What’s in Your Garden?
Here’s how I am handling my bountiful harvest
This week we have been harvesting a lot of food from the garden. I haven’t been canning, freezing or dehydrating anything that I am harvesting right now. Some of it will keep without refrigeration and others we are eating as soon as we pick it from the garden.
Why Not Can, Freeze or Dehydrate?
My mother used to do a lot of canning and freezing, but often she didn’t cook the food she grew immediately. Instead, she put it up so that she could brag about how much she had canned or frozen. Often she would say, “You’ll be glad this winter that we have this.” Often, however, the food that she froze or canned didn’t get eaten at all. Too often, the food in the freezer would get freezer-burned and had to be given to the livestock or thrown into the compost pile.
My dad often commented on this flaw in her thinking and suggested that we should eat the vegetables when they were fresh rather than let them waste away on the shelf or in the freezer. I try to take this advice and utilize as many fresh homegrown vegetables in my diet as possible.
Right now we have a variety of vegetables that we are using. Here’s what we had coming from our garden that we have used this week.