Blog #17

Relish!

So …, our little 35 square foot garden has produced enough of something to preserve!  In other parts of the US, zucchini grows like weeds, to the point there’s a joke about how many zucchinis you have to get from your neighbor before you start getting produce you really want.  We’ve already clipped four, and three of them were purpose grown to be way too big for salads or sautéing.  Several of these, though, became relish!

  

The relish recipe from my mom calls for 10 cups of ground zucchini, and if you’re buying that in a store, that means about ten of them at up to a dollar each.  Add four cups of ground onion then let that brine overnight.  The next day some ground peppers, spices, vinegar and sugar get added, then cooked and processed to result in seven pints of savory goodness for the coming year.  Our garden isn’t ever going to produce enough to live on, but it will probably produce enough of what we like to make our diets more diverse.  The garlic is already out and curing, and onions will follow soon, plus we have a pot or two of herbs to clip and dry for seasoning throughout the year.

  

Going along with trying to source locally, the onions came from our local Farmer’s Market—the Rusted Plow has a wide variety of produce year-round, all grown in middle Georgia.  The canning supplies come from the hardware store around the corner, and the spices and other bits came from the grocery store.  We’re not 100% local, but we know much more about the heraldry of these ingredients than about many others.

If you note in the pictures, most of the jars of food have the rings removed and they’re stored in cardboard lined aluminum foil trays.  My brother taught me part of this.  If the food does go bad in the jar, having the rings off allows the lid to pop without cracking the jar, and the tray keeps any liquid from dripping down onto the floor, provided I’m looking at the racks regularly. 

I’m not a complete prepper or environmentalist, but we do try to conserve what and where we can.  I think I’m more of a modern realist in the South rather than a doomsday survivalist.  We prepare what we can, maximizing the resources we have.  Even the food racks are a recent purchase.  For years we stored canned foods in the boxes the jars were purchased in.  Unfortunately, entropy is reality, and after years of use and multiple household moves around the country, the boxes designed for a single use 40 years ago finally gave up their structural integrity.

If you look at the other pictures of the food racks you see jars of water and the lids have “Xs” on them.  These are previously used lids that can’t be used for food storage, but we use them to cover jars of water to get a second use out of them before recycling them.  No, the water isn’t necessarily for drinking, but if we do lose water due to either a freeze or a hurricane, we have several gallons of water that could be boiled and used or used to flush the commode or to water plants, until clean water flows through the pipes once more.  Again, that’s not enough to live on, but it makes use of empty jars and provides a buffer for a few days while service crews are working to restore utilities.

We got the idea of using the empty jars from the web, and since we aren’t planning on drinking it, the used lids aren’t a health concern.  We follow USDA guidance on canning and preserving, and over the past 35+ years of preserving everything from basil to zucchinis, we’ve had no health issues from home-preserved foods.

Think about things you enjoy eating that you can produce or preserve yourself.  We’ve found that the food we secure and preserve provides a sense of accomplishment, plus, we know what went into the jar that’s going to go into us.

C-Ya!

*** No animals were harmed in the making of this post. Shearing is an important part of sheep farming for the wellbeing of the sheep. ***