She answered the one big question of us post-modernists, "Why can when you can freeze?" with "What happens if the electricity goes out?" Oh, good point! I came back from one trip to the UK to find we'd had no power in DC for 6 straight days. I lost about $500 worth of frozen food. If some of those frozen Indiana-picked blueberries had been converted to jams plus sauces and canned, I would not have been half so heart-broken. As it was, I had a freezer full of decaying mush. Lesson learned.
It was all part of the Free DC Urban Gardens lecture series at the Historical Society of Washington (HSW) and co-presented by DC Urban Gardeners, and Washington Gardener Magazine.
If you missed Liz's talk last weekend, don't feel blue, she has another event coming up on October 23-25. You can spend a weekend learning the basics of urban gardening, garden design and starting a community garden. The Introduction to Urban and Community Food Gardens course is $200 and you can learn more about it here.
BTW, the next in our Free DC Urban Gardens lecture series at the Historical Society of Washington (HSW) will be Raising Winter Greens by farmer Brett Grohsgal on September 19.
I got the bug for quick pickles. I did pickled carrots with jalepeno(yummy), english cucumbers with fresh dill (good), jicama with lavender(gross, what was I thinking?) and broccoli stems with garlic (surprisingly tasty) for a picnic. This weekend I'm going to try pickled grapes. One of those too weird not to give it a go recipes.
ReplyDeletePickled grapes? May work. Let me know your verdict.
ReplyDeleteAt local food dinner on Monday I tried a hunk of pickled melon - did not care for it, after reading the platter label more closely saw that it as musk-melon they had picked not watermelon rinds as I had thought.
Oh - the point about canning vs. freezing is excellent! I'd wondered about the virtues of one over the other, and the not-so-minor issue of power going out on the freezer hadn't occurred to me. Thanks very much for sharing that!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome, T Mama, and hurricane season coming at same time as harvest/canning time may be a good future reminder of why we do it.
ReplyDeleteDid you see today's Daily Candy about the canning class? Sounds like you need to put on your cub reporter hat and do some investigative journalism.
ReplyDeleteSaw that, FP, the DC Daily Candy link refers to hands-on canning classes at hillskitchen.com. Interesting, but bad timing for me -- others may want to check it out andreport back though.
ReplyDelete