Preserving Summer Flavours

In my neck of the woods, the summer season is a mysterious creature that provides an enormous bounty of food over a very short period of time. While I'm busy getting over the shock of the flavour explosion contained in a handful of blueberries, brightly coloured stalks of rainbow swiss chard, and heirloom varieties of tomatoes, the summer quietly slips away and suddenly I'm wearing hoodies to keep warm again. Thankfully that's still a few months away this year, but before it happens, some canning and preserving is in order.

Back in June I attended a workshop put on by Young Urban Farmers CSA and facilitated by chef, food activist, and writer Joshna Maharaj. I'd like to share the recipes we used to save summer flavours for the long winter months ahead. The benefits go beyond merely enjoying great tasting food when nothing is growing outside; by doing your own canning, you avoid purchasing products at the supermarket, which means...

• you decide exactly what goes into the preserve, and more importantly what doesn't
• you can use local ingredients from the farmers' market, your backyard garden, your CSA share, or another source of food grown close to home
• you take back control of your food - let's be honest, canning is a skill everyone should know!

Let's start at the very beginning of the growing season with asparagus.

Pickled Asparagus

Makes 2 x 500ml jars

Ingredients

30 asparagus spears

1/3 cup coarse salt

2 quarts cold water

1 2/3 cups white vinegar

2/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1 teaspoon mustard seed

1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed

1 white onion, sliced into rings

1/2 teaspoon chili pepper flakes

2 sprigs fresh dill

Method

1. Trim the cut end of the asparagus spears and cut them into 3" lengths. Place them in a large bowl with 1/3 cup salt and cover with water. Let stand for 2 hours. Drain and rinse under cool water and pat dry.

2. Sterilize two pint-sized wide mouth jars in simmering water for 5 minutes. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the vinegar, sugar, 1 tsp of salt, mustard seeds, dill seeds, and onion rings. Bring to a boil, and boil for one minute.

3. Pack the asparagus spears, tips up, in the hot jars, leaving 1/2" of space below the neck. Tuck one dill sprig into each jar and sprinkle in 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes. Pour hot pickling liquid into the jars, filling to within 1/4" of the neck. Wipe rims with a clean damp cloth, and seal with lids. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

4. Cool to room temperature. Check seals when cool by pressing the centre of the lid. They should not move. Label and date; store in a cool dark place. If any jars have not sealed properly, refrigerate and eat within two weeks.

Moving ahead a few weeks past asparagus season, strawberries begin to emerge in the fields.

Strawberry Freezer Jam

Makes 5 x 500ml jars

Ingredients

10 cups strawberries, hulled, washed, and chopped into quarters

2 cups granulated sugar

2 packages (45g each) freezer jam pectin

Method

1. Sterilize 5 x 500ml preserving jars and lids and set aside. Place strawberries in a bowl and mash well, until berries are pulpy and liquidy.

2. Add sugar and pectin and stir well for 2-3 minutes to dissolve in strawberry mixture. Taste and adjust sweetness if necessary. Allow to sit for 5 minutes or so to make sure that pectin and sugar are completely dissolved and incorporated.

3. Fill bottles to just below the neck with jam, cover, and freeze for up to 8 months. Once jam has been thawed, you can store it in the fridge for up to 2 months.

Chinese napa cabbage, grown commercially on a limited scale in southern Ontario, is available continuously through the season. Why not make kimchi with it?

Classic Napa Kimchi

Makes 4 x 1-litre jars

Ingredients

1 cup + 1 tbsp coarse sea salt or kosher salt

2 litres of water

2 heads Napa cabbage, cut into 2” wedges

1 bulb garlic, cloves separated and peeled

1 x 2” piece of ginger root, peeled

1/4 cup fish sauce or Korean salted shrimp

1 small daikon, peeled and grated

1 bunch of green onions, cut into 1” lengths

1/2 cup Korean chili powder

1 tsp sugar (optional)

Method

1. Dissolve 1 cup salt in 2 litres of water. Soak cabbage in the salt water for 3 to 4 hours.

2. Combine garlic, ginger, and fish sauce or shrimp in food processor until finely minced.

3. In large bowl, combine radish, green onions, garlic mixture, chili powder, 1 tbsp salt and optional sugar. Toss gently but thoroughly. (If mixing with your hands, be sure to wear rubber gloves to avoid chili burn.)

4. Remove cabbage from water and rinse thoroughly. Drain cabbage in colander, squeezing as much water from the leaves as possible. Stuff radish mixture between cabbage leaves, working from the outside in, starting with the largest leaves to the smallest. Do not overstuff, but make sure radish mixture adequately fills leaves. When entire cabbage is stuffed, take one of the larger leaves and wrap tightly around the rest of the cabbage. Divide cabbage among 4 x 1-litre jars, pressing down firmly to remove any air bubbles.

5. Let sit for 2 to 3 weeks in a cool place before serving. Remove kimchi from jar and slice into 1" pieces. Refrigerate after opening.

Carrots and pears honour us with their presence in late summer. Bet you didn't think they went together!

Carrot Jam

Makes 4 x 250ml jars

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups carrots, grated using a food processor

2 cups pears, peeled and chopped finely

1 3/4 cups canned pineapple with juice

3 tbsp lemon juice

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cloves in a cheesecloth sack

1 package pectin

6 1/2 cups of sugar

Method

1. Boil everything but the sugar and pectin for 20 minutes. Add pectin off heat and return to a boil.

2. Add sugar, stir, and bring to a hard boil for 60 seconds.

3. Can in 4 x 250ml jars, process for 10 minutes.

Look at what we made in less than three hours!

What's being preserved in your kitchen this year?

Guest Post: The Buzz on the Street

We've all heard a lot about bees and their declining populations. To help us understand why they're so important and what we can do to boost their numbers, I've been given permission by Tara Mabon, one of this year's farming interns with Young Urban Farmers CSA, to post her bee article here which first appeared in the YUF CSA newsletter a few weeks ago.

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About Tara: Ever since I was a child I've been fascinated with bees. My father used to bring home wild honey comb from his hunting trips and for most of my life there has been a bee hive residing in a dead tree in my garden, which I would spend countless hours watching as a child and proudly showing anyone who wasn't afraid of being stung (not many people shared my enthusiasm). Like many people, however, my head was in the honey bee clouds until I started researching this article. I knew there were other bees out there but I thought that honey bees were, well, the bee's knees. While I still love honey bees (my middle name even means honey bee so I'm pretty sure I have to) I have a new found respect and gratitude for all the work native bees do everywhere, especially now as an intern for YUF CSA, because really they make it all possible.

While the honey bee may reign supreme in the pollinator world in terms of popularity, it is but one of 200 species which can be found in Toronto and only one of 800 that can be found throughout Canada. Even then the honey bee is a welcome visitor having been brought over during European settlement. The huge variety of bees, here and around the world, contributes to 1/3 of all crop pollination, a service valued at over $ 1 billion in Canada alone.

As important as honey bees are, native bees are better suited for pollinating local plants and crops. This is because native bees have evolved alongside native plants and often have specific adaptations that make pollen collection easier for them than for the introduced honey bee. For example, 250 Orchard Mason bees can pollinate 1 acre of apple trees in the time it would take 20,000 honey bees to pollinate the same area! On top of that, native bees are busier bees in general as they are more inclined to work in cold or wet weather conditions where as honey bees tend to sulk inside their hives if the weather is bad.

The diversity of native bees, in Canada, has many benefits. For example, the bees tend to specialize in collecting pollen or nectar from fewer species and therefore will visit and pollinate more flowers than less picky generalist bees. Unlike the honey bee, which is a part of a greater hive and social system, native bees tend to be solitary dwellers, making their own nests and tending their own offspring. The benefit of this is that solitary bees are less aggressive because they don’t have a hive to protect. Unlike the honey bee, which will become aggressive if they feel the hive is threatened.

Similar to the way people value a diversity of crop species, the variety of native bees is valuable in much the same way. With a greater genetic variety native bees are more likely to resist disease and environmental change. This is something which honey bees have less fortunate with.

Like honey bees however, native bees also face an uncertain future. This comes mostly in the form of habitat loss from urban development and pesticide use. While urban centers provide an array of flowers that often rival those found in rural areas, increasingly they are ornamental and are non-native species that provide little benefits to pollinating insects. Ornamental flowers are bred to be big and showy and as a result loose much of their pollen and nectar producing abilities. Along with increasingly vast expanses of grass lawns, the urban garden is increasingly becoming a food desert to bees.

So what can we do to help native bee populations? Like other environmental movements it can start right in your own home.  It can start simply with planting native flowers and shrubs in your own yard or maybe even get your local parks involved! Not only will native plants provide bees with more pollen and nectar but they will help you as a gardener as well. Native plants are more resistant to disease and pests than ornamental exotics because they have evolved alongside these pests. They are also more adapted to the local climate and require less maintenance on your part. Other simple things you can do at home to make your yard more bee friendly is to provide water sources and suitable habitat spaces. It can be as easy as setting up shallow pans of water, leaving some ground bare so that borrowing bees, such as mining bees, can make their nests or building you own bee boxes!

Want to learn more about Native bees? Here are some interesting links that will help you learn more about these helpful and busy pollinators.

Some Info About Native Canadian Bees
http://www.wildaboutgardening.org/en/gardening-for-wildlife/animals/bees
 

A guide to Creating a Bee Friendly Garden
http://www.cwf-fcf.org/en/what-we-do/habitat/gardening-for-wildlife/attracting-wildlife/insects/bees-and-other-pollinators.html
 

A guide to building your own Bee Condo
http://onnaturemagazine.com/how-to-build-a-bee-box.html

Is your garden bee friendly?


Photo of honey bee used under Creative Commons from Rainer Hungershausen (Mamboman1/flickr)
Photo of solitary bee nesting box used under Creative Commons from jon hayes (jon.hayes/flickr)
Photo of native plant garden used under Creative Commons from Bill Barber (bill barber/flickr)

Get Your Share of Locally and Sustainably Grown Veggies

Take some seeds, one part rain, two parts sun, and a generous amount of heat, and all that's missing is you: it's time to purchase your share in Young Urban Farmers Community Shared Agriculture program!

It only costs the equivalent of six lattes a week to get your hands on a bounty of the freshest, most locally grown veggies in Toronto. This is Young Urban Farmers CSA's second year growing food in backyards in the Wychwood, Lawrence Park, and Riverdale neighbourhoods, and it's going to be a great season. I've already told you how thrilling it was to receive and cook with veggies grown minutes from my home (especially considering I don't have a garden of my own), and I've alluded to my rewarding volunteer involvement with YUF CSA; now it's time to fit you into this picture. I am shamelessly advertising this great opportunity because I've benefited so much from it and really want to see the organization thrive.

What do you get? Only the tastiest GMO-free, organically grown heirloom varieties of leaf lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, kale, broccoli, radishes, beets, carrots, leeks, garlic, spring onions, shallots, tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, beans, peas, zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, and herbs. Southern Ontario simply overflows with food in the summer months; why would you want to buy imported veggies trucked in from far away to the supermarket? Even a farmer's market can't beat this freshness - you take home your share mere hours after it was harvested, often in the very same garden it was grown in.

Support your health, the environment, and the local economy by investing in YUF CSA today. If you don't live in Toronto, please pass this on to those you know that do, and click here for a list of CSAs in Ontario.

Do you own a share in a CSA? If not, what's holding you back?

King Corn: growing trash for 28 dollars' worth of government subsidies per acre

On Thursday I attended a free screening of King Corn, hosted by Young Urban Farmers CSA as part of their 2011 workshop and event series. Released in 2007, this film - at times quite funny and overall much more lighthearted than other documentaries, like Food Inc - follows the adventures of college buddies Ian and Curt as they move from the East Coast of the US to rural Iowa to the small town where as luck would have it, both of their great-grandfathers grew up. Their goal: to grow an acre of corn and follow it from field to end product.

Although King Corn didn't teach me much I didn't already know about the food system and corn's role in it, I experienced my fair share of moments of shock and disbelief. The funny thing is, if I hadn't spent a lot of time this spring helping Young Urban Farmers CSA (YUF CSA) turn back yard lawns into vegetable gardens, I may have had very different reactions. Take for instance the fertilizer Ian and Curt buy for their corn: anhydrous ammonia, or pure ammonia gas, which is highly toxic and very dangerous if not handled correctly. A specialized machine injects it into the ground where it will wait to be sucked up by the corn. What does YUF CSA do? We keep the soil healthy, which in turn keeps the veggies healthy, by adding compost and other organic matter. We feed the soil rather than forcing chemicals to sit in it.

Another real kicker was watching Ian and Curt plant their acre of corn. It took all of 18 minutes, and they didn't get their hands dirty. In fact, the only indication they may have done work in the field is visible in grease stains from operating yet another industrial farming machine. The only oil-dependent equipment YUF CSA uses is a rototiller, once per yard when it is first turned from sod to veggie. Elaine, our Head of Operations, shows us how it's done:

The variety of corn Ian and Curt planted has been genetically modified to generate a huge yield, tolerate growing in very dense rows, and resist the pesticide that is used with it. In other words, this corn tastes like chalk. Because most of it is used to make animal feed and high fructose corn syrup, the flavour has literally been bred out to make room for more starch (more calories). It's a raw material and definitely not destined for the grill in cob format. Again, the contrast to YUF CSA's approach is startling: we choose plant varieties that grow well in our climate and taste good... and that's it!

There's much more I could say... about how little Ian and Curt actually did in terms of farming; about how creepy a field of corn looks at ground level because absolutely nothing else is growing there; about how wrong it is to force cows to eat so much corn that they develop ulcers and would actually die of illness if we didn't take them to slaughter as early as we do. But what I really want to highlight is the irony of modern farming: people who grow corn can't feed themselves. Farmers can't feed themselves. As one farmer put it, "[we're] growing trash, the best trash in the world, because the government pays us for it". Ian and Curt received $28 in federal subsidies for that one acre they grew. Never mind the surplus corn sitting in giant piles outside of the already full grain elevator. Never mind the obesity and diabetes caused by everything we turn corn into. Never mind the toxins we put into the ground that eventually end up in our drinking water. It's a sad picture, one that farmers from as recently as two generations ago couldn't have imagined. I for one am happy to support an alternative food system that allows me to eat food straight out of the ground, grown 2 km from my home with no chemical inputs. There's nothing healthier than that.

Have any of you seen this documentary? How did you feel when you watched it?

Happy Spring

In honour of the first full day of spring, please enjoy these bright and sunny pictures I took on Saturday while planting basil and tomato seeds with Young Urban Farmers CSA.

making teensy holes

We are lucky to have access to some space in a greenhouse on a farm in Mount Albert. It was a strange feeling to walk around in a t-shirt on an otherwise chilly and windy day.

prepping tomato seeds

It's incredible to consider that so much can come from so little: minuscule seeds grow into huge plants that produce lots of food, and all we humans have to do is pull a few weeds and ensure the soil stays moist.

seed surgery

I got to take home a some Globe Basil seeds that had been saved from last year's harvest. I will be starting my windowsill garden soon.

Check out what else is already growing in the greenhouses!