this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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Gardening
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Thanks!
I try and eat as much fresh as possible but I do preserve as well. I freeze, dehydrate, water bath can and pressure can depending on the produce.
Beans and peas are best frozen I think - water bath canning cooks them too much. That said, it's really good to have a shelf stable option so I will likely end up canning some beans. I have water bath canned pickled beans but I simply don't eat them enough to make it a good choice.
I prefer to eat most things fresh because any of the processing really takes away from the flavor. Tomatoes are the exception to this and I also make jam from purchased fruits as I don't quite have enough to make the kind of batch size of jam I would like to. Homemade jam is amazing and I use it in my oats almost daily.
In a few weeks I will (hopefully) be drowning in produce and will preserve whatever I can't eat or give away.
This is a constant dilemma. There are plants I want to grow but they will undoubtedly produce more than we're able to eat fresh or give away. At one point I was thinking about doing some kind of insect farming with the extra but that's a whole other thing I'm not ready to tackle.... It's silly but it almost feels wasteful to grow things sometimes... If I was in a better location and didn't hate people I could almost start a produce stand... Anyway.
My grandmother used to do jellies and jams when I was very young and they were head and shoulders above anything store bought. Unfortunately there isn't a practical way to do a lot of the fruits for that where I'm at now. I've never considered using store bought fruit to make homemade jellies, do you have any recommendations for what is or isn't worth buying for that purpose?
For me it doesn't feel wasteful because I rely on minimal external inputs. It's time and effort and a little money for seeds, but I'm usually learning something and I'm at the worst case generating compost. A being of some kind will eat it!
When making jam, I still buy local fruit so it's as close to homegeown as possible. I will typically make strawberry, blueberry and raspberry. I am skipping strawberry this year as I need to buy a new hose for the propane burned I use for water bath canning (outside, of course). I've done peach in the past too. That's not locally grown, but I still buy the ones grown in my province and they are wonderful. I also make apple butter. I guess if I was going to say what makes a fruit it worth it is if I can get the fruit at the peak of ripeness. Compound berries take the least prep, but blanching peaches is still worth it because I love the flavor so much and frozen peaches don't hit the spot.