Fresh Food
Storage
Wild Food
Recipes
Home;
Back to TopWe pick our food as we need it. Fresh vegetables come from the garden. Spring is the leanest season as I haven't yet learned to grow much during the cool winters. Fresh fruit comes from the orchard. Stone fruit in summer. Apples in autumn. Citrus in late autumn and winter. Mulberries in spring. Unlike city living where you decide what you'd like to eat and then go and buy the ingredients, our menus are based upon whatever is harvested that day. Recipes are adapted or created to suit the available ingredients.
Back to TopWe have built a small cellar by enclosing and insulating one end of the garden shed. A vine has been planted over the shed to help keep it cool in summer. The cellar is dark and cool and used to store our excess food. Pumpkins are dried in the sun and kept in the cellar.
Bottling. Excess fruit is processed in a Fowler's Vacola preserving unit. Vegetables are not usually bottled as health warnings have been given about the dangers of food poisoning from bottled vegetables. Tomatoes are the exception to this rule.
Drying. Excess vegetables are sliced, blanched and dried in an electric dehydrator. Herbs are usually dried in a dark, airy environment. Drying reduces the volume of produce and is therefor a very efficient way of storing food.
Freezing. Many excess vegetables are blanched and frozen. Chicken meat is also frozen.
Preserving. Jam, marmalade, chutney, pickles, cordial are made when there is a glut of fruit or vegetables.
Wine. I have tried making wine. The results have been mostly drinkable but rather sweet and syrupy. The bottles tend to blow the corks out in hot weather so I not doing any wine making for the moment. I intend making some ginger beer one day.
Bush lemons, persimmons and plums are collected if the birds leave us any! We used to collect blackberries but Alan has eradicated most of the bushes.