Home grown asparagus can be cut for canning the second spring after planting. The harvest time lasts 4 to 6 weeks and begins when temperatures rise above 55°F. Then asparagus sends up stalks from its thick underground roots. Asparagus stalks grow 2 to 3 inches a day in cool weather, 7 to 8 inches a…
Preserve
Canning, freezing, and drying - you can have harvest fresh flavors on your table all year long. Here are our easy tips to can, freeze, and dry your favorite vegetables, herbs, and fruits for future meals. And visit the Index to see a complete list of all of the articles at Harvest to Table.
How to Make Orange Marmalade
Orange marmalade is the most popular marmalade. Marmalade is a soft translucent jelly preserve quite simply made from fruit, water, and sugar. Marmalade looks like jam but it contains thin fruit slices or diced fruit suspended in the jelly. Many say the fine flavor of the Seville orange makes the best marmalade. But you can…
Maple Syrup: Kitchen Basics
Use maple syrup as a replacement for sugar or as a flavoring for desserts such as pies, soufflés, mousses, and cakes. When you use maple syrup to replace sugar, reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe by approximately a half a cup for every cup of syrup used. You know maple syrup as a…
How to Preserve Lemons
Lemon is the most common accompaniment for fish and other seafood dishes. It’s interchangeable with vinegar for many sauces and salad dressings. Here is a way to preserve lemons for use as flavoring in marinades, salad dressings, and many fish and stew recipes. You will find the flavor a bit salty, pleasantly fermented, and just…
How to Make Old-Fashioned Applesauce
McIntosh and Granny Smith are two apples that are slightly tart and juicy and well suited for cooking and applesauce making. (Once I have the applesauce, it’s hard to resist the baking up a dozen applesauce muffins.) McIntosh is an East Coast and Midwest favorite. Granny Smith, originally from Australia is a West Coast favorite. It’s…
How to Make the Best Tasting Grape Juice
The secret to making delicious homemade grape juice is to never boil the grapes. Grape juice reduces bad cholesterol, helps maintain healthy blood pressure, prevents damage to blood vessels in your heart, and reduces the risk of blood clots. Do you see a down side to drinking fresh-made grape juice? Concord grapes are great for…
How to Make Old-Fashioned Jams—Really Simple
Strawberry jam, plum jam, peach jam, blueberry jam, grape jam—any fruit can be cooked with sugar to make jam. Late summer is home-made jam season—unless you grow apricots and then mid-summer is jam season. My Santa Rosa plum tree is a jam factory in September. Whatever fruit you grow or buy at the farm market…
Corn, Herb, and Tomato Relish
Fresh corn, herb, and tomato relish is a mix that comes together naturally as the summer harvest peaks. When sweet corn kernels can be cut from the ears and popped in your mouth as a garden snack—well, that is the same time you are going to find meaty tomatoes ripe on the vine. For this…
How to Sun-Dry and Oven-Dry Tomatoes
Sun-dry tomatoes or oven-dry tomatoes to use for seasoning in salads, soups, stews, casseroles, mixed vegetables, and snacks. You can also rehydrate dried tomatoes for use in cooking. Choose firm, ripe, full-flavored tomatoes that are heavy for their size. Tomatoes with a high acid content dry best. Excellent tomato varieties for drying are San Marzano…
How to Freeze Ripe Tomatoes
Freeze the bounty of tomatoes you don’t eat fresh this summer for use in cooking next winter. Freeze tomatoes whole or cut into wedges. Wash and dry tomatoes for freezing and cut out any bad spots or bruises. Place whole or sliced tomatoes on a baking sheet and put the sheet into the freezer. Once…
