Notes for improvement

Food Preservation Techniques 

While I have only tried a few Preservation methods I am interested in food and the processes it under goes in order to make it last longer.  I have a garden, I have two gardens actually.  One is in the backyard and one I keep on the front balcony.  The balcony holds all of my houseplants, An herb-garden, and a late blooming tomatoes patch. “Green tomatoes are well worth harvesting. Those in the light green stage will ripen, providing good eating long after the vines have been killed by frosts.” (Garden Way Associates 23)  In the backyard I grow tomatoes, peppers, Scallions, Rhubarb, and pretty flowers.  The backyard garden produces more tomatoes than the porch garden.  I think this is mainly to do with them getting more sun, and being in the earth as opposed to in pots.

Last year for the first time I planted Thyme and Parsley in the outdoor garden.  They flourished.  By the end of summer they were both big and beautiful.  I decided to harvest, and store the leaves in ways that would allow me to use them in all my winter dishes.  Just the thought of this plan made me very happy, I felt successful.  I had grown it.  I had cooked it.  Now I would preserve it.

There are two categories of preservation techniques:  The traditional techniques and the industrial techniques.  The traditional techniques consist of:  Dehydrating, Chilling, Freezing, Salting, Sugar, Marinating, Lye, Can & bottling, Jellifying, Smoking Jugging, Fermentation and Pits & Trenches.  “The aim of Preserving is to slow down the activity of microorganisms and enzymes or destroy them altogether; they cannot survive in acidic or dry conditions, in high concentrations of salt and sugar, in alcohol, or in high temperatures.” (Steel 16)  The industrial techniques consist of:  Hurdle technology, “Hurdle technology is used in industrialized as well as in developing countries for the gentle but effective preservation of foods.” (Leistner)  Sterilization, Vacuum wrapping, Imitation food, adding of Antibiotics, Electroporation, Modified atmosphere, No thermal plasma, High-pressure preservation, and Bio-preservation.

To preserve the parsley I used two methods, freezing and refrigeration.  My technique was to wrap the freshly cut branches in plastic wrap and place into the freezer.  This was not very successful.  When I tried to the use it, all I got after thawing was a shriveled mess.  So I ended up using it sparingly and always as iced crystals.  “The freezing process does affect their texture, so they are best frozen in oil or water for ease of use.” (Steel 32)  To preserve the Thyme I used drying and refrigeration.  Drying;  I preserved thyme by hanging it out to dry in my pantry.  This was very successful.  My technique was to make small neat bundles of the freshly cut branches and wrap string around the stem portions.  “Dehydration is one of the oldest-known methods of food preservation, probably because it is so simple and extremely effective:” (Steel 124)   My refrigeration technique for both plants was the same.  I stuffed wads of the freshly cut plants into zip-lock bags.  These I placed in the fridge, and used often while they were still fresh.

The Porch Garden's production was also beautiful and plenty.  The potted herbs, I decided to preserve by keeping alive, smelled so good.  My technique was to place the various herbs in the sunniest  windows and nurture them on plant food, water and good conversation.  This was not totally unsuccessful.  But that is another story, for another time. 

Works Cited

Building & Using Your Root Cellar. United States: Garden Way Associates, Inc., 1978.

Leistner, L. “Basic aspects of food preservation by hurdle technology” International

            Journal of food Microbiology. 2000 Apr 10; 55(1-3): 181-6.

            http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10791741

Steel, Susannah. Get Started Preserving. New York, NY: Dorling Kindersley, 2013.

Green is my Garden

Away with you Broom, Mop and Bucket.  I am finally through cleaning and setting up the porch garden.  It is going to be amazing this year.  Now I have time to work on the yard. Unless rain falls soon, it is going to be blotchy.

The vegetable garden needs to be tilled.

My friend a fellow amateur gardener has promised to come by today, with his plow.  Green is erupting from the most unusual places.  Yet some spots still seem frozen.  It must be the lack of rain. 

  Spring is here but winter isn’t completely gone.  It is mind-boggling how the seasons change, as if rolling one over the next.

What am I going to grow this year?  Last year only my tomatoes and sweet peppers were successful.

  I am thinking of flowers, wild flowers.  I want strawberries too and maybe a small batch of tomatoes, just because.  But first I must turn over the soil.

 

Spring, the season I awake or wake up and live

flower girl

I can hear it clearly.  Spring is, singing for me, calling to me.  Completely distracted by the sounds, I am being pulled away from here.  I will unfold myself and get up.  I will stretch the restlessness from my bones as I walk out to meet her.  The song she sings is about new beginnings.  It awakens every sleeping thing in her path.  She supplants the dead.  This freshness is all I have hoped for.  Winter took my breath away.  Spring gives it back.  She awakens me, to me.  And now calls me back upstairs.  I have gardens to wake up, and seeds to plant.  I will smile all season long, like a hibiscus

Summer, the season I love.

rmhcaustin.wordpress.com

Summer came home today.  He walked in slowly this year and nearly stole my breath away with his heat.  His shining smile is always following me.  Like before, his coming has made me happy.  Spring has left.  The last of her tears fell yesterday.  Here in the porch garden surrounded by nature, with summer warming my bones I will forget how he left me.  And how I had got cold. 

I dreamt last year that I had followed him.  I had left my bed my home and my yard to walk across the world.  Covered in filthy grime my feet felt worn.  I could barely place one in front of the other my clothes turned to rags on my back.  I had even forgotten why I was walking.  Then I came to a town to that place.  Where I looked up and saw him.  I knew.  Summer was walking past me going the way that I had just come.  The smile on his face mines, only for me.  I awoke tired, sad and lost.  Summer was gone. 

Yesterday I noticed that my friends the sparrows are also back from their winter vacation.  I often wish that I could migrate with them and see what they see.  Bird jealousy is not a pretty thing to admit to.  It is always exciting watching them get ready to leave every year.  Travel to new places is a passion of mine.  For some years now, I have not been able to leave.  I looked at them this morning while I was watering my vegetable garden.  They stood on our side of the street a large group of birds, talking.  About my garden I think.  How nice it looks, about the seeds I planted last week that will never be plants but did make for a nice snack.  They love summer too and have decided to help me in the gardens.  

School is out in celebration of Summer’s return and we have just had our first barbeque dinner in the porch garden.  Chicken, salmon, and hotdogs adorned the grill.  One bee, two flies and my whole family came.  Everyone squeezed in, found a seat and enjoyed each other.  We fed our bodies, while beauty planted fed our souls.  Summer has truly come home to me.  I will make him happy and he will be loath to leave.  I will lose myself in his radiance and he will burn love joy and peace into me.

He will stay with me this time I am sure.

Pollination or love at Springtime.

fredhatt.com

There they are sitting on the porch feasting on sunbeams half-wild, pollinated and almost abandoned.

Spring is covering everything with her yellow dust.  She has every plant in sight growing as if today is their last day of sunlight.  I have been working like a mad woman, washing walls, cleaning railings and scrubbing screens.  Even so, my porch is not a garden.  My porch is uninhabited.  Wherever I stand or sit down to rest, spring reminds me that summer is coming.  She keeps dumping that sallow powder in my hair and on my chair.

This time around, the realization of a porch garden has been a lesson in delayed gratification.  Its completion is an act of love, a pleasure, a luxury.  Yet I feel overwhelmed and almost beaten.  I am anxious.  It seems like the first time just happened, but every mother knows that that is not so.  I have simply forgotten.  Carefully I press on, working on my porch garden, hoping that it will be full of plants before spring exhales her last breath and summer inhales it.

The plants are out of place, pots upon pots and potting soil, my family is put out of place.  We have a house full of guests; they sit in all the sunniest spots.  It is just like a delay at an airport around Christmas, time.  They should only have been passing through yet here they are.  A big beauteous mess of freshness greeting you every time you pass by.  Egg box seedlings, houseplants, sun lovers, herbs and vegetable plants are everywhere.  New slips and old slips some with roots and others without.  The connecting flight to destination unfinished is me.  They are all waiting for me to open the back door to the Porch Garden.

Yes, I am quite aware.  This is my idea, my space, my air.

The Porch Garden

fineartamerica.com

I have always been attracted to flowers and greenery even as a child.  It was not long before I realized that if I was having bad days and I went through the greenhouse section of a store, I would perk right up.  All the flowers and plants there had the simple effect of making me smile; the scents helped me to breathe when I didn’t even know that I was holding my breath.  Being among plants feed my soul.  My senses of touch, smell, sight, taste just come alive. Now I only go to green houses in the winter and in the summer I keep a porch garden.

Spring has just began, and it is time to get work started on the porch garden.  Last year the garden was home to plumb tomatoes and big beef tomatoes.  They were so delicious.  All of my house plants found themselves outside.  Rosemary and her friends Sage, Oregano, Mint and Sweet-basil made life in the little garden on the porch wonderful and fragrant.  The children learned to name, recognize and care for all the plants that lived there.

My sister Jacky our family chef cooked lots of special foods with the materials from our garden.  We had the daily pleasure of walking out to the porch-garden/Sanctuary for coffee or just to pick 3 sprigs of mint to add to a jug of lemonade at dinner time.  This was incredible for us because we lived on the third floor.  When the frost came in it was miserable and a bit depressing knowing we would soon be inside for the winter.  The frost damaged some plants and the apartment could not support the herbs so we ended up losing those as well.  Our apartment was just too small and dark.

We moved last November and even though our new place is bigger we are still on the third floor.  Here I feel like a rich woman when I sit in my empty living room and survey the square footage.  Blossoms, foliage and more Plant life are my big plan.  In the spring time I will have greenery, in the summertime too and Greenery in the fall and if I have my way in this house with all these windows and space, I will have a green and white winter.  Imagine that, happiness in the winter.

The new porch is large, 7 feet wide and 16 feet long, it has great potential.  We have a lot of work to do before this new porch can be called “The garden”.  The last tenants where not kind to the place.  They kept a dog on the porch, but did not keep him well.  When we moved in here it was cold, and now that it is getting warm it has also become the time to clean away the smell of dog and the mess.  The first thing we will need to do is empty the area and clean it with a scrub brush and lots of soap and water.  There is outdoor carpeting, the green grass stuff, the new landlord said it is in good condition.  The cleaning will tell.  This is an exciting time, I have to remember to save more egg containers for the tomato seeds and get potting soil for all the new slips I have been taking from the house plants.