Preserving Data

No, this post isn't about the willfully blind gutting of the long-form Census by the current Canadian Government (please note: the "H-word", "H-word Administration", or any variation thereof shall not appear in this blog). Nor is this about the Snowden revelations: the outrageous wholesale appropriation of private communications by the NSA and their agents, the informatics industry. Those are rants for another day.  

So I apologize for a possibly misleading title: Preserving Data. I love double meanings, in writing and in life. Here are two examples randomly drawn from my clogged memory for your reading pleasure: one a novel--Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan (I almost admire that double-edged title more than the book, which is good but not his best), and the other a song--God's Comic, by Elvis Costello. In fact, let's invite younger Elvis Costello into the blogspace. Enjoy. (Technical difficulties with the embedded video? Click here for the YouTube link.)

Wow, that was a serious digression.

What I intended to detail is my nascent efforts to preserve local food as we enter the height of summer. The Unprocessed Project bug infects me still in spite of a weak will, time-pressed schedule, and weather too hot for baking.

Last year, I stocked the freezer sporadically with produce from our garden--mostly tomatoes, pesto and zucchini--but the garden is hit or miss, not big enough (or laboured-over enough!) to feed six people. The kids and I picked 35 lbs. of strawberries at a local farm, which took almost no time with all of us picking. For a few days we were rich in strawberries: we ate lots fresh and froze several bags; I also made jam for the first time. The jam was a huge hit. (It contains an appalling amount of sugar, but at least we know what is in it--just sugar and fruit.) I gave away several jars, and the remainder didn't last the year. Neither did the pesto or tomatoes. At the moment, all that is left from last summer is one bag of shredded zucchini that will soon be turned into bread or soup.

Unloved zucchini aside, I realized that if we were serious about this venture, we had to ramp up production. Here's what has been achieved so far this year.

Preserving, data on:
Rhubarb--2 2-cup bags (from the farmer's market--our rhubarb patch is new; we're trying again to grow what everyone else seems to take for granted as an unkillable country plant)

Strawberries--two expeditions (with children) to the wonderful, laid back McLean Berry Farm, where we picked 45 lbs. the first time, and then 5 lbs., resulting in:
               --7 6-cup bags in the freezer (slightly depleted already for smoothies and baking)
               --14 250 ml jars of jam (2 given away, 1 opened)

Raspberries--4 lbs, and later 5+ lbs. (picked by my lovely eldest daughter, who drove up to the farm on her own while I was away last weekend), resulting in:
               --copious fresh berries in yogurt and muffins
               --7 250 ml jars of jam; and
               --3 2-cup bags in the freezer (minus 1 that I had to use to complete the batch of jam)

Beautiful, eh?

I'm hoping these quantities, plus freezing/canning Ontario blueberries, peaches, plums, etc. as they come into season, will fill the larder until next year. I suppose a purist would eat fresh fruit and vegetables only in season and then wait out the winter, drawing on the blah squash, pumpkins and potatoes that can be stored in a cold cellar, rather than "processing" everything in the name of an Unprocessed Project--oh, the irony. Home preserving, however, involves minimal processing. No wonder canning is enjoying a renaissance: recycled containers; local, natural food; control over ingredients (preserves, not preservatives). It's extremely satisfying.

Next will be tomatoes. I've never canned them, although I watched my paternal grandmother "put up" tomatoes many times. We're going to try salsa, crushed tomatoes, and sauce. I use a lot of tomatoes in my cooking and would be thrilled to a) support local farmers by purchasing a bushel or two or their harvest; b) steer clear of produce trucked from afar and grown under the worst possible labour conditions (detailed in Barry Estabrook's Tomatoland, reviewed by the NYT here); and c) avoid consuming bisphenol-A (BPA) that is reported to leach from the white plastic lining of commercially canned goods.

That white lining no doubt represented an advance in its time, aimed at solving the problem of botulism, and now we're going back to simpler ways. How the world turns.