To Freeze or Not to Freeze?

We're selling our deep freezer. Last year, I would not have guessed I'd be anxious to unload it. We bought it new about four years ago or so, and we usually kept it full of bread, meats, frozen vegetables and some prepared foods from shopping forays to Costco. So, what has changed for us?

First, Kelly's job change has caused us to be much more aware of our spending. Though some bulk foods at Costco are definitely a good value, we inevitably end up cancelling out most of the savings when we see other awesome stuff there. We've reduced our Costco spending by making firm lists and having Kelly shop there alone after work, rather than having the whole family go. (I really miss Costco... it's a magical, dangerous place!)

Second, we're trying to eat more sustainably, which for us means consuming much less meat and more fresh (local when possible) vegetables. Frozen vegetables were a staple for us, until I realized how quickly they start losing nutritional value in the freezer. And since I am baking our bread now, we no longer buy 20 loaves at a time for the freezer when they go on manager's special at Kroger or when we go to Costco.

In addition, I'm in the process of gradually transitioning the family into eating more of a staple foods diet, as is the historical norm around the world. Basically our goal is to eat (more) beans and other legumes and whole grains, with variety coming in through vegetables and fruits. As I read in Independence Days, purchasing meat, dairy, vegetables and fruits at a local supermarket has a much larger environmental impact than buying dried legumes and grains. Pound for pound, you're getting more nutrition and less water with dried foods. Beans are awesome. So are lentils.

The hardest part of this transition for us is eating less dairy products, because we're all kind of crazy about milk and cheese and yogurt. We're not doing anything insane like giving it up completely, just trying to decrease the amount we consume. Today I am taking a stab at making my own plain yogurt, since we go through so much of it, and it's cheaper to buy milk than yogurt at the store. I found out we have a farm about an hour from here that sells raw goat milk. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm quite there yet, but I love the idea of it.

Another factor in our decision to diss the deep freezer is that in the event of a major power outage, we lose everything in that freezer that we can't consume fairly quickly. This happened to us in an ice storm a few years ago, and it's painful! My goal with food preservation and storage is to help cushion my family in the event that we can't get food from the supermarket for a period of time, whether that's due to being stuck on this hill, widespread power outages, other natural disasters, or even [insert crazy theory here.] Food that can only be stored with electricity isn't helpful in some of those scenarios.

All of these little changes mean that our freezer is generally not full anymore. Even a full upright deep freezer is an energy hog, but it doesn't make any kind of sense to run the thing when it's almost empty. We were preparing to store our emergency water jugs in there to make it run more efficiently, when I had the eureka moment that we don't need a deep freezer. Kelly was initially surprised when I suggested it to him, but he's on board now too. We are both curious to see how much our electric bill goes down once we sell it. (Just waiting to eat through the stuff that is in there before listing it on Craigslist.)

Millions of Peaches

Sunday I saw cling peaches on sale at the grocery store for $.99 a pound, so we bought six pounds, with the plan of making peach preserves. After getting home, it occurred to me that I don't really like peach preserves, so I decided to can plain peach slices instead. By the time Monday evening rolled around and Kelly and I were ready to can, we had a little under five pounds of fresh peaches. (My kids really like peaches and had eaten at least two each throughout the day. I need to remember that my children are fruit fiends when making my purchases and calculating how much fruit I want for canning.)

Of course when I purchased all those peaches, I didn't consider that they would all need to be peeled. We blanched the peaches in boiling water for about 30 seconds, and then plunged them into an ice bath. This enabled the skins to peel off easily, but we did find that we needed to cut the peaches in half before taking the skin off, or they were too slippery to grip. (Side note: I don't know why they are called cling peaches but I imagine it's because the pit clings to the fruit and does everything in its power not to be separated from it.)

After we pitted, peeled and sliced each peach, we dropped it into a bowl of water mixed with salt and vinegar, which kept the slices from discoloring while we finished the rest.

 

We rinsed the peaches before loading them into five quart jars, and then we topped the jars with boiling water. (You can use simple syrup or fruit juice, but we thought water would be just fine.) Next we loaded the jars into my new canning rack, and that's when Kelly pointed out that our over the range microwave was too close to the top of the canning pot for us to lift the full rack into the pot under it. So we had to put the rack in and add the jars one at a time. Then we realized that the canning pot barely had enough height  for the one inch of water required on top of the large quart jars. As you can imagine, filling a large pot to the brim with water and then bringing it to a boil is a rather splashy undertaking. 

Here are the peaches when they first came out of the water, all hot and bubbly. Kids and I opened one of the precious jars at lunch time this afternoon, and they are delicious!

Once again this process took considerably longer than I anticipated, and the kids were long asleep before the musical pops of the lids sealing. Surely with more practice, I will get faster at this!

Boozy Fruit

Jack and Fred helped me purchase 12 pints of fresh strawberries at the farmers market this morning, and this afternoon I made my first batch of boozy fruit! I filled seven pint jars with chopped berries, and topped three with rum and four with brandy. I must say, I think they look pretty yummy. They'll be ready in about three months.

So, I was feeling pretty pleased with my first foray into food preservation, when Bonnie suddenly realized that she and her brothers would likely not eat many of these alcoholic berries, and that the whole thing was somewhat "unfair." One of the things that appealed to me about preserving food this way is that I didn't have to worry about jar sterilization and timed boiling, but Bonnie has a valid point. I still have five pints of strawberries, so I'm going to attempt to make a small batch of (non-alcoholic) strawberry preserves tomorrow, assuming I can figure it out without any specialized canning cookware. I'm keeping my eyes out for a pressure canner, but I think I can do a simple water bath for preserves in my largest stockpot.

In the meantime, I'm still planning on making boozy fruit with other combinations of fruit, spices, and liquor as various fruits come in season.

Currently Reading

A year or so ago, I read this memoir about a family who left their urban life for one year to live as they would have on a farm a hundred years ago. The author mentioned that Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living was his family's number one resource in their experiment. I got my hands on a copy of the encyclopedia and have been reading sections here and there since then, and I've picked it up most recently to learn as much as I can about the canning process. Although I don't expect high yields from our own spur-of-the-moment garden this year, I hope to try my hand at food preservation with some of the bounty that will be available at the local farmer's market this summer. Along with that, I've just begun reading Sharon Astyk's Independence Days. So far it's a wonderful read, and the author really speaks to my desire to feel a little more in charge of my life. As she says, our current food system is completely entwined with our energy system, and we all know that is not remotely sustainable. Without getting too gloomy here, I have to mention one thing that really stuck out in her introduction that is not fun to think about: our supermarkets have only three days worth of food on their shelves. You know how they run out of milk and bread when we have even a forecast of flurries in Kentucky? Can you imagine if there were an actual disaster of some sort? I want my family a lot less dependent on %@+# Kroger!

I'm also reading a work of fiction, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It's a touching letter written by a dying man to his young son. My cousin Sallie asked me yesterday if it made me think of the things I would want to tell my own kids about my life, and maybe that combined with the other books I've been reading have a lot to do with the visions of blogs running through my head.