WE old-timers (and Scott and I are that, having homesteaded in Vermont for nineteen years and in Maine for twenty-seven) are used to growing our own food and eating it summer and winter. Our larder is stocked from our garden, not from the stores. We live way out on the end of Cape Rosier on a rocky windswept point, sticking out into Penobscot Bay, twenty miles or more from the nearest village with shops and a bank (Blue Hill), and fifty miles or more from a city of size (Bangor). Our excursions to town are few and far between.
Those who live in large towns can run back and forth to the grocer's and supermarkets every other day for food they need. We grow our greens and roots, eat out of the garden in summer, and out of our large cellar and our sun-heated greenhouse in winter.
Generally speaking, stored or preserved foods are not in the same rank as fresh foods. Fresh vegetables from the garden, of course, have the highest nutritive value and are preferable to those preserved, dried, fermented, canned or frozen. But in our New England climate we must work out some method of storage through the cold season.
One of the early means of storage was a pit, lined and covered with hay or straw, held in place by boards and loose earth, and properly ventilated. Located on a knoll so that moisture would not accumulate, such storage pits proved to be reasonably frost-free. On sunny days, even in the middle of winter, one could open up the pits and take a portion of the contents for immediate use.
An alternative was to pick a side-hill location close to the farm buildings, dig a hole into the hill, build a front door and a ventilator. The side-hill location, well-chosen, took care of water accumulation. The part of the storage cellar dug into the side-hill below frost level had the advantage of earth temperatures (in New England, in the forties). The part of the storage cellar protruding from the hillside should be double-boarded or in some way protected against summer heat and winter cold.
We have never had to dig an outside root cellar, as we have been lucky enough to have cool-enough, warm-enough cellars. But all storehouses must be proof against invading rodents such as rats, mice, squirrels, raccoons and skunks.
We will never forget one of our winters in Maine when we had stored twelve bushels of apples in the cellar, supposed to be rat- and mouseproof. The apples were layered with abundant semidry autumn leaves below and above the fruit. We closed the door of the cellar and went off on a transcontinental lecture tour. On our return, four months later, we went down to the cellar to look over our dozen boxes of carefully stored apples. The floor was covered with leaves, inches deep. We felt in the boxes. Of the hundreds of stored apples only one apple remained—a fine specimen of Northern Spy. We never saw the marauder (probably a rat or a squirrel) nor could we find out where it got in and out. It had gone from box to box chewing up the apples and leaving some of the chewed pulp, the leaves, and one lone apple as a token for us latecomers. What a fine winter the animal must have had!
We take our beets, carrots, onions, garlic, turnips, rutabagas from the ground in the fall when they are mature. We dig them out, cutting off the green an inch or so from the top of the roots so they will not bleed. We store them in our root cellar in open boxes or baskets lined with dry leaves. We alternate layers of vegetables and leaves, no root touching another, so that if one root rots it will not affect its neighbors. We do the same with potatoes and apples. They will all keep fresh and crisp to the next harvest time. Periodically during the winter we go over the boxes (perhaps once a month) using up first those roots that show evidence of early deterioration.
The best temperature for storing in this open-boxed way is forty to forty-five degrees Fahrenheit. A centrally heated basement with a furnace in the cellar is too warm. No vegetable or fruit or canned produce has ever frozen in our forty-five-degree cellar. Freezing and thawing is what breaks the cells in plants or fruits. An even temperature allows plants and roots to survive in garden or house cellar or root cellar. The object is to keep them as "live" as possible for as long as possible.
Squash and pumpkin do not last as long as the root crops, but we can keep them (on wooden shelves or in baskets or boxes) into the New Year. Tomatoes and green peppers we keep in open boxes or baskets until Christmas; these are not stored in leaves. We have never found a good way of keeping cabbage, cauliflower and celery beyond the end of the year.
We have tried storing our root vegetables in sawdust and in sand, and prefer our leaf treatment. We gather the leaves in early fall, when they drop from the trees, push them into old maple-sap buckets we have kept from Vermont sugaring days, and keep two or three dozen pails in the cellar till we find time to put the roots to bed for the winter.
We feel that storing, processing or preserving foods is a poor alternative at best to the raw fresh thing. But choosing to live in New England with its delightful procession of the seasons, we take the bitter with the sweet, and the cold with the balmy. We had to work out some way to preserve our "cold weather vegetables" through the long winters.
There are four ways to keep spring, summer and fall garden produce: we can store as above described, in leaves; we can dry certain produce; we can preserve in glass jars; and we can freeze produce. Drying involves the least work and has other real benefits.
Although leaf vegetables only contain about 2 percent of protein, it is worth pointing out—and this is often overlooked—that the dry matter of such vegetables contains more than 20 percent protein.
PYKE MAGNUS,
Man and Food, 1970
Dried products do not require expensive containers, and they can be stored almost indefinitely, under proper conditions, in relatively small space. One hundred pounds of fresh vegetables may be reduced to an average of ten pounds by drying. Drying does not seem to injure the nutritive value of foods.
HENRY GARY,
A Manual of Home-Making, 1922
Peas and beans we leave to dry in their pods on the plants in the garden, and then we store them, shelled, in bottles or tins on the pantry shelf. These are used for winter suppers or as the base for year-round soups.
We have dried blueberries on cheese-clothed trays, put in the sun for two days, then into a very low oven till really dry. We have kept these berries in a cloth sack and when soaked have used as raisins.
Cranberries can be dried a little in the sun, then put into sterile dry bottles with tight covers. They will keep thus for years. An old recipe I read said that "cranberries will keep all winter in a firkin of water in the cellar." This we have never tried.
Pumpkin or squash can be dried by peeling and cutting into thin strips or slices. Spread out on a screen, they can dry in the sun, or in or over a moderate oven. Store in cloth bags in mouseproof containers. When wanted, soak overnight in cold water and cook the next day till tender in the same soak-water.
Apples can be cored, sliced and hung on strings in a warm kitchen. We also dry our herbs by hanging them in branches from the kitchen timbers, and strip them when wanted for teas or cooking. The herbs we dry in this way are parsley, celery leaves, dill, tarragon, basil, thyme, oregano, sage, summer savory, rosemary, hyssop, and many mints.
Our rose hips are the fruit of the Rosa Rugosa, which we found growing on the coast of Maine. We have cultivated the bushes until they now grow five or six feet tall and produce inch-size pods in the fall after the roses have bloomed.
To dry, gather when the hips are bright red-orange and still firm to the touch. Cut hips in half and dig out seeds with a knife or pointed spoon. (This is a tedious job. Have someone read aloud or play some music while at it.) Spread on a tray in a lukewarm oven or on top of a warm stove. When thoroughly dry, put in an earthenware container or cloth sack and keep in a dry cool place. They can be pulverized and the powder used in teas or soups. (I also cut citrus rinds in strips, dry in a low oven and pulverize for teas or fruit soups.)
Even rhubarb can be dried!
Rhubarb, when well-prepared, will keep good for an indefinite period. The stalks should be cut into pieces about an inch in length. These pieces should then be strung on a thin twine, and hung up to dry. Rhubarb shrinks in drying more than any other plant, and when dry strongly resembles pieces of soft wood. When wanted for use it should be soaked in water all night, and the next day stewed over a slow fire.
SOLON ROBINSON,
Facts for Farmers, 1869
I have not tried this way of drying rhubarb, but I have canned rhubarb cold and uncooked. I cut the stalks into two-inch pieces and pack them tightly into a sterilized but cold jar, filling it to overflowing with cold water. Seal tight and put in cellar. This will keep at least a year. Sweeten when serving. I won't say it's as good as fresh rhubarb!
Following are old-time recipes for drying plums, cherries, pumpkins, and tomatoes.
The most kindely way to dry all manner of plums or Cherries in the Sunne: If it be a small fruite, you must dry them whole, by laying them abroad in the hote Sunne, in stone or pewter dishes, or iron or brasse pans, turning them as you shall see cause. But if the plum be of any largnesse, then give eyther plum a slit on each side; and if the Sunne does not shine sufficiently during the practice, then dry them in an Oven that is temperately warm.
SIR HUGH PLATT, Delightes for Ladies, 1602
Pumpions are prepared for eating in various ways. The Indians boil them whole, or roast them in ashes. The French and English slice them, and put the slices before the fire to roast; when they are roasted, they generally put sugar on the pulp.... The Indians, in order to preserve the Pumpions for a very long time, cut them in long slices, which they fasten or twist together, and dry them either by the sun, or by the fire in a room. When they are thus dried, they will keep for years together, and when boiled, they taste very well. The Indians prepare them thus at home and on their journies and from them the Europeans have adopted this method.
PETER KALM,
Travels into North America, 1771
Scald, peel and stew tomatoes. Then spread on earthen plates and dry in sunshine or in a slow oven. It will resemble the pulp of dried peaches. When wanted for use in winter, soak a quantity in cold water and let soak up on back of stove. Sweetened, it is an excellent and cheap sauce.
SOLON ROBINSON,
Facts for Farmers, 1866
On our pantry shelves many staples are stored: raisins and prunes and nuts; grains such as wheat berries, rolled oats, rye, millet, barley, buckwheat, bran, alfalfa, rice, lentils, mung beans, popcorn, in small wooden barrels; sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and sesame in cans; bottles or cans of safflower, peanut and olive oils; maple syrup, honey, molasses; vinegar; peanut butter; seaweed. It constitutes a veritable health food store.
The shelves in our cellar are filled with around five hundred quart jars of applesauce, rose hip nectar and raspberry juice, soup stock, tomato juice.
With the coming of the so-called "self-sealing" glass fruit jars every pioneer family sought to can a quantity of fruit each season. These jars were too expensive, however, for the average frontier householder to be able to afford more than a few dozen at most. It is an interesting commentary on the size of pioneer families that every frontier housewife insisted upon half-gallon jars, asserting that the quart size did not hold enough to go more than half way around in serving her family. Yet, the modern housewife virtually always demands either pint or quart jars, usually the former, and the half-gallon size has almost disappeared from the market.
EDWARD EVERETT DALE,
The Food of the Frontier, 1947
Whatever vegetables or fruit I put up is done the open-kettle way—not processed in a hot water bath. The latter is more trouble and takes more time and I have never lost jars through souring or molding unless I had used an old rubber for sealing or an imperfect jar or cover.
To can applesauce I start the operation by filling the inside of a hot oven with clean quart jars from the cellar. They heat and sterilize while I prepare the sauce, cutting the apples into quarters, leaving on the skins but eliminating cores and any bad spots. Toss into cold water to wash. Put in kettles with minimum water. Cover. Cook till tender. Take a quart bottle out of the oven, set it on wooden board or dry cloth. To prevent jar from cracking when the hot apples are poured in, stand a long silver knife or spoon in the hot jar to act as conductor of the heat. Spoon the boiling hot apples from the first kettle into the jar, working down the jar with the knife to fill in any air bubbles. Fill right to the top. Cover with a tight seal, and bottle the next kettle full of sauce. When bottles cool, store in cellar. Sweeten to taste when serving.
Fruit juices and rose hip nectar are prepared in much the same way. Heat jars in oven. Fill each jar one-third full with boiling water, remembering to insert the metal knife before pouring in the hot water. Add a big tablespoon of honey, dissolving it by stirring. Drop in a cup and a half of fruit (blueberries, rose hips, blackberries, grapes, strawberries, raspberries). Fill jar to top with boiling water. Screw cover on tight and store away. Under the best conditions (with no interruptions and everything at hand) Scott and I can put up twenty quart jars in thirty minutes when we work at it together: he at the stove, keeping containers of water boiling and bringing me the jars, covers, rubbers and water.
We find that these bottled fruit juices keep indefinitely in the cool cellar. Some of them (especially the rose hips) seem to mature and have a better flavor in the second or third year. In any case, they do not deteriorate in that time. The juice from the rose hip bottles has such a delicate flavor I call it "faery food" and serve it in tiny, two-inch glasses as a liqueur. I gave it one time to an old Maine neighbor friend, who swigged it down and said, "Umph. Ain't got much kick, 'as it?" Well, the kick is in the vitamin C it contains—many times as much as fresh citrus juice.
We drink our homemade rose hip juice, slightly diluted, every morning at breakfast. The hips that are left in the bottle we store in the refrigerator till we have a quart or two. We whirl these in the blender with a minimum of water, put them through a sieve, using the resulting puree as a base for rose hip soups. The thick seedy remainder we drop in spoonfuls onto pie plates or cookie sheets and dry on the back of the stove. When crumbly we add this to our herb teas.
I do not bottle corn or beans, as they are the most difficult to keep even if pressure-cooked; although corn canned with an equal amount of tomatoes is fairly foolproof.
Soup stock and tomato juice I make thusly. Clean and quarter tomatoes, not peeling. (I put up almost a bushel at a time.) Fill your biggest kettles with the tomatoes, adding no water. Let the tomatoes cook down while you clean and chop up two or three bunches of celery, using all stalks but the heart (which I save for salad) and any leaves that are too tough and old. Peel and chop a dozen onions and great handfuls of parsley and some green peppers if you have them. Add these to your by-now cooked-down tomatoes. Boil moderately until the celery (your toughest item) is forkable. When done, strain off the liquid, setting aside the solid part for later. Heat the liquid to boiling again, adding a small bundle of assorted fresh herbs which you fish out before bottling. Ladle the boiling tomato juice into hot sterilized jars (remembering to put in a silver knife to conduct the heat), fill to tip-top, seal, cool and put away.
The thick residue should now be reheated in kettles with a minimum of water added, to prevent scorching. As soon as it boils in one kettle, fill jar, knifing down to prevent air bubbles. Halfway through the bottle add a teaspoon of sea salt, then continue filling to top. Seal. Continue the process, kettle after kettle, till all thick material is used up. This thick stock, as well as the liquid, is handy for soups throughout the year.
A friend, Madith Smith, sent me her recipe for tomato soup stock which might be better than mine as it is less cooked, but one needs a blender. She heats a half bushel of tomatoes, unskinned, quartered, till soft, and strains off the juice (apparently not using the tomato residue). She then puts in a blender 4 chopped onions, 1 head chopped celery and 2 green peppers, adding 3 teaspoons of salt and 3 teaspoons sugar (!), with enough juice to churn. This mixture she adds to her plain tomato juice, which has been cooking. She boils it all together, then bottles.
My freezing requires no time charts. I freeze peas (young sugar peas in their pods or regular shelled peas) by dropping them into boiling water. When they begin to change color they are blanched enough and I lift them out or strain them through a sieve (keeping the liquid for the next batch of peas or for the next soup). I spread them out to cool or dip them into ice water, then pack them in bags or cartons and put them in the freezer. The same may be done with young green beans.
Here is a method of no blanching which works both with peas or green beans. Put raw in a freezer container (box or bag), cover with cold water, leaving space for expansion. Seal and freeze. When you're ready to eat the peas or beans, put the frozen block of vegetables in a pan and heat till piping hot.
Corn need not be blanched for freezing. Remove the husks and put directly into freezing bags, without any water or washing. To be eaten, put cobs in a shallow baking dish, spread with butter and bake in a hot oven for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Young zucchini squash can be put single-layered on pans and frozen in freezer, then transferred to bags or boxes and stored in freezer. To cook, chop into pieces and stir-fry in butter or oil with a few herbs. A fancier way for zucchini is to cut up the raw squash into half-inch chunks, and simmer with some ripe red tomatoes and some sliced onions. Add a few leaves of basil and sprigs of oregano. Cool and put in containers in freezer.
Frozen asparagus, when thawed and cooked, become limp and tasteless. I serve it straight from the freezer. If eaten by hand in the semifrozen stage, before the stems thaw, it is a delicious, unique icy hors d'oeuvre. Some guests have called it "asperge glace."
Whole tomatoes (the small plum or cherry size) should also be eaten before completely thawed. I pack jars full of the raw fruit and put them directly into the freezer. I also simmer large tomatoes, quartering them so that they will break up better, and ladle them into jars for freezing. These barely cooked tomatoes are indispensable for use in soups and stews.
Cucumber slices can be packed in pint jars and frozen with onion slices and vinegar. They also can be eaten semithawed.
Shell beans (green beans that have matured on the vines but not yet dried) I boil and cool and freeze in containers. They are one of our most useful staples for winter.
Quantities of parsley, chopped up with celery, onion and green pepper, is a pleasant thing to find when digging through the freezer in midwinter.
Strawberries and blueberries and cherries are the easiest of all to freeze. I don't even wash them if they come from our own place. I just pour them from the quart basket into cellophane bags or cardboard cartons and pack them away in the freezer. Peaches I peel and slice and stir up with a bit of maple syrup or honey and store in cottage cheese containers.
All so far mentioned has been indoor storage of fruits and vegetables. We also have a sun-heated greenhouse that stays green all winter with parsley, lettuces, leeks and carrots, rare additions to our menu in midwinter. The outside garden carries over, through the bitterest weather, kale, brussels sprouts and often spinach and other hardy greens, to the coming of spring. I can say we eat our own food year-round, with only intermittent excursions off the place to buy extras. The imported additions to our home food supply are nice but not necessary: citrus, avocados, nuts, raisins, dates, prunes. Most of these, along with oil, butter, cheese, and grains, we can order from our local co-op.
It goes without saying that if possible we prefer to grow all our own food and have it "garden fresh," but in our climate this is not feasible. We therefore have worked out these various ways to store, dry, freeze, can and otherwise preserve what foods are not eaten straight from the garden.
Our homegrown food enables us to live simply, frugally and healthfully what we call our Good Life. Scott and I have kept hale and hearty for more than half a century eating this way. It may be worth a try for you to more than scan these recipes of simple food for simple people.
This little work would have been a treasure to herself when she first set out in life, and she therefore hopes it may prove useful to others. In that expectation it is given to the Public.
A Lady, A New System of Domestic Cookery Formed upon Principles of Economy, 1812