In order to eat as locally and healthily as possible I plan our menus around what’s ready in the garden.
Over the winter (if I’m on my game) leeks, herbs and Brussels sprouts are on the menu, as well as stored root vegetables, canning and frozen produce. As long as I can keep wood bugs and slugs out of the cold frame I harvest spinach and lettuce. Herbs are grown in sunny window pots, adding nutrients and fresh taste to winter meals.
Spring is nigh (finally!) so we’ll be eating peas, early cabbages, lettuce, spinach and asparagus as well as raspberries. In the summer we plan to eat cabbage, summer herbs, early potatoes and all the summer vegetables, doing a fair amount of canning to see us through next year’s winter.
Strawberries and cherries will also be ripe so I’ll have to stop David from filling up the freezer with meat. Late summer meals include whatever’s available in the garden: cucumbers, beans, melons, nectarines, apples and then pears. I have to pick the fruit quickly before earwigs get to them.
We always have too much to eat when crops become harvestable, so what we don’t use or give away, I preserve for winter use. This entails a lot of work, but come winter it’s a great feeling to figure out our meals around what I’ve preserved. Last year I froze several meals of cabbage rolls and many packets of grated zucchini to add to soup, as well as bags of berries and dried apples and tomatoes. Whew, what a lot of food we have! We certainly never go hungry and our grocery bill remains low.
With the glut of food, I’ve learned several ways to preserve our nutritious crops, including making potato starch, drying vegetables and then powdering them to add to soup, drying fruit, making fruit leather, canning homemade V8 juice and trying other new recipes.
It’s a great comfort knowing that producing so much of our own food preserves both our quality of life and budget.
Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.
