My friend passed away recently and his wife gave me some jars because they had so many. She says he was a hoarder and indeed there is a lot of stuff, including many jars of very old home canned foods that never got used. Their huge chest freezer is also stuffed with all kinds of bags of old frozen stuff. It reminded me to write this blog post I’ve had in mind for a while.
There is a common phenomenon in canning and preserving, where people preserve things they don’t actually end up eating. I have been through this issue myself. It is an ongoing process to figure out what I am and am not going to actually end up eating and how much, but I have a pretty good idea now.
Canning is actually kind of expensive. If you use gas for fuel, there is that expense. It adds up boiling big pots of water over and over. Then there are those stupid disposable metal dome lid/seals that most use. Those things are not cheap. Then there is the storage space that the goods take up for years if you don’t actually use them. Eventually you have to empty the jars and wash them, and all for what?
There is a psychology that if there is food and you don’t preserve it, it is wasted. If you can it then don’t eat it, you not only waste the food, but also the time, energy and materials involved. Giving it away may not be any better. If you aren’t going to eat it, whomever you give it to might not either! I never give away canned goods that I don’t want to eat myself, that’s not gifting, it’s foisting. The concept of waste is a little different in gardening and subsistence anyway. Stuff gets cycled back through the compost. You can give extra produce away to a food bank or to neighbors and friends if you have too much. Get chickens or pigs, they can dispose of a lot of extra food.
Here are the foods I will eat if I have them, with links to any content I’ve made on them. Some I can use a limited amount of and some I can use more than I can ever manage to produce.
Canned tomatoes and sauce: I usually put up whole canned tomatoes instead of sauce, but either way, I end up using them and wishing I had more.
Canned tomatoes wih a fresh basil leaf and a piece of roasted pepper are a staple. It is hard to make anywhere near enough of them. I can open a can and just eat them they are so delicious. Canned tomatoes and sauces from the store are just sad by comparison.
Frozen tomato salsa: I can eat a lot of salsa if it is good. I don’t can tomato salsa, because it just isn’t that good. I’d rather wait until tomato season comes back around. I may someday try to figure out how to make the one tomato salsa brand I like out of a can, Herdez.
Tomatillo salsas": I make two kinds of tomatillo salsa, one brown with dried California chilies and the other green with roasted green anaheim peppers. I can use quite a bit of both. Those I heat can even though they are better fresh. There is only so much freezer space.
Marinated artichoke hearts: these are canned. I will use a lot in a year and they are appreciated as gifts. It’s hard to make enough, let alone too many.
Canning artichoke hearts is a production. A years supply is a significant investment in time, but worth it.
Berry jams: Raspberry, blackberry, any berry, they are just good. On toast or mixed into yogurt.
Apple Saffron Jelly: Red fleshed apple jelly with saffron is amazing. My own original recipe. I can eat a lot of it. Hungry just thinking about it.
Looks amazing, tastes delicious. This is a marketable product for farmers markets and farm stands. One taste and they will come back for more. Hoping to put up a lot of it this year. A couple of crepes filled with this stuff is a perfect before bed snack.
Apple butter: Traditional apple butter keeps on the shelf without canning for years. My oldest test batches are 7 years old now and still fine, sitting on a kitchen shelf. It is delicious and makes a great gift if you are willing to part with it.
Hot sauce: I can go through a lot of my fermented hot sauce in a year. It is not super hot, so I use gobs of it.
Pepperoncini: Fermented pepperoncini is another one I can eat a lot of. If I have a lot, I eat a lot. Hard to make enough of them.
Fermented ripe “pimentos”: I don’t use these in nearly the quantity that I use other preserved foods, but I like them and make some when I have enough peppers.
Kimchi: I sometimes will grow Asian cabbage and make large batches of kimchi. I prefer to keep it in the refrigerator, so I don’t make a huge amount at one time anymore. I hesitate to put it down here since, like saurkraut, it’s more like a food I make than a think I preserve out of the garden for later. If I could store it the way I want to though, I would make a years supply every season.
Fermented dilly beans: Green beans ferment very well. Add a little dill, peppercorns and coriander. They can be kept without refrigeration or canning if managed correctly and usually stay very crisp.
Frozen roasted peppers: In a good pepper year, I will roast and freeze half cup jars of roasted ripe and green peppers, cut up and ready to use. They are good in sauces and stewed meats of various kinds, as well as fried up with meat for tacos and burritos.
I will usually roast peppers for salsa. I also put a small piece in each jar of canned tomatoes. Any extra get frozen in small jars.
Olives: I make several kinds of olives and can eat a lot in a year in salads, out of hand, on pizza and in a few recipes.
Dried chilies: I can use a ton of large dried chilies for chili powder. I also use a lot of small dried hot chilies, preferably Chile Arbol. I basically can’t grow enough of either one. I like paprika a lot too, but rarely grow enough peppers to make it. If I had the resources, I would grow a lot more peppers and dried chilies.
Dried tomatoes: I can use a fair amount of these if I’m in the habit of cooking with them.
Tomatoes are easy to dry in hot sun with the skin side down.
Jerky: I can eat a lot of jerky if I have it, usually venison. If I can get two deer this hunting season, I will likely dry about a deers worth of it.
Dried wild mushrooms: Some dry well and others taste bad when dried. My favorites are Porcini (king and queen boletes) and Black Trumpets. I can use gallons a year of those, more than I can ever manage to gather and dry.
Frozen fruits: I use these mostly for smoothies. Peaches, pineapple guava, any kind of berries, cherries. I don’t freeze apples much, just a few for smoothies, but they are not the most useful or delicious frozen fruit. Someday I hope to have a much larger freezer and more berries in the ground.
Dried prune plums: I can eat quite a few of the small french prunes that grow in this area. I slice them in half and dry them. They taste like red licorice sticks. One of my favorite dried fruits.
Dried Persimmons: Whole dried persimmons are the gummy bears of dried fruit. They can be challenging to make, requiring both warmth and air circulation, but they are worth the effort.
Dried Oregano
Dried Basil
Coriander seed
Saffron
That is what I can think of that I actually preserve and eat. I don’t end up throwing out anything except extra herbs when I dry a new batch. I don’t give anything away just to get rid of it. I also don’t usually take a surplus of any random thing, like zuchinni, and try to make something out of it just because it is there. I mean I’ll do that once or twice to see if I’m going to like it and eat it, but I try to take the hint if it ends up sitting around forever. I prefer to spend more time and energy growing and putting up the stuff I use the most of instead.
I think in some cases, it is a failure of creativity, or failure to adapt eating habits to what is available, but that only goes so far. And there is still the bottom line of whether you end up eating it or not, regardless of why that is. For instance, I just threw out a big bag of artichoke hearts that I froze last year. I did the same thing the year before. They are delicious, but I forget to use them and there are not that many places where I have figured out to use them anyway. I thought I could make tapenade or something like that, but I never did it. Both years I had to deal with this huge bag of unwieldy lumpy things, finally realizing artichoke season is at hand again. I won’t do that again. I might make tapenade and freeze that if I can’t can them all, but no more big bags of them taking up space.
Best wishes for a good harvest and canning season.
