated, I recommend storing it in glass jars if possible, or food-grade plastic 5-gallon buckets. 

If you’d like some very simple instructions on how to dehydrate a number of my favorite fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

I’ve included that in my cookbook “The Contemporary Artisan’s Collection of Recipes & Methods”.  Here are a couple of samples:

Dried Italian Plums

Wash and slice plums in half (slice along the seam that’s on one side of the plum and back up the other side). 

Discard pits. Place halves on the dehydrator tray. Dehydrate at 135 degrees or in a solar dehydrator until plums show no moisture when touched, but are still pliable. 

To make sure plums are dry enough, put them into a plastic Ziploc bag or glass jar with lid right away while still warm, and if condensation forms on the inside, you need to dry them out a bit more. Pack in air tight containers until ready to use. 

Sun-dried Tomatoes in Oil

Ingredients:

*4 pounds ripe, small, plum tomatoes

*8 oz. coarse sea salt

*Olive oil

Method:

Cut tomatoes in half and place on a tray to dry in the sun.  Sprinkle with salt and cover with cheesecloth to protect from insects. During the daytime, turn tomatoes twice daily. Bring in at night to protect from moisture. Remove any excess salt that hasn’t dissolved and put dried tomatoes into small jars. Cover with 1/2” olive oil so that the oil is within 3/8” of the top of the jar. Close jars tightly. Store in refrigerator. Makes about 2 cups.

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But I don’t have a root cellar.  I have a “cool room”. 

There are a number of reasons why. Our cabin is not built on the side of a slope. We don’t have a basement either. I wanted to have an area inside my home where I could keep potatoes, onions, garlic, apples, winter squash, wheat berries, and a few other things fresh for as long as possible, but that I could also access easily and frequently. 

And that’s what I got!  We had an unused bedroom in our cabin that had not been finished off. So we super-insulated the walls and the ceiling too. The room had two windows—one on each of the outside walls.  The windows can be used to regulate the temperature in the room.  It’s important to keep a good thermometer very visible in the room so we know where we’re at temperature-wise;  and then we can open or close the windows as needed. We bought heavy duty shelving units and lined most of the walls with these units. On the shelves I store canned goods, dehydrated foods, boxed foods (in plastic bins), and whatever else I need to store. In the middle of the room we can make additional storage as needed by adding a couple of rows of stackable plastic bins for potatoes, onions, winter squash, etc. 

This storage method has been a dream for me!  It’s so accessible, I have plenty of storage space, and it just works for me! No, the temperature is not generally in the 30’s or 40’s and it’s not humid inside the room—but it has done an amazing job of keeping the types of foods that I grow or purchase fresh for long periods of time. 

Just something to consider. 

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These vegetables should be coming along nicely in your garden and hopefully you’re harvesting a lot of them right now. I love to make refrigerator pickles particularly from these three types of vegetables. They should last for a number of weeks in your refrigerator—but they taste so fresh and crunchy and delicious that most likely they’ll be gone before you know it!

With cucumbers, I prefer to grow types that are specifically for pickling such as Boston Pickling Cucumbers. Once my plants start producing, I like to pick them when they’re fairly small (3-5” long). 

Here’s my favorite recipe for pickling cucumbers:

Refrigerated Dills

Ingredients:

• 3-5 pickling cucumbers, sliced into elongated spears (or enough to fill a pint jar)
• 1-2 sprigs fresh dill (flowering heads) per pint 
• Fresh garlic, onions, tomatoes, jalapeño or other peppers, sliced (optional)
• 2 t. coarse sea salt per pint
• 1/2-2/3 C. lemon or lime juice per pint

Method:

Place cucumber spears in pint jars; add dill, veggies and salt. Add lemon or lime juice (fresh is best!) till jar is 2/3 full, then top with water to 1/8” from jar top. Put lid in place; refrigerate. Ready in 3 days!

I love pickled onions also—and I think pickled red onions are absolutely beautiful.  But Vidalias and Walla Walla sweets taste great too!  If I have any beets available I like to cook several beets until just slightly soft and easy to slice.  Slice thinly and add the beets in with the onions. So delicious! So here’s my recipe:

Pickled Onions with a Twist!

Cut one large onion in half vertically, then slice each half horizontally into 1/4” thick slices. Transfer the onion slices to a pint jar. They should almost fill the jar. 

In a small saucepan, pour 1/2-2/3 C. fresh squeezed lemon juice, 1/2-2/3 C. water, 3 T. unrefined sugar and 1 3/4 t. sea salt.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 30-60 seconds. Remove from heat and pour into jar containing onion slices. Cover jar and refrigerate! Ready in about 15 minutes.

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Even if you haven’t made your move to the country yet, perhaps you’ve been growing produce in pots or window boxes. At the very least, you probably have a local farmers’ market nearby!  

Hopefully you have so much produce available that you can eat fresh and still have plenty to preserve for future meals!  

The question is—what methods should be used to preserve all of the various types of produce?  I want to take a look first at what I would consider the most basic method of food preservation.

To preserve fruits and vegetables as long as possible in their natural, unprocessed state, you must have some type of storage set up, such as a root cellar. Actually, the term “root cellar” could include anything from a hillside cave to garden trenches. It’s simply an underground storage space that uses the earth’s temperature to keep your produce cool for long periods of time. Basement rooms can also be used as root cellars if you set them up properly. 

In a broad sense, fresh produce cold storage can be done in garages, on porches, in buried containers, or in outdoor piles—sometimes known as “clamps”. 

There are three basic conditions that a good root cellar must provide:

• Correct Temperature (32-40 degrees is optimum)
• Humidity (most root crops and leafy vegetables require 90-95%). 
• Ventilation (you need properly placed air inlets and outlets). 

Resources

The best book that I know on this topic is “Root Cellaring—Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables”* by Mike and Nancy Bubel. 

Story Publishing also carries two very inexpensive booklets. The first, “How to Build Your Own Underground Root Cellar”*, Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin, describes an 8x12 root cellar that can be built by one person. It includes info on tools and materials needed, and divides the construction process into 14 steps, so you can buy the materials as you go along if you want to. This root cellar can also double as a storm shelter for your family. 

The second booklet is called “Cold Storage for Fruits and Vegetables”*, Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin. If building a concrete block root cellar isn’t possible right away, this booklet tells how to make a root cellar in your basement, plus how to store fruits and veggies in pits, trenches and barrels. It also gives detailed charts of storage life expectancies and recommended storage conditions for a variety of produce.

Not all fruits and vegetables store well in a root cellar. I plan to cover other methods of preservation in future posts.

*Affiliate link, which doesn't cost you a penny but helps support this blog. Thanks!

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Now—would you like to know a secret to getting rid of most of those weeds?

Six or seven years ago I’d had enough! So I went to our local garden supply store and bought several rolls of black plastic. I bought the thickest plastic that I could afford. My garden rows are about 50’ long and most of the rows are about 4’ wide. So I tried to find rolls in sizes that would accommodate my needs.

Early in the spring, before all the weeds had gone crazy and before I transplanted my seedlings into the garden—I unrolled and placed the black plastic on top of the soil on each row where I planned to transplant varieties of vegetables that needed to be spaced at least a foot or more apart.

I anchored the plastic on both sides and on each end of the row with medium-sized rocks to weight the plastic down and keep it in place. Next I took scissors and cut round holes approximately 8-10” in diameter wherever I needed to plant my seedlings. Some plants such as tomatoes, peppers, squash, cabbage, cucumbers and melons need to be placed several feet apart, but others like broccoli can be placed a little closer together.

Once the circles had been cut, I was ready to take my trowel and loosen the soil and dig holes inside each of the 8-10” circular openings, adding fertilizer such as soft rock phosphate into the soil as I prepared the holes.

Now I was ready to put my little baby seedlings directly into their new homes! This was also the time to place a vegetable marker beside each seedling so I’d know exactly what was planted where! After planting I watered each seedling well.

When I started this process, I don’t think I could have anticipated the amazing results of planting this new way! Not only did the black plastic prevent weeds from growing between the seedlings, but it also warmed up the soil in my rows, which caused my seedlings to really thrive even when the spring nights were still very cool. In addition, each time that I water my plants during the summer months, that water is directed right into the holes surrounding each plant, rather than watering all the areas between the plants.

Soon after I started using this method for many of my garden plants, I realized that I wasn’t having a weed problem in those rows any more. But I was still having a weed problem in the narrow pathways between each row! So I decided to put plastic down on the pathways also, then I covered the plastic with wood chips to make nice permanent walkways. From season to season I move around the plastic that covers my actual rows, since I rotate my crops each year. But I don’t ever have to move the plastic that’s underneath the wood chips on my walkways.

There are some rows where I don’t use the plastic, and that’s where I sow seeds such as carrots and beets and lettuces and greens directly into the soil—where the plants will be growing closely together. And I don’t use it in my strawberry beds either. It just wouldn’t work well in areas like that.

After six or seven years of using this method for a major part of my garden, the only change that I think I would make if I were to start this process all over again, would be that I might prefer to use a black barrier cloth instead of the plastic.

All in all, though, it has made my gardening hours so much more pleasant, so much easier, and my plants have really thrived! I recommend it!

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The Case For Pectin

I discussed and recommended using a natural pectin product, Pomona’s Universal Pectin, as a way to get as many jars of jam as possible from the produce you had on hand. This product also has the advantage of not relying upon a certain amount of added sugar (usually a lot!) for the jam to thicken to a spreadable consistency.

And truly, if you use Pomona’s Pectin or any other type of commercial pectin you should end up with a much larger amount of jam, since you didn’t lose perhaps half of the jam by boiling the fruit down to your desired thickness or consistency!

However, what about flavor? And what about the consistency of the jam if it’s not all eaten within a short period of time? Is anything lost by using commercial pectin rather than boiling it down?

My answer after years of using the commercial pectin is “Yes”! If I’m going for volume and want as many jars as possible on my shelves—then I still recommend Pomona’s Pectin. But if you are looking for intense flavor and a softer, more spreadable consistency—there’s nothing like making jam with no added pectin! Or, if the particular fruit you’re using doesn’t contain much of its own natural pectin and doesn’t thicken very easily by boiling it down, you could try using your green apples or crab apples to make your own homemade pectin (see my recipe for “Apple Pectin” on p. 9 in “The Contemporary Artisan’s Collection of Recipes & Methods”).

Why I Stopped Using Pectin In Jam

For the past four years or so I’ve been omitting the pectin in my jams and I love the results!

I’ve been taking my delicious strawberries or raspberries or huckleberries—adding only enough sugar as needed for taste—then boiling them for as many minutes as I need to thicken the jam by reducing the water in the fruit. In this way I obtain a soft but very spreadable consistency. I find that I generally have to remove my pot from the heat even before it’s exactly the “right” thickness, as it continues to thicken as it cools.

When making raspberry jam, if I want to remove some or most of the seeds, I run the berries through my Victorio Strainer before the boiling process.

When making my jams for extended storage rather than for fresh eating, i follow the Ball Blue Book method for water bath canning.

Strawberry Jam With A Little Fireworks

However, In honor of today—the 4th of July—I thought I’d share a recipe with you for my fresh unprocessed refrigerator jam that is so quick that you can make it in no time and share today with your family and friends on this special holiday (or whenever)!! I don’t recommend this particular jam for water bath processing. Just make it quick and eat it fresh! It can be stored in the refrigerator.

“Strawberry Jam With A Little Fireworks”!

Ingredients:
20 C. fresh strawberries
1/3 C lemon or lime juice
5 C. Turbinado or other sugar, (or to taste—it gets sweeter as it boils down)
2-4 jalapeño peppers, seeded or unseeded, or to taste (dice very finely)

Method:
Rinse berries and remove stems/leaves. Chop or crush and place berries in a large pot along with lemon or lime juice, sugar and peppers.

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Continue boiling until mixture becomes clear and thickens to a soft consistency. As you continue to boil and stir the fruit you’ll notice the thickening process taking place. To check for thickening, dip a cool metal spoon into the boiling mixture and lift the spoon out of the steam so the syrup runs off to the side. When the mixture first starts to boil, the drops will be light and syrupy. As the jam continues to boil, the drops will become heavier and will drop off the spoon two at a time. When the two drops form together and “sheet” off the spoon, the jellying point has been reached.

Once the mixture is your desired thickness but still soft and slightly runny, remove from heat. Pour into hot half-pint jars. The amount of jars will vary depending on a number of factors, but I think you should end up with about 10-12 half-pint jars. Top the jars with lids, put a label on the side of each jar or write “Strawberry Jam with a Little FIREWORKS!” on top of the lid with a magic marker—and take to your holiday get-together to share with family and friends!!

I recommend this recipe as a refrigerator jam to eat fresh, not for canning.

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Now I’m thinking about what to do with all my bounty of fresh cherries coming up!  My favorite way to preserve them is to dehydrate them. Not the sweet cherries, like Bings, but the pie cherries like my Montmorencies.  It’s a simple process—really the hardest part is removing the pits. I generally divide my dehydrating over a period of several weeks, just preserving every few days the cherries that have just reached their peak and leaving the rest to continue ripening. It makes the whole process so much easier when you don’t have to do a marathon!

This simple process for “Dried Cherries” is detailed in “The Artisan’s Collection of Recipes and Methods”. Here it is for those of you who don’t already have the book:

Drying Cherries - Method:

Wash cherries, remove stems & pits. Add sugar to taste if desired, and mix until dissolved. Place on dehydrator trays. Dehydrate at 125 degrees or use a solar dehydrator. When correctly dehydrated, cherries will feel sticky and leathery. Don’t over-dry! To make sure cherries are dry enough, put some into a plastic Ziploc bag or glass jar with lid right away while warm. If condensation forms on the inside you need to dry them out a bit more. Store in air-tight containers or vacuum seal to preserve freshness.

I can’t end this post without sharing one of my very favorite fresh fruit recipes that I discovered not too long ago. Craig and I had some very special times at a restaurant located on a gorgeous lake nearby that served this most delicious fresh huckleberry pie in season. I often make it for our family and friends with our own huckleberries after the restaurant shared this recipe. 

I’ve made a few changes and actually, you can use this basic recipe for almost any fresh fruit in season that I can think of. The beautiful thing is that other than the glaze and the pie crust it’s all just fresh fruit—not cooked or baked—with the incredible flavors that only come with fruit straight from the orchard, garden or vine!  

So here’s the recipe for FRESH cherry, strawberry, huckleberry, raspberry, blackberry, or peach pie:

Berry Pie (your choice of berries)

Ingredients

• 1 9" pastry shell
• 4-6 cups washed berries (or other similar fresh fruit)
• 3/4 cup water
• 3 tbsp non GMO corn starch
• 1 cup sugar
• lemon juice
• whipped cream or ice cream

Preparation

Simmer 1 cup berries with water for 3-4 minutes. Combine corn starch and sugar, then add to cooking berries. Simmer slowly until syrup is thick and clear.

When thickened, add lemon juice (1 tsp-1 Tbsp depending on sweetness of fruit) and cool slightly. Line pastry shell with 3-5 cups fruit, pour the slightly cooled glaze over the raw berries/fruit. Mix gently with a fork to coat the fresh berries/fruit. Chill thoroughly. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Serves 6-8

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