Sharing Your Extended Harvest

 

from citações org/minimalismo

Recently a meme floated through social media promoting clutter-free gifts. Raise your hand if you don’t need more stuff. (I’m in the back row with my hand raised!) Great ideas included gifting an experience (tickets to a favorite event or class,) memberships (in person or digital subscriptions), and DIY goodies like a jar of affirmations, old-fashioned mixed tapes, and consumables are mentioned in this sweet essay from Closed Loop Cooking.

DIY. (Yes! We love this category!) Not everyone loves receiving food gifts, but Lin (family/friend/mentor) actively encouraged a consumable gift exchange. The kids and I would drive over the pass in our ’69 Volkswagen bus with a basket of pickles, jams, and preserves and come home with a cooler packed with frozen venison or elk, salmon, and her amazing zucchini bread. I consider these gifts from the heart.

Image from Pinterest

Before joining OSU Extension, my former occupation was a cheese monger and produce buyer for a small grocery store in SE Portland. The store carried a plethora of local and imported specialty grocery items, perfect for gift baskets. I often heard folks say they could make “that” at home.

 

Caution: hard to find treats can be tempting to make at home, but may be unsafe. Commercial processing facilities have higher temperatures and processes to preserve foods, and are tested by a process authority for safety.

However, thanks to university research, there are safe options:

Herbs and Vegetables Stored In Oil Follow these instructions to the letter.

Photo by horst from Pexels

Oil’s oxygen-free environment is perfect for growth of bacteria. For this reason, herbs and vegetables in oil must be stored correctly to prevent botulism food poisoning. (Commercial garlic-in-oil mixtures are acidified to prevent bacterial growth. These products can be stored safely at room temperature.) Safe gift ideas in this publication include:

    • Dehydrated tomatoes in oil– Acidified for safety and to soften them a bit, they can be stored in oil. Adding herbs or garlic is okay but they will need to be stored in the fridge for 4 days max, or frozen.
    • Pickled mushrooms or hot peppers, stored in oil–  Pickled mushrooms and chilies in oil must be refrigerated and used within 4 days or frozen for long-term storage unless they have been pickled with vinegar or lemon juice. Pickled mushroom recipe here. Pickled hot pepper recipe here.
    • Pesto– Freeze it.

Making Garlic- and Herb- Infused Oils at Home –  Follow instructions exactly for a safe product. In a word- Acidify! Flavored olive oil is great w bread, but what about drizzling it over a bowl of rosemary-infused beans, or homemade butternut soup?

Image from PNW 664
Pumpkin soup and pepitas. Photo courtesy of Tina Vanhove on Unsplash.

Which brings me to Winter squash. In a previous blog post, we talked about food safety issues preserving purees. Because of density issues affecting thorough and consistent heat penetration, it needs to be frozen, but listen, frozen soup is a great gift! (Imagine having a selection of delicious homemade soup in the freezer!) It can also be dehydrated and ground into a powder.

Flavored vinegars– Safe, easy, and fun to make. Vinegar isn’t just for salad dressing, consider making a drinking vinegar or shrub to add to sparkling water or a more adult beverage. Infuse with berries, fruit, herbs, spices, or roots like ginger or turmeric. Get creative!

Finally, as we (rapidly) approach the gift-giving season, please consider taking some intentional time to be kind and patient with yourself and the world around you. It’s not only good for your emotional and mental health, but it’s good for your body too. And as a nod to my friend and former mail carrier, hug your loved ones a little more. Make sure your peeps know you love them.

Until next time, friends… embrace the rain and fruits of the season. Look for more OSU Extension Family and Community Health program information on our FacebookInstagramYouTube, website, and newsletter. And please subscribe!

Keep exploring, stay curious, and be excellent to each other!
Buffy | mom. gardener. forager. volunteer turned program assistant. a real busy beaver

 

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Meet me in the pawpaw patch

It’s been said that showing up is 80% of life. Showing up during a pandemic looks different than it did “before March 2020”, my term for pre-Covid life. One method the Clackamas FCH team chose to show up is through an increased social media presence. It was a “Hey, you two should meet,” Facebook introduction from my friend and fellow Master Food Preserver, Amanda, that led to Meagan McKenney, the communications director at the Home Orchard Education Center, (HOEC).

Apple Scions for sale at the Home Orchard Education Center.

The HOEC is a demonstration orchard, offering horticulture education, volunteer opportunities (Learning and free fruit in exchange for work? Heck yeah!), and has a CSA program, nestled in 1.6 acres of the Clackamas Community College campus. They offer CSA fruit share options and host regular workshops. They also sell a huge assortment of custom grafted heirloom apple and pear trees, as well as fruit scions

Back up though…let’s quickly talk about the term CSA. It stands for Community Supported Agriculture and, quoting the HOEC website: “Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a mutually beneficial harvest sharing model, based on a relationship between Farmer and Customer. Rather than simply purchasing fruit, customers become “Supporting Subscribers” of the farm, and in trade receive a portion of the harvest. Proceeds from this program help keep the gates to our well-loved arboretum open and support our mission to provide affordable, fruit-focused education to the community.” Beautiful, isn’t it? I could talk all day about CSAs, and maybe I will in the future, but let me just add that the payment method for CSAs has changed over time. It used to be that you paid one lump sum at the beginning of the season. Times have changed. Many farms offer the option to divide the share price into payments. Some farmer’s accept monthly EBT payments. Because everyone, in all income levels, deserve farm fresh food. I call it eating with dignity.

CSA image courtesy of Home Orchard Education Center website

Anyway…stepping off my soapbox…The Home Orchard Education Center offers three different CSA options, one of which is an Orchard Sampler Box. The subscriber gets 17 boxes throughout the year, containing different varieties of fruit. It’s a great way to learn about new fruit, like the pawpaw.

“Fayetteville” pawpaw. Photo from Blogs at Tallahassee.com by Robyn Metzger, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University.

In my previous career as a produce buyer, I’d heard of pawpaw, but until now had very little knowledge of them. When ripe, the fruit is custard-like and tastes tropical. It’s an indigenous East coast native that grows well in the PNW. It has soft flesh (when ripe) and a number of large seeds. Its leaves are the main food source for the zebra swallowtail butterfly, it’s pollinated by flies (the blossoms smell funky), and the bark is used as a natural insecticide. It may not be widely available commercially because it has a short season, bruises easily, and should be picked when ripe, because it doesn’t ripen well off the tree. It transitions from rock hard to mush and the flavor isn’t great. I also learned that cooking it really doesn’t do the flavor justice. It tastes more banana-like; you might as well use bananas.

Unripe pawpaw clustered on the tree

The HOEC grows pawpaw and includes it in their CSA. Meagan asked if OSU knew why some folks suffer gastric distress after eating unripe or dehydrated pawpaw, such as in fruit leather. It proved to be a challenging question without a clear food science answer, but led me down a very interesting rabbit hole: learning about pawpaw, its place as an indigenous food (perfectly timed, I just watched the film, Gather, last week), research programs across the country, a recently arrived magazine article shared by my buddy and Master Food Preserver volunteer, Don, and a final recommendation with hope of future research from the food science community. 

Folks are making ice cream, booze, pies, and custards with pawpaw. There are all sorts of creative ways to enjoy them but fruit leather isn’t recommended. Until we know more, and I’m really hoping someone does a research project on this, Joy Wait-Cusic, associate professor and food safety specialist at Oregon State University recommends freezing the ripe pulp, and avoiding making quick cooking breads, such as waffles with it.

I want to thank y’all for sticking around . I had a bit of a gap between posts, longer than planned. The holidays are behind us, although, a friend/former retail co-worker used to say that the “holidays” start in October and end in February, so I guess we have a couple of weeks left. Be kind to yourselves. There’s a lot going on, but chin up! The planting season is just around the corner. I plan to retire with a cup of peppermint tea and my seed catalogs tonight, dreaming of and planning for the future. If you have a favorite farm, think about supporting them by subscribing to their CSA. It helps pay for the seeds and equipment to start another glorious season.

Keep up the good work. Stay curious and be excellent to each other.

Buffy Rhoades| mom. forager. gardener. volunteer turned program assistant. a real busy beaver

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Tomatoes and Autumn Sweaters

As last week’s morning fog can attest, Autumn has arrived in the Pacific Northwest. It brings to mind garden clean up, and one of my favorite songs by Yo La Tengo, Autumn Sweater.

End of season tomatoes on a misty Oregon morning.

As the weather cools and Summer crops fade, it’s tempting to let tomatoes stay on the vine, but if you’re going to be canning them you might want to reconsider. Tomatoes from dead or frost-killed vines in your garden are unsafe to can. (Yes, it’s true!) Why? The pH in tomatoes attached to dead or frost killed vines change to a less acidic level that is unsafe for safe canning directions. Despair not, they’re still great for drying, pickling, freezing, and eating fresh! 

Pickled tomatoes w edible flowers and whole spices. Photo courtesy of Kirsten Schockley via #fermentation on Instagram.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation has some great ideas on uses for green tomatoes here. (Pickled green tomatoes are going into this year’s holiday gift baskets as part of a Bloody Mary kit.)

 

Clackamas County Master Food Preservers utilize every bit of their tomatoes by dehydrating the skins left over after peeling tomatoes for canning. It’s an easy, no-waste method of Extending the Harvest. Dehydrated tomato skins, leftover pulp, and seeds become delicious tomato powder. Powder can be used in soup, sauce base, or paste, and is a perfect backpacking/camping food. Bonus, it doesn’t require jars. (Jar and lid shortage is a real thing!)

Blended tomatoes, dried herbs and garlic for dehydrated pizza sauce. Photo by Buffy Rhoades

To make: Blend cooked skins, or whole cooked tomatoes into a sauce and spread on lightly oiled leather trays. Caution! Let the sauce cool before blending in a blender! Dry at 135°F for approximately 10 hours. After about six hours, the tomato leather should be dry enough to remove from the leather trays. Flip onto mesh drying trays and finish dehydrating until brittle.

 

Blended tomato skins. Photo from Buffy Rhoades.
When completely dry, you should be able to easily snap or tear it into smaller pieces. Blend with a blender or food processor until powder. Store in an airtight container and shake to condition. To make into a thick sauce, add 1/2 cup of boiling water to 2 1/2 T of powder. It’ll thicken slowly. If you want a thinner sauce, gradually add water.
 
Hopefully you’re enjoying the warm afternoons, getting time in the kitchen and garden, stocking the pantry, and eating well. Meanwhile, look for the OSU Extension Family and Community Health program on FacebookInstagramYouTube, our website, and monthly newsletter.
Keep exploring, stay curious, and be excellent to each other!
 
Buffy | mom. gardener. volunteer turned program assistant. a real busy beaver