Food Preservation - Choosing a Method - Cabbages

Our ancestors devised many methods of preserving their harvest out of necessity.  They did not have the luxury of having fresh food shipped, sometimes thousands of miles, to the grocery nearest them.  Nor did they have freezers that would hold the food cold for months at a time (except in the coldest climates where it was kept in attics or outside).

Food Preservation includes many different methods:  Canning, Freezing, Dehydrating, Cooked and Frozen as meals, Smoking, and Fermenting to name a few.  When choosing a method or methods to use for a particular fruit or vegetable coming out of your garden or bought bulk at your local farmers market you have to decide how you are going to use this product and primarily how you prefer to eat it.  There is no sense dehydrating everything if you don't like reconstituted dried foods or canning if you hate, well canned peas for example.  Sometimes the way you use that particular food will dictate how you preserve it.

Pickled Cucumber Salad

12 cups unpeeled cucumbers, thinly sliced (I like to use the small english type)

2 cups green peppers, chopped
2 cups onions, chopped
1/2 cup Kosher salt
4 cups sugar
4 cups pure apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon celery seed

Combine cucumbers, peppers, onions and salt with lots of ice cubes, let stand 2 hours and drain.

Mix Sugar, vinegar and celery seed and combine with cucumber mixture.

Refrigerate in covered jar (will keep for up to a year-stir once a month)

Eat as a cucumber salad

Fresh Salsa

Do you ferment in your kitchen?  Have you even heard of it?  Do you think it's to much work?

Previously I had only made some Sauerkraut a few times because my grandmother did.  Now I've tried several ferments and actually keep some ferments in my refrigerator all the time now.  The Fresh Salsa below is one of my favorites.  It will keep for several months in your refrigerator and it took only 30 minutes to prepare!.  Really!

Before you start the first and most important key to great fermented products that keep for weeks and even months in your refrigerator is to us CLEAN surfaces, CLEAN equipment and CLEAN containers.

Fermented Foods?

Just what is a condiment?  Historically condiments on the table were some type of pickled or fermented food..........




There are a variety of different fermented foods available to supplement our daily diet. Why should we seek to supplement our daily diet with fermented foods?

 

Simply speaking,  supplementing our diet with fermented foods can help to reduce high cholesterol levels in our blood, it strengthens and supports our digestive by adding pre and probiotics plus fermented foods enhance our immune systems---by helping our bodies to fight off and prevent diseases.

 

Some of the most familiar fermented foods are pickles, sauerkraut and yogurt.  The basic problem is that all of these products when mass produced are woefully lacking in all the the above benefits of the very foods you think will be helping.  They cannot be made the same and have the same benefits when they are mass produced with extra ingredients to rush the process and/or loaded with sugar or sugar products.  All are heated to the point that the pre and probiotics have all but disappeared.

 

What Is a Fermented Food?

Pickled Garlic

Now here's a great way to preserve your garlic for the season.  Stored properly your garlic should last awhile.  If they start to get small little green tails it means they are starting to grow and the garlic will begin to taste bitter.  Then it's time to get it preserved in a different way or used up!

Pickled Garlic

Ingredients:

12 large heads garlic

2 teaspoons dried oregano

2 teaspoons sea salt

2-4 tablespoons whey

**The quickest way to get whey is to place a cup of plain yogurt in a cheese cloth and hang in a jar. Let the whey drip from the yogurt overnight in the frig. You should have about 1/4-1/2 cup of whey and what remains is yogurt cheese which is a low fat version of cream cheese with all the goodies (probotics and enzymes).