The Cellar and the Pantry Blog
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Posted by: chapka in spinach, mustard, lettuce, kale, freezing, feta, dill, collard greens, cilantro, blanching on
Jun 4, 2010
Last week I posted about lettuce soup, my favorite way to preserve lettuce that would otherwise bolt in the garden. But if a heat wave hits your beds and you don't have the time or inclination to make and freeze a big batch of soup, there is another way. Yes, lettuce can be frozen.
Posted by: chapka in livestock, eggs, chickens on
Jun 1, 2010
Backyard henhouses are popping up all over, and people are rediscovering the great taste of really fresh eggs. Using your own eggs in omelets and scrambles is simple, but as bakers quickly learn, some recipes can be fussier, especially if, like most backyard birds, yours are a mix of breeds laying a mix of large and small eggs. Here are the facts on home and commercial egg sizes you need to keep your batter at just the right consistency.
In spring and fall, lettuce is a crisp, fresh, easy to grow green that only needs regular watering to produce delicious salad. But as soon as the weather turns hot, it's a bitter mess. And in winter, it's a distant memory. It doesn't keep; it doesn't can; it doesn't dry; and it doesn't freeze. This means that a sudden hot spell, like the one currently battering the Cellar and the Pantry gardens, can turn a whole bed of lettuce into bitter herbs fit only for seed saving and composting. But there is a way to save these greens from the compost heap.
For anyone else in the Philadelphia area, the Kennett Square Farmers Market will be hosting a "fermentation festival" this October 9, featuring tastings and demonstrations of local and homemade beer, wine, cheese, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt, and more. I'd be there in a heartbeat if it wasn't on a Friday afternoon -- if you go, be sure to comment here or in the forums!
Is this a trend? Village Whiskey, Jose Garces' newest restaurant, is the second place I've been to in the last month or so that featured house-made pickles. Village Whiskey offers a choice of five different pickle plates as an appetizer: tomatoes, beets, carrots, artichokes, or onions. I got the pickled cherry tomatoes, which were delicious, as was everything else I tried. It was served the way many restaurants serve cheese samples, with two sides (whipped mascarpone and a tapenade). If you're curious, the other place was the Varga Bar, which offers a very tasty "pot o' pickles" appetizer. Could small-scale, traditional food preservation be the next culinary trend?
Posted by: chapka in canning on
Aug 6, 2009
Why not make this the year you preserve something in your garden? There are plenty of great canning or preserving books, but if you're just getting started, everything you need to know can be found at the web site of the National Center for Home Food Preservation, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Their site includes tested recipes, so you know you can process them safely, as well as basic information to help you get started.
 The first cucumbers of the season finally arrived the other day. The unusually rainy weather we've had here means most of my cukes are off to a slow start, and a couple of plants had disease problems and had to be pulled out. In once case, the cucumber seeds were literally washed out of the bed and started sprouting in a gravel path.
With what I have left, it may be tough to fill up my pickling crock this year. But since my dill is flourishing, I was still able to mix those three early cukes into a fresh preview of what I will hopefully be preserving this fall, which is also my contribution to the current edition of Grow Your Own, the cooperative web project for homegrown cooking. Read on for a picture and the recipe.
Posted by: chapka in tomatoes, nutrition, canning on
Apr 9, 2009
A nutrition blogger at examiner.com suggests that home-canned tomatoes aren't just a good way to preserve your harvest, they're actually healthier than either fresh tomatoes or store-bought. Another vote in favor of the "simple, extremely satisfying and nutritious" home canning process.
Posted by: chapka in water, slow food on
Feb 6, 2009
The 2008 Slow Food Almanac arrived in my mailbox today. There were some interesting articles, but I'll leave it to others to review the content. Suffice it to say that if you're not a member, you should sign up regardless of whether the articles are your cup of tea. What made the strongest impression on me, though, were the ads.
Posted by: chapka in root cellaring on
Jan 26, 2009
I somehow missed this back when it came out, but the New York Times has published an article on one of the most basic preservation techniques of all: the root cellar. The article, Food Storage as Grandma Knew It, describes a root cellar built in the basement of a Harlem brownstone. If you're interested in the subject, please consider contributing to the Root cellaring page of the Cellar and the Pantry Wiki.
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