Farmers Markets Can Be A Great Source For Putting Up
by admin
Posted on 14-11-2020 08:12 AM
Handling and storing fresh fruits
Gardeners and other lovers of fresh produce are often interested in extending the season's bounty by learning more about preserving fruits and vegetables at home. Ohio state university extension family and consumer sciences teach the basics of home canning and preservation through demonstrations and workshops. So do lots of other states. We emphasize the science behind preservation so that everyone who cans or freezes fresh fruits and vegetables understands why certain procedures must be followed precisely to ensure a high-quality, safe product that they and their family can enjoy.
There are lots of benefits when you get good at storing food: you reduce food waste , which saves money and is better for the environment. Fruits and vegetables will stay fresh longer. You can buy things in bulk or in season, which will save money. And you can use them over a longer period of time without rushing, which can reduce stress.
Farm Fresh Fruits and Vegetables
Food placed in the refrigerator doesn't spoil for some time. That's why people who have refrigerators could buy a whole week supply of food. Meat, fish, vegetables, and fruits can be kept in the freezer for a long period of time without spoiling them. But when it comes to storing food in a root cellar you have to do something different. You have to take steps to preserve your food like canning, dehydrating and such. The best food to start with is farm fresh fruits and veggies. And the local farmers market is a great place to get that food for several reasons.
First of all you may not garden but still want to put up. Secondly even when you garden lots of the food ripens in small harvests throughout the season. But its way easier to pull out all the gear to put up at one time. Buying at the farmers market makes this way easier. You can also save money because you are buying things in season.
Mediterranean cuisine is considered the most useful since its main ingredients are fresh vegetables and fruits, fish, seafood, and greens. Mediterranean housewives use olive oil for dressing and frying, add it to marinades, and grease bread and tortillas with it. The diet in the mediterranean cuisine is extremely balanced, it provides the body with all the necessary vitamins, minerals, trace elements, fatty acids, and fiber. Eating this way, you can maintain your health at a decent level to a great old age and lose weight without hard diets, while maintaining youth and beauty. Packing things in olive oil is a great way to preserve food and has been used in this way for thousands of years.
Fresh, raw and organic foods are very popular today, as people try to make their diets more healthful and natural, but there can still be a place in your pantry for some of the now-to-be-dreaded, processed foods. As a minimum, you probably will want to keep some kind of broth or bouillon, canned tomatoes, vegetables and fruits, as well as canned beans, even if you aren't stocking a root cellar. Please note that the concept of "processed foods" includes canning and freezing because some of the nutrition is depleted in the process. But, in an emergency food is good to have, so go ahead and stock those shelves!
Dried food does not taste the same as fresh food does. Moisture can cause dried foods left in the food in the drying process or allowed in during storage can cause mold on food. Overly dried fruits, vegetables and meats can be exceptionally hard, often to the point where they do not soften. Texture is often noticeably changed. Jerky for instance will never be made into a regular piece of meat. Fruit leathers will never become fruit or fruit sauce again. The dried product would rot before it softened.
The natural canning resource book states: “while some nutrients are lost during canning, recent research has shown that refrigerating fresh fruits and vegetables also results in nutrient losses, especially of fragile vitamins like vitamin c. For example, broccoli loses 50 percent of its vitamin c and vitamin a (in the form of beta carotene) after five days of refrigeration, similar in scale to the loss of vitamin c during cooking and canning. This is because plant foods are alive and thus continue to metabolize nutrients during storage.
One study found that freeze-drying strawberries resulted in zero loss of vitamin c and phenolic content an minimal losses in total antioxidant capacity (tac) – only 8%. In contrast, fresh strawberries chilled for equal time showed a vitamin c loss of 18%, a tac loss of 23% and a massive 82% loss in phenolic content.”
Vitamins b and c are lost in the freezing process. Antioxidants, which protect you from cell damage, are also lower in frozen fruits than they are in fresh fruits. Vitamins a, e, carotenoids, fiber, minerals, and proteins, however, retain their values in frozen fruits and vegetables. Freezer burn can affect texture and flavor. Foods frozen in containers that are not designed for freezer use can be exposed to air. Because of this exposure to air, damaging ice crystals form on the food. The cells in the frozen food rupture, resulting in moisture, texture, and flavor loss. Freezer burn is the dried out, gray-brown edges or sections of meat, dried sections of baked goods, and the dulled coloring in vegetables and fruit. Eating freezer-burned foods is safe, but it is unappetizing.
How To Make and Freeze Your Own Fresh Fruit and Veggies
Canning can be a cost-effective way to preserve the quality of food at home. Commonly canned foods include applesauce, vegetables, jams and jellies, and baby purees. The basic steps for proper canning include thoroughly washing the fresh produce you’ll be using, peeling and hot packing if needed, adding acids like lemon juice or vinegar if the food isn’t already sufficiently acidic, and using self-sealing containers with lids. Canning jars are then processed by boiling water (for acidic fruits and vegetables) or using a pressure canner (for low-acid fruits and vegetables) for the appropriate amount of time. This helps prevent bacterial growth and kill any pathogens to ensure safety.
Frozen food requires some upkeep in that your freezer must continue to use electricity to maintain the food. However, there is a distinct advantage to freezing food for those that are health conscious. Frozen food is the most like fresh food in regard to nutritional content. In fact, frozen food properly stored and recently thawed looses very few nutrients. I find that fruit makes an excellent candidate for freezing, because it doesn't need to be thawed to be prepared as smoothies, which my children love! what an easy way to incorporate the daily fruit servings.
The most ancient method is drying, and it was employed early for fruits, grains, vegetables, fish, and meat. It was sometimes combined with parching, as in the oatmeal of scotland or the corn of the native american. Modern applications of this ancient device are seen in dried or dehydrated fruits and vegetables, milk, meat, and eggs. A more recent variation, known as freeze-drying, is now being used on such foods as instant coffee, meat, orange juice, and soup. The early method of drying was by direct exposure to the sun's rays; in modern industry the process is hastened by complex apparatus and by chemical agencies. The use of sugar was early combined with drying. Smoking, a method used mainly for fish and meat, combines the drying action with chemicals produced from the smoke, which form a protective coating. The process of heating was used centuries before its action was understood.
This site describes how to freeze fruits, vegetables, and juices, and how to refreeze frozen foods. Includes freezing fruit without sugar, with ascorbic acid, in syrup, and packed in sugar; and blanching vegetables.
Select fresh fruits or vegetables and sort them according to size and the degree of ripeness. Very ripe fruit should be used only for juices rather than for preserving. Any fruit or vegetables that have signs of decay should be discarded as this will lend to bacterial growth. Avoid mixing different types vegetables in the same jar. It's safer to preserve vegetables separately and mix them later. Wash the fruit or vegetables thoroughly to remove any dirt, fertilizer or pesticide residue.
Non-thermal processes for food preservation include freezing, modified atmosphere packaging, ozone treatment, high pressure treatments, irradiation, pulsed electric fields and drying. In fresh and processed meats and fish, to minimise oxidation of essential oils in foods, etc. Whilst ozone has proved a very successful microbicide in water treatment without the residual effects of chlorine, and experimentally has been proved effective against certain pathogens and spoilage flora, it has an oxidative effect on unsaturated fatty acids that may result in rancidity. It is also difficult to apply in practice in an open system. High pressure processing has also been extensively researched and is now successfully applied on some foods of high quality/price, such as fruit juices, and speciality cured meats. Monocytogenes is still a problem. It is an expensive process in terms of the equipment required and power needed. Although ionising irradiation (electron-beam or from a radioactive source) has been very extensively researched and proven highly effective against a very wide range of microorganisms, it is still not acceptable to consumers. Pulsed electric fields and high intensity pulsed light have also been subjects of research but have not as yet been applied in practice. Pulsed electric fields have problems of achieving uniform application to foods and pulsed light is essentially a surface effect treatment. The latter may achieve some application in reducing surface contamination of fresh produce. Either way you want to start with lots and lots of fresh fruit and veggies from the local farmers market.
It can be a busy time for preserving seasonal fruit; several apple trees with enormous yields keep me very busy making apple butter, jams, and chutneys through september and october. I also dry some apples for use over winter, can apple juice, and make apple cider and apple cider vinegar. Additionally, paper-wrapped fresh apples kept in my root cellar will last for a few months.
Want to save money and boost nutrition? try preserving fresh fruits and vegetables from your garden or the farmers market to use year-round -- no water bath or pressure cooker required! the trick: let your freezer do the work. And don't worry; we won't get too complicated here. Only the absolutely easiest ways to freeze and preserve fruits, vegetables, and herbs to begin! if you have a handful of freezer plastic bags, a mixing spoon, a refrigerator, and microwave or stove, you have everything you need to get started.
Dehydrating your vegetables is another way to store vegetables in containers or in bags giving you that extra space in your freezer. You can put your dehydrated veggies in your shelves pantry. You can also freeze and dehydrate your herbs and fresh fruit too. When foods are dehydrated they will restore the moisture back into themselves when cooking. Also this is another way to use your creativity with children when it comes to crafts. It is amazing what you can do with sliced dehydrated fruits and vegetables. Make sure you slice them first before you dehydrate them.
Ready to start freezing? check out this recipe featuring fresh fruit. Strawberry orange freezer jam 4 cups crushed strawberries (about 8 cups sliced strawberries) 1 tablespoon finely chopped orange zest (peel from 1 large orange) orange segments from 1 orange 2 cups powdered sugar 1 box less-sugar jam package (such as sure jell no sugar needed).
Freezing has advantages and disadvantages for food preservation. The two main advantages are that the procedure is simple and that it keeps food more like fresh produce than any other method of long-term preservation. A disadvantage is the cost to buy and operate a freezer. If you already have one for convenience, freezing inexpensive sources of produce can be an economical way to provide a variety of high quality fruits and vegetables during out-of-season months. Also, home frozen foods can be preserved to your own taste or special diet needs.
Pickling was a standard method of preserving foods. The simplest pickling was done with water, salt and an herb or two, but a variety of spices and herbs as well as the use of vinegar, verjuice (a highly acidic juice made by pressing unripe grapes, crab-apples or other sour fruit) or lemon led to a range of pickling flavors. Pickling might require boiling the foods in the salt mixture, but it could also be done by simply leaving the food items in an open pot, tub or vat of salt brine with the desired flavorings for hours and sometimes days. Once the food had been thoroughly infused by the pickling solution, it was placed in a jar, crock, or other airtight container, sometimes with a fresh brine but often in the juice in which it had marinated.
You can freeze almost all fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and meats, bread and cakes, and casseroles and clear soup. This is a great food preservation if you want to eat your produce without having to change its state i. E. Chopping and pureeing. Properly packing food in freezer containers or freezer papers prevents degradation to its quality. Damage in frozen food happens only when your food comes in touch with the dry air of the freezer. Despite the fact that freezer-damaged sustenance won’t hurt you, it makes the food taste terrible. Freezing might be the easiest method of food preservation, given you can buy and properly operate such expensive appliance.
Once you have your fresh produce in hand, acquired from your farmers market or garden bounty, you can choose the best way to put it up. No matter how you do it some of it should make it to your root cellar where you can use it throughout the year or during emergencies.