Food Preservation & Storage

How to save all the wonderful fresh food you grow or buy local!
Of course I am all for keeping this as simple as possible.  The last thing I want to do is be in the kitchen all day - especially in the summer!  I would rather be outside enjoying life!  So when it comes to cooking meals and storing and preserving food, it  needs to be as easy as I can make it!
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  • Drying
  • Canning
  • Freezing
  • Other Ideas
  • Use the Scraps!
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There are many ways to dry your food. We personally do not use a food dehydrator (no need to waste that electricity) but instead prefer to either air dry by hanging, outside in the shade, or out in the sun! 

Some of the ways we dry food:
  • Herbs are clipped and hung upside down. When they are dry we break them up and bottle them.
  • Onions we braid and hang in a cool, dry, dark location.  We clip them off as we need them.
  • Garlic is processed the same as onions and hung in a cool, dry location until we need them.
  • Tomatoes (especially cherry tomatoes) we dry in out in the Sun (see below).
  • Other vegetables can be dried just like the tomatoes, however they should be put in the shade instead.
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Canning:
  • Water Bath Canning:
Used for all fruits, jams, jellies, pickling, and tomato sauce.  Only good for these due to their high acid content.  You may need to add some lemon juice or citric acid to some of the recipes if they are not acidic enough.  The acid helps preserve the food so it does not have to be heated to such an extreme temperature.  That is why this is not good for regular vegetables.

The Water Bath Canning process is explained very well by Simply Canning.  This is the canning that I do at home.  Recipes coming soon!
  • Pressure Canning:
Good for vegetables because of low acid content.  Pressure canning reaches a higher temperature which is necessary for low acid foods.  This type of canning is actually not good for jams and jellies as the higher temperatures will prevent them from setting.

The process of Pressure Canning by Simply Canning.  I have not tried this yet, but it's on my list.
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Freezing:
Freezing food is one of the easiest ways to preserve food for use over the winter.  
  • It does not require a large investment
  • It does not take a lot of time
  • It is relatively simple
A lot of people express concern about losing power and thereby losing our stored frozen food.  This does not happen often but when it does the power is not usually out for too long. 

What helps is the fact that we have a separate chest freezer just for storage.  As long as it is pretty full and we DO NOT open it during the time when the power is out it stays frozen with no problems.  If the electric is out more than a few days then we have to start thinking about using a generator.  Also, if the freezer is not very full and we know there is a storm coming with potential power loss, then we fill gallon freezer bags with water and put them in to fill it.  This keeps the food in the freezer colder longer if the electric does go out.

Check out Facts: Home Freezing of Fruits and Vegetables by the University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension.  They have a pdf file you can download as a reference!  It's great :-)

Other fruits and vegetables we freeze:
  • Cherry tomatoes (we just remove any stems, wash them, and throw them in a freezer baggie for later use)
  • Grapes (we just remove any stems, wash them, and throw them in a freezer baggie for later use)
  • Autumn Olives (we just remove any stems, wash them, and throw them in a freezer baggie for later use)​Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit (after removing the prickers)​
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Other fresh food ideas:
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  1. Use fresh vegetable peals and scraps to make vegetable broth (soup stock). Check out How to Make Vegetable Broth from Kitchen Scraps from ohmyveggies.com.
  2. Compost them! Read the post by clicking the picture below....