food preservation
sastyk | September 19, 201240% of all food produced worldwide, and nearly half of all food produced in the US goes to waste. When you break down the realities of food waste, you see that in the developing world, much of the waste is due to lack of ability to preserve food - no refrigeration means that sheep you slaughtered is waste if all of it isn't eaten or dried or otherwise preserved immediately. Lack of energy to run grain dryers means that rain at the wrong time results in moldy grain, etc...
In the Global North, however, the vast majority of food is wasted not in the field, but in the process of getting to our…
sastyk | August 23, 2012I find the ways we define ourselves by what we eat fascinating. We do this project of self-definition both through what we DO eat and what we refuse to eat. In Martin Jones' fascinating book _Feast: Why Humans Share Food_, he observes that our taboos about food can be so powerful that they are actively detrimental - observing that are indications that ancient peoples in coastal areas have had such a strong taboo against the ocean and fishing that they starved to death with easy access to plenty of fish. Most of us have a powerful sense, instilled culturally, about what we do and don't…
sastyk | August 14, 2012It is hard to believe that summer is coming so rapidly to a close, and that the opportunity to put up for winter will pass so fast. So if you'd like help and guidance in doing so, I'll be running my food storage and preservation class starting Thursday, August and running for six weeks into October. The class is online and asynchronous and will cover everything from putting up the summer's glut to building up food storage and a reserve to help temper hard times. That's going to be particularly important this year with predictions of skyrocketing food prices due to drought and other…
sastyk | May 11, 2012I get a lot of books for review, and for the most part, they are wonderful surprises. Because I receive and read so many books, I rarely sit around saying "Hey, where's my review copy of...X?" Generally I've got a giant pile of books that I need to get to anyway, so I'm much more likely to say "Oh, I didn't realize X was out." So let us first note that I was so anxious for my review copy of Sandor Katz's _The Art of Fermentation_ that I actually sent emails to beg for a copy - only to find that UPS had stuffed this book and another in a really weird place and it had been waiting for me…
sastyk | February 15, 2012Here's the syllabus - I still have a couple of regular spots and one scholarship spot available, so please email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com if you'd like one. The class runs six weeks starting tomorrow and is asynchronous and online. Cost of the class is $100. Hope some of you can join us!
Week 1, - Introduction to Food Storage, How much, where to put it, and how? Can I afford this? Overview of food preservation methods, their energy and economic costs. Storing Water, making space. Food safety, thinking about the food future, recommended reading.
Week 2, : Water bath canning 101,…
sastyk | February 6, 2012Are you gearing up for the new garden season and thinking ahead about what to do to make your garden work all year long for you? Concerned about the rising price of food and looking for ways to feed your family through tougher times? Want to get in on the fun and wonderful flavors of home preserved food? Concerned about how to adapt your storage or preserving to special diets? Want to make the most of your farmer's market? All of the above? I'll be teaching a six week online, asynchronous (ie, you don't have to be online at any particular time) class on food storage and preservation…
sastyk | August 31, 2011Yesterday afternoon we put our work aside and drove down into the Schoharie Valley, at least as far as we could go. We wanted to check on friends in the area, and we had called down to Schoharie Valley Farms to see how they were doing and also ask about the status of the flowers I had ordered for a bar mitzvah this weekend. Despite the fact that just about everything else they had was destroyed, the flowers were unscathed. Moreover, they told us that since no one in the town had power, lights or time to preserve, we could come down and buy anything they had to preserve. So down we went,…
sastyk | August 15, 2011Some parents are soccer parents. Some parents are baseball or gymnastics parents. Some drive constantly to swim, cheer, play volleyball or cricket. My kids do swim, play basketball in winter and pick-up baseball anytime, but our primary family sport is fruit picking.
Historically speaking, berrying is children's work - one sent the kids out into the woods for the afternoon and if they are not eaten by bears (think _Blueberries for Sal_, _Farmer Boy_, and other classic treatments of the "meet the bear in the woods while berrying") they come back with a pail of berries for canning.
We, of…
sastyk | June 14, 2011In a previous post several of my commenters observed that they lived in places too humid for solar dehydrating, and had been using electric food dryers. We have similar issues here - the summers are very humid, and there is a tendency for things not to dry rapidly enough, while reabsorbing moisture overnight and molding. Fortunately, the great Sue Robishaw, homesteading Goddess, connected me to her variations on Larisa Walk and Bob Dahse's design for the "Midwest Solar Food Dryer"
We have a small version and plans for a much larger one, and have had a great deal of success with this - a…
sastyk | June 7, 2011This year will be interesting - we anticipate adding two or three more people to our household (and maybe more - we're gently looking for a housemate or two once things settle down with the foster kids). In past years I've mostly been able to keep up with the "every year the kids get bigger and eat more" growth needs, but this ups the ante in several ways - besides adding more mouths to feed, we anticipate that the first few months we'll be pretty focused on the kids, with less time for garden and preservation than usual.
I could let some of it go - just accept that this year less will be…
sastyk | May 31, 2011My food storage and preservation class starts today, and I thought it was worth reproducing this essay - the very basics of getting started on storing food. Why would you want to do this? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I don't think anyone who has tracked events over the last decade can argue that it would be a good thing for you to have enough food to go through a period of disruption. Whether we look at various Hurricanes, ice storms, earthquakes or events in Japan, we know that the kind of social disruption that can affect access to food supplies really does happen…
sastyk | May 25, 2011It seemed up here in the north that spring would never come - and now we're headed rapidly into that time of year when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you start preserving, so if you'd like a friendly voice to walk you through it, please join us, starting next Tuesday!
The class is on-line and asynchronous, and you can participate at your own pace. Every week we'll have projects involving what's…
sastyk | September 6, 2010I've got to leave you with something fun to read. I'll be in Virginia for several days - if you are anywhere near Monticello's Heritage Harvest Festival this Saturday you should come by - it is going to be fabulous.. I'm going to be talking about how Jefferson's idea of "A Nation of Farmers" can be lived today, and I'm giving a workshop on low-energy food preservation, complete with tastings. C'mon by and say hello! I'll be the one following Patti Moreno around admiringly ;-).
The family and I are making this an extended holiday (Rosh Hashana) trip with visits to family and friends on the…
sastyk | September 1, 2010It is manifestly the case that I have never fully mastered keeping things from getting overwhelming, but I get better at it every year (mostly). And there is a lot you can do to make sure that the canning and preserving don't make you crazy!
Despite the fact that you've got a life, a job, a family, volunteer responsibilities and enough backlog in your life to keep you busy until 2182, you've decided that you are going to do some food preservation too. And you are definitely wondering if you are a little nuts. After all, this means finding time to do so, and isn't always easy. It helps to…
sastyk | August 30, 2010"...and that's true love and homegrown tomatoes." - Guy Clark
Guy Clark's song is true - and over here we've got homegrown tomatoes and true love coming out our ears. The true love can be put up for winter until it is chilly and huddling together for warmth looks good, but the tomatoes, well, they have to be eaten, and preserved. So that's what your blogiste is doing today.
You might as well listen to the song while I'm at it:
sastyk | August 17, 2010It is that time of summer here - the one where you can't eat all the vegetables pouring out of the garden, and the farmers can't keep up with all the stuff their farms are producing, and many things that are precious and rare much of the year are cheap and abundant. Besides eating yourselves into a coma on ripe tomatoes, okra, eggplant, peppers, blackberries, peaches, sweet peppers and the ubiquitous zucchini, it is time to think ahead to the days when the idea of thinking "oh, no, more ripe vegetables" will seem strange and alien, and you will be desperate for red and green and orange and…
sastyk | August 16, 2010Busy week here, as Eric attempts to wind up his online teaching class, my parents descend for a week of family projects and fair going, and we deal with the daily realities of a rapidly-onrushing fall, complicated (happily) by a long trip and an early Jewish holiday season. So I give you something I wrote way back in 2007.
The other day I thought I'd try out three "fast, easy, healthy, local" recipes that were sent to me from a green website that shall remain nameless because I'm not trying to give them a hard time - I appreciate what they are trying to do.
Why? Because my job now is to…
sastyk | August 12, 2010This is the the time of year for most of us when everything is ripe and abundant in our gardens and at local farms, and learning to put food up can make it possible for you to enjoy summer in winter, and continue eating locally as long as possible. It can be overwhelming when you start preserving, so if you'd like a friendly voice to walk you through it, please join us.
The class is on-line and asynchronous, and you can participate at your own pace. Every week we'll have projects involving what's overflowing in our gardens and markets to get you familiar with the basics of preserving the…
sastyk | August 12, 2010"Sauerkraut!"
She said it with an absolute certainty, as though it was an order - get yourself some sauerkraut! It was said kindly, but as though I should have figured this out already for myself.
And she was right. The woman sitting next to me on the bench outside my synagogue was a Russian woman of late middle age, the mother of five sons, the survivor of all most of what was thrown at the Russian Jews. She knew things, and wasn't shy about telling me, although her English and my poor Russian made the conversations challenging at times.
I was pale, greenish and pasty from the epic morning…
sastyk | July 1, 2010In the spirit of helping my readers increase their preparedness, I thought I'd remind you that you have 0 more days before Zombie Day to shop and get ready for Zombie attacks. So just in case there are zombies coming down your pike, and you aren't ready, I offer a reprint of a piece I wrote about what to do if you haven't been preparing or storing food, water or medicines (as everyone from FEMA to the American Red Cross advises every citizen to do). Crisis shopping is really not the way to do this - you are better off making preparations in advance, but just in case you have been ignoring…