Harvest Season

Peaches

sliced, frozen: 9 quarts
pie filling, frozen: 4 pies' worth
sliced, canned: 6 quarts


Apples

apple sauce:14 pints
dehydrated: 1 quart


Blueberries, frozen:4 pints


Tomatoes

sauce, canned: 14 quarts
chopped, canned: 9 quarts
dehydrated: 1 quart
Tomato/vegetable mix: 5 quarts


Zucchini

shredded, frozen: 7 quarts (2-3 cups ea)
dehydrated:1 quart (l large)


Eggplant

roasted, pureed, frozen: 4 cups (2 large)
dehydrated: 1 quart (5 small)


Corn: 2 bags, 2 cups ea.

Green Beans, frozen: 7 1-lb bags

Kale: frozen, 2 bunches

Pesto: coarsely chopped, frozen in olive oil: lots

It's not my fault. Really. I didn't plan to become obsessed with the jars of food on my pantry shelf or the ziploc bags full in my freezer. I most certainly didn't intend to fall seriously in love with a food dehydrator.

It all started with a book. I read Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' this past spring. I stopped buying foods with high fructose corn syrup. While I have made bread episodically for many years, I found "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" and now make 90% of our bread and pizza. All summer long, we've been enjoying our CSA farm share. It just feels better to be eating local and eating fresh. And since I am already anticipating (and mourning) the end of harvest season and the loss of all this wonderful bounty, I've been putting it 'up' as they say, mixing a variety of canning, freezing, and dehydrating to do so.

I certainly don't have enough in the pantry to see my family through till next spring, but we do have a fair amount of fresh produce stored away. At the very least, it's virtually eliminated any waste from our weekly farm share.

I may have found a local source for chicken, eggs, and beef, so we could conceivably have at least half our diet from <100 miles away from home. 3 things I think I couldn't give up: coffee, chocolate, and bananas. No local sources for those, but I can at least buy fair trade.

What does this have to do with writing? Pretty much nothing. But it may explain my lack of recent blogging and my dearth of words for the month of September.