From Greg Atkinson

When I first discovered home preserving, I wanted to preserve everything in sight. That first year, nothing was safe. Apples from neglected trees all over the neighborhood were captured in jars of jelly and sauce. I didn’t wait for tomatoes to ripen; instead, I boiled them with spices and onions to make green tomato chutney. Even the notoriously prolific blackberry vines were hard-pressed to produce enough fruit for my insatiable need to make preserves.

That winter, my little laundry room turned pantry was filled with rows of jars. Dilled green beans, pale pie cherries, pickled carrot sticks, and jams and jellies galore made a colorful patchwork  of the room’s shelf-lined walls. But I wanted more.

When canning season ended, I scarcely noticed. I perused old books and found more ideas for preserving. Faded peaches from the grocery store bargain bin were transformed into more chutney. Flame grapes with vinegar and allspice became a strange little pickle, and cauliflower gleaned from a friend’s garden looked like something preserved in formaldehyde but tasted wonderful, I thought. It was clear to everyone but myself that I had gone overboard.

Finally, other projects commanded my attention, and I stopped preserving. Christmas came and I unburdened myself of a great many jars, transferring the problem of how to use these strange pickles and preserves to my friends. Months went by and I still had a generous year’s supply of home-canned goods.

When apples and blackberries began to ripen again, I still had jars of applesauce and jam from the year before. Only canned tomatoes, peaches, and raspberry jam were completely used up. Actually, several years went by before I used all the chutney I made that first year of canning, and my pantry has been known to harbor things that could well be considered antiques.

Now I know that the time between canning seasons is a chance to take stock of what’s there, what’s worth keeping and what’s not. Induced perhaps by a case of cabin fever, my wife Betsy and I clean out the pantry every winter. One year, behind cans of chicken broth, pineapple, and tomatoes, a spilled bag of pine nuts, and three opened bags of rice were some jars of preserves that had been with me for a very long time. There were, among other things, a jar of pickled beets and a couple of jars of faded pie cherries.

“Do you realize,” asked my wife, “that you have had these preserves longer than I’ve known you?” It is true that I had packed and moved with some of these jars three or four times, and I don’t move often. What I realized was that the preserves were like a diary.

I remembered picking the pie cherries from a big tree in Bellingham, where some friends of mine were renting an old bungalow on the edge of town. I had stood on a rickety ladder looking out over empty fields that are covered with houses now. A horse grazed in the pasture next door, and children played freeze-tag somewhere behind me. I would hear their laughter and their high-pitched voices, shrill and full of the fear and delight of being tagged. I could hear birds there too, and I had to pick and choose among the cherries because some of them had been pecked. There were no cherry trees where I grew up, and this was the first time I had ever picked cherries from a tree.

The day I picked those cherries, I took them to the little student apartment I had then, and I made a Danish cherry flan from a recipe I found in Larousse Gastronomique. I covered some of the cherries with a pint of vodka and spiked that jar with a scoop of sugar and a cinnamon stick to make what my friends with the tree called “cherry bounce.” The rest of the cherries I canned in pint-sized jars.

“Get rid of them,” I said after a moment. “We’ll never eat them. Toss them out!” And so we did. Out went the old pie cherries. Out too went jars of umber-colored corn relish and jars of pickled beets from a garden I had tended in the days when I was still a bachelor, more than a decade before. Everything went into the garbage disposal. “Disgusting,” I admitted.

“What a relief!” said Betsy.

“Yuck!” said son Erich, who had climbed up on his step stool to watch the canned goods go down the drain.

When all the jars were empty and clean and lined up on shelves in the little broom closet we call the rat room, I began to imagine all the ways I could fill them again. When summer comes, we’ll go to Yakima for tomatoes. Tomatoes are my best canned food. I bottle them with a splash of balsamic vinegar and a few leaves of basil. They are always gone long before spring.

Jams and jellies are also well received. We like plum jelly, made from Italian prunes just before they ripen, and Concord grape jelly made from grapes that grow on a viine in my in-laws’ backyard. Blackberry and raspberry jams disappear more slowly, but we like them too. My favorite jam is apricot. I like to spread it between the layers of a chocolate cake or bake it between layers of sweet cookie dough or brownie batter full of walnuts.

When the pantry was reorganized and the food we saved was neatly tucked away in bags or stowed in clean, dry jars, I felt inspired to cook again. The pasta was full of promise. The rice was no longer a burden, the jars of preserves were no longer frightening relics. Nearly forgotten treasures like a tin of saffron and an unopened can of whole-bean Italian coffee were pulled to the forefront, so that I would remember to use them. Everything looked good enough to eat. Then we started on the refrigerator.

Like the pantry, our refrigerator is typically stuffed. Some of what’s in there really shouldn’t be. The condiments alone take up most of the space: mayonnaise, three kinds of mustard, ketchup, teriyaki sauce, and three kinds of salsa. By the time everything that needed to be composted was removed and the shelves were wiped down, we were beginning to think about lunch. In the produce drawer there remained one good-looking sweet potato, half an onion, and half a bunch of kale. I determined at once that this would become a kind of stew to be served with rice. Sweet potatoes, cooked on the stovetop, become tender in an incredibly short time, so start the rice before you start the stew.

Organic Kale and Sweet Potato Stew Recipe

Serves 2

½ large organic yellow onion
1 large organic yam or sweet potato
4 or 5 leaves of organic curly green kale
2 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ cup water
¼ cup teriyaki sauce
1 cup organic rice, cooked according to package instructions

Peel onion and slice lengthwise into 1/8-inch slices; set aside. Peel sweet potato and cut it into 2-by-¼-inch matchsticks; set aside. Rinse kale and shake off excess water. Cut across line of stems into ¼-inch ribbons.

In a saucepan over high heat, heat oil and drop in sliced onion, sweet potato, and kale. With tongs, toss vegetables in hot oil 1 minute, or until wilted and just beginning to brown. Sprinkle dried ginger over mixture and toss for a few seconds to coat. Add water and teriyaki sauce all at once, then cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 10 minutes, or just until sweet potato is tender. Uncover, turn heat to high, and cook 1 minute, or until sauce surrounding vegetables is almost evaporated.

Serve hot with rice.
~
See also Dave’s Organic King Kale Recipes
~~
Greg Atkinson is author of West Coast Cooking, and The Northwest Essentials Cookbook, and lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Greg is Culinary Director of OrganicToGo.
Image Credit: Jelly Jars © Shelagh Duffett | Dreamstime.com
OrganicToBe.org | OrganicToGo.com
[Permanent Link] [Top]