Canning Frenzy

Canned beats and dilly beans.

Equipped with a borrowed pressure canner, a canning book from the 70's, the Internet, and and a garden overflowing with fresh, organic produce, the crew at Better Farm took off on a canning project that will provide the people here (and some of our very favorite neighbors and CSA members) with delicious, canned meals for months to come.

Here are a few of the recipes we used. Send us yours at info@betterfarm.org!

Elderberry Jam 
From Recipe Wise-UK Edition
Elderberry Jam is a lovely tasting jam with a beautiful color—but always be sure to use ripe berries to prevent the jam from becoming too tart. We picked wild elderberries along the roadside and spent a week utilizing them in Belgian waffles, scones, and pies. Toward the end of the week when they were perfectly ripened, we froze what we had left after siphoning off some for this jam recipe. To ensure a good set you can use a jam sugar with added pectin, but the lemon juice should help set the jam
Ingredients:

• Ratio of 1:1 elderberries and sugar
• 1/2 lemon for every 2 cups of elderberries (juice and zest)
• 1 tsp. butter (or vegan equivalent) for every 2 cups of elderberries

Instructions

Rinse each elderberry cluster under running water, then drain thoroughly. Work on one small cluster at a time, gently pulling your fingers through and across the clusters to dislodge the berries from the tough stems – only use berries that are completely blue or blue-black, do not use any green berries, or any partially green berries, as they are not ripe and they will spoil the jam. Once you have de-stalked the berries rinse under running water once again. Simmer the elderberries in a dry preserving-pan, slightly bruising them, and stirring them about, with a wooden spoon. When the juice runs put in one-third of the sugar, and let the mixture simmer slowly up to the boiling-point. Break the berries up with the wooden spoon or a masher. When the berries are thoroughly soft and pulpy, take them off the heat and press the sugary pulp through a fine-meshed sieve – no seeds must go through – catching all the juice and pulp in a bowl below. Disclaimer: We let some of the seeds survive for an authentic jam experience! Put the pulp and juice, remaining sugar, lemon juice, butter, and the grated lemon-rind, back into the cleaned preserving pan. Let this simmer for half an hour, stirring and skimming frequently. After 30 minutes, boil for 10 minutes to the setting point. Remove the pan from the heat and skim off any scum and impurities from the surface using a slotted spoon. Leave to cool for 5 minutes. Pour the Elderberry Jam into warmed sterilized jars and seal. Leave the jars to cool completely, then label and store in a cool, dark place.


Pickled Beets
From MyRecipes.com
Ingredients

• 1 pound small beets (about 7 beets) 
• 1/2 c. white vinegar
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. black peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves

Instructions
Rinse out your canner, put the rack in the bottom, and fill it  with hot tap water. Put it on the stove over low heat just to get it heating up for later on. Meanwhile, leave root and 1-inch stem on beets; scrub with a brush. Place in a medium saucepan; cover with water. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes or until tender. Drain and rinse with cold water; drain. Cool slightly. Trim off beet roots; rub off skins. Thinly slice beets; place in a large bowl. Combine vinegar and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil; cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in salt, peppercorns, and bay leaves. Pour vinegar mixture over beets; then pour into glass Mason jars. Allow for 1/2 inch of headspace in the top of the jar. Put the lids on each jar and seal them by putting a ring on and screwing it down snugly (but not with all your might, just "snug").Put the jars in the canner and the lid on the canner. Using the jar tongs, put the jars on the rack in the canner.  Make sure the tops of the jars are covered by at least 1 inch of water. Process for thirty minutes. You can use either a plain water bath canner OR a pressure canner, since the vinegar adds so much acidity (if you can vegetables other than tomatoes without adding vinegar, you must use a pressure canner).

Dilly Beans
From Simply Canning

Note: As with the pickled beets, using vinegar in the recipe negates the need to use a pressure canner. If you are making these recipes without the vinegar, the food is too acidic to not use a pressure canner. Always keep this in mind in order to ensure food safety!
Ingredients

• Green Beans - enough to make 4 pints or about 2 pounds
• 4 sprigs of fresh dill weed or 4 heads of dill.
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup canning salt
• 2 1/2 cups vinegar
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper (optional) 

Instructions
Wash beans - snap off ends and snap (break or cut) to jar length. Add sprig of dill weed (or head of dill) (or 1 tsp dill seeds) and 1 garlic clove to each jar. if you like spicy try adding 1/8 tsp cayenne to each jar. Pack each jar with beans length ways. You can also cut your beans short and pack them that way. I just think it looks nice to have them long and lengthways. An easy way to do this is to tip the jar in your hand and fill. This way the beans stack nicely. Combine -vinegar, water and salt to make the pickling solution or brine.  Bring this to a boil. The best way to do this is in a stainless steel tea pot. It makes it so easy to just pour the brine into each jar without having to use  a ladle. Turn the heat off your brine and when bubbling stops, cover beans with pickling solution, leaving 1/4 inch head space. emove air bubbles with a plastic knife or other small tool. Just push the tool gently between the dilly beans moving things around just enough to let the air bubbles rise. There is a tool you can buy specifically for this purpose, but an orange peeler is what I always turn to. It just fits perfectly and is usually hand. Wipe rims clean, you don't want any pickling solution or bean bits on the rim of the jar.  It may interfere with the sealing process.  Then... process for 10 minutes per quart.

Farm-Fresh Greens all Winter Long

With all these greens coming in, preserving will ensure a steady supply throughout the winter.

There's nothing like walking outside at Better Farm to pick beautiful, leafy greens for salads, smoothies, main dishes, and delicious sides. We're big consumers of kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, arugula, mustard greens, and spinach—and we're awfully spoiled by all the fresh, organic produce we've got from April through November. So, we're hesitant to give that up during winter months. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to ensure a steady supply of super greens throughout November, December, and beyond. Below are some simple methods for keeping a cache of greens suitable for stir fries, smoothies, soups, casseroles, and much much more.



FREEZING: Kale, Spinach, Collard Greens, and Swiss Chard
If you like using any of these super greens in soups, smoothies, casseroles, or stir fries, the good news is that they're extremely easy to blanch and store in the freezer. This is by far the best method for preserving your dark, leafy greens. Here's all you have to do:

1. Thoroughly clean the greens.
2. Chop into small pieces. Remove stems and stalks.
3. Toss into boiling water, leave for three minutes.
4. Immediately drain the greens and toss into a bowl of ice water. Leave for three minutes.
5. Drain again and pat dry or use salad spinner.
6. Put greens into freezer bags. Remove air by using a drinking straw with most of the bag sealed.

DEHYDRATING GREENS
If you're a fan of, say, sprinkling seaweed flakes over rice, you might enjoy dehydrated greens. We find they lose some flavor this way, but it can't hurt to add a nutritional boost to any dish you're preparing. All you have to do (information found at Doris and Jilly Cook): Steam your greens just until they’re wilted. Transfer them to dehydrator trays and dry at a low temperature (say, 110ºF) just until they’re crispy (approximately two hours). Cut them up and add to a spice jar. This is a particularly great technique if you have family members who are loathe to eat greens and you're looking for a way to sneak health food into their meals. The flakes can even be ground into powder to make them completely imperceptible.

A Few Lines About Lettuce
Lettuce is basically impossible to freeze, but is extremely easy to grow all winter long indoors with a fish tank and grow light. Click here for more information on aquaponics. If you've got a good stream of lettuce growing, follow these tips from Pinch My Salt to keep your harvested lettuce crispy for up to two weeks:

1. Fill a sink with cold water, separate all the leaves of lettuce, place them in the water and swirl them around. If the lettuce is a bit limp, let it soak in the water for 30 minutes and it will miraculously come back to life.
2. Drain the water, turn on the faucet, and briefly rinse each piece of lettuce as you remove it from sink and place in the basket of your salad spinner. If you use organic lettuce, just give each piece a quick once-over to check for clinging bugs and dirt. As you put the lettuce in the spinner, you can tear the leaves in half if they are large (such as full-size romaine).
3. When the spinner is full but not tightly packed, spin the lettuce until dry.
4. Spread two paper towels (still connected) on the counter and pile the dry lettuce in the middle. Wrap the paper towels around the lettuce and slide into a gallon-size zippered plastic bag. Squeeze the air out and close the bag.
5. The lettuce can now be stored in the fridge and should stay fresh for at least a couple of weeks. You can take out what you need whenever you want to make a salad or sandwich and then just reseal the bag. The plastic bags can also be reused!

Research Resource: Commercial Storage of Fruits, Vegetables, and Florist and Nursery Stocks

The USDA regularly produces its Agricultural Handbook 66 – “The Commercial Storage of Fruits, Vegetables, and Florist and Nursery Stocks” to help guide long-term storage of these products. The handbook is dense, with info on optimal storage conditions for everything from Jerusalem Artichokes to Watercress. Each crop is given a brief overview which summarizes the expected loss when stored at certain conditions and also a summary of respiration rates to help with the sizing of any refrigeration that may be needed.

Many growers are probably familiar with the green book from 1986.  But did you know that a newer version is available online? 

Unlike previous editions, this edition presents summaries of the storage requirements of fresh fruits, vegetables, cut flowers, and other horticultural crops; as well as information on quality characteristics, maturity indices, grading, packaging, pre-cooling, retail display, chilling sensitivity, ethylene production and sensitivity, respiration rates, physiological disorders, postharvest pathology, quarantine issues, and suitability as fresh-cut product.  In addition, a number of fruits and vegetables were added, as well as sections on food safety and fresh-cut produce.

The purpose of storing plant material is to lengthen the time it can be consumed or utilized.  In doing
so, it is critical to provide an environment that minimizes deterioration, maintaining safety and quality while lengthening the marketing- or shelf-life.  The intent of HB-66 is to provide guidelines for storing produce in an optimal environment in order to accomplish this.

Preserves

We're entering peak production out in the garden, which means an overabundance of certain foods. Not a problem, if you're willing to spend a little time in the kitchen canning, freezing, blending, cooking, and blanching. The time spent is well worth it, potentially saving you hundreds of dollars at the grocery store over winter months on jarred, canned, and fresh produce.

In the last week, here are the foods we've prepared for freezing and canning:

• Zucchini Bread (one loaf out on the counter, the rest in the freezer)
• Basil-Arugula Pesto
• Dilly Beans (canned)
• Cucumbers (canned)
• Zucchinis (blanched and frozen)
• Zucchini Pancakes

Wherever possible, we used 100 percent ingredients from our own gardens, including dill and garlic. Some of the recipes we used are below!

GARLIC, DILL CUCUMBER PICKLES

from COOKS.COM
5 qt. water
1 qt. vinegar
5 c. sugar
1 c. pickling salt
Sliced cucumbers
Dill heads
Garlic buds

This recipe makes a sweet pickle similar to bread and butter pickles.Boil water, vinegar, sugar and salt; add sliced lengthwise cucumbers 1 quart at a time to boiling solution until cucumbers change color.
Pack in jar. Put 2 garlic and 1 dill head per quart. Cover with boiling solution, seal jars.
Note: Revised canning methods call for processing quart jars 15 minutes in a boiling water bath. Consult your favorite canning reference for more details on proper canning techniques.

PICKLED GREEN BEANS (AKA DILLY BEANS)
adapted from So Easy to Preserve
2 pounds green beans, trimmed to fit your jars (I had to trim mine a bit more after taking the photo you see above)
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I used nearly two, but tread carefully here if you’re not a spice person)
4 teaspoons dill seed (not dill weed)
4 cloves garlic
2 1/2 cups white vinegar (5%)
2 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup pickling salt (use a bit more if you’ve only got kosher)
Prep your canning pot by inserting a rack to keep your jars off the bottom of the pot, place pint jars in (wide-mouth pints work best here. A 12 ounce jelly jar is also nice, as it’s a bit taller than a standard pint and makes for less trimming) and fill it with water. Bring to a boil to sterilize while you prepare the rest of your ingredients.
Wash and trim your beans so that they fit in your jar. If you have particularly long beans, your best bet is to cut them in half, although by doing so, you do lose the visual appeal of having all the beans standing at attending.
Combine vinegar, water and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. While it’s heating up, pack your beans into the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace (distance between the tops of the beans and the rim of the jar). To each jar, add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 clove of garlic and 1 teaspoon dill seeds.
Pour the boiling brine over the beans, making sure to leave that 1/2 inch headspace. Use a plastic knife to remove air bubbles from jar by running it around the interior of the jar. Wipe the rims and apply the lids (which have been sitting in a small saucepan of water at a mere simmer for at least ten minutes in order to soften the sealing compound) and rings.
Process for 5 minutes in a boiling water bath (remember that you don’t start timing until the pot has come to a roiling boil).
These beans want to hang out for a least two weeks before eating, to thoroughly develop their flavor.

BASIL-ARUGULA PESTO
1.5 cups of packed basil leaves, stems removed
1/2 cup packed arugula leaves, stems removed
1/2 cup of shelled walnuts
1/2 cup fresh Parmesan cheese or vegan alternative
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 garlic clove peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon salt

Brown 6 garlic cloves with their peels on in a skillet over medium-high heat until the garlic is lightly browned in places, about 10 minutes. Remove the garlic from the pan, cool, and remove the skins. Toast the nuts in a pan over medium heat until lightly brown.
Food processor method (the fast way): Combine the basil, arugula, salt, walnuts, roasted and raw garlic into a food processor. Pulse while drizzling the olive oil into the processor. Remove the mixture from the processor and put it into a bowl. Stir in the Parmesan cheese.
Mortar and pestle method: Combine the nuts, salt and garlic in a mortar. With the pestle, grind until smooth. Add the cheese and olive oil, grind again until smooth. Finely chop the arugula and add it to the mortar. Grind up with the other ingredients until smooth.

Preserving: Zucchini storage

By Salman Akhtar

Massive zucchinis are raining down from the skies at Better Farm!! Well, basically. While zucchini-related weather is a bit of an exaggeration, we have grown an impressive number of these delicious veggies this summer. As a result, we realized a need to learn a new trick – how to properly store zucchini. Here’s what we came up with:

1. One of the ways to store zucchini over a long period of time is to freeze it. To do so, one must first wash their favorite zucchini (or any zucchini, you don’t need a preference for this to work).
2. Next, cut your zucchini into ½ inch slices. For the next few steps, you will need a pot of boiling water on the stove, and a pot of ice-cold water on your counter.
3. In the pot of boiling water, blanch your zucchini slices for about 3 minutes (Note: blanching is simply the process of boiling a fruit or vegetable for a short period of time).
4. Remove your zucchini from the boiling water and place it in the ice-cold water for 5 minutes. If you’re doing more than one zucchini be sure to keep adding ice to the cold water to keep it, you know, cold.
5. Remove the zucchini from the water and place it in a freezer bag/container, make the seal as airtight at possible, and move the bag or container into your freezer
6. Celebrate your success!  

Grower's Guide: Growing and preserving leeks

It's amazing how underused the leek is, in spite of its similarity to the onion in cooking, its ease of growing, its flavor and smell and nutritional value.

We grew a huge crop of leeks over the summer, and have been enjoying their bounty well into November. I wanted to harvest what was left in the raised beds, and experiment with leaving the rest of the main garden's leek crop out under a hay cover so we can continue accessing the plants fresh into December and, possibly, even January.

Leeks from our raised beds. Photo/Nicole Caldwell

Below is some basic information on leeks, as well as preservation tips so you can enjoy these delicious plants year-round. Those of you who have never tried growing this vegetable before, don't be intimidated! We found leeks to be easier to grow that even string beans. And how many plants can you go outside to pluck even under a cover of snow?

Leeks are a biennial member of the allium family, which includes onions, garlic, shallots, and chives. There are several leek varieties, including American flag, King Richard and jolant. All leeks can be stored in a similar manner. The white shank has a mild, almost sweet, onion flavor; the green tops are stronger tasting.

Click here for great information on growing leeks in your garden; and read on for storing methods.

Leave them in the ground

Surround your leeks with straw, peat moss, grass clippings, and compost. Except for the most severe conditions, your leeks will survive all winter. If you're going to pick them in the winter (and not wait until spring), be sure you pull them from the ground on days when they don't have frost on them. If you leave them all winter, the leeks will come back to life in March.

Store them in peat

Pull the leek plants, trim the leaves, wash off the roots, and put the plants in a big tub of damp peat or potting soil. You will have to add water every so often to keep everything moist.

Bury them in the sand

You can put leeks in a bucket of wet sand and they will keep for two to three months.

Blanch them

Wash the leeks to remove all visible dirt. Place the leeks onto the cutting board and slice off the roots from the ends. Slice off the top part of the leaves also. Slice the leeks into ½-inch-long chunks. Fill a pot with water and set it on the burner. Set the burner to high and bring the water to a boil. Add the sliced leeks to the boiling water and leave them in the water for three minutes. Remove the leeks with a slotted spoon and place them directly into the ice water. Leave the leeks in the ice water for five minutes, then transfer them to the other bowl. Allow the leeks to cool to room temperature. Put the leeks into freezer bags, close the bags so only one inch is still open. Squeeze the bags to remove as much air as you can, finish closing the bags, and put your leeks in the freezer for up to one year.

Got a gardening question or tip? E-mail us at

info@betterfarm.org

to have your thoughts published on our blog!

How to Blanch Tomatoes

Blanching equipment. Photo/Nicole Caldwell

'Tis the season for harvesting the last rush of produce in the garden before the onslaught of chilly (read: freezing!) weather. While the celery, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and leeks are in it for the long haul, our more sensitive produce like tomatoes have called it quits and needed to be plucked before they succumbed to the cold North Country climate. But what to do with all those romas?

One option is to make a bunch of sauce and can it—a project photographer-in-residence Erin Fulton took on about a month ago. The other choice is to blanch and freeze the tomatoes, then access them throughout the winter for sauces or soups. This is a much faster process than cooking all the sauce and canning it—so for the impatient among you, I'd say this is a much more obvious choice. Follow these easy instructions, and you're well on your way to having yummy, garden-fresh tomatoes all winter long.

What You Need:
Two large pots
Lots of roma tomatoes
A slotted spoon
A sharp knife
Freezer bags

How to Blanch:

1. Bring a pot of water to boil.

2. Fill a separate, large bowl with cold water and ice.

2. Remove stems from each tomato.

3. Make a shallow cut in the shape of an x on the bottom of each tomato with a knife.

4. Drop tomatoes in water and boil for about a minute; once the skin starts to peel back, they are done.  The point is not to cook them so watch the tomatoes closely.

5. Remove tomatoes immediately and "shock" them in the ice water.

6. You will now be able to easily remove the skin of the tomatoes—just pull the skins off by hand!

7. Compost the skins and bag the tomatoes in freezer bags, Get all the air out of the bags, label them, and put them in the freezer.