Pickling Your Vegetables For Long Term Preservation

One of the most popular ways to extend food life is to pickle it. Pickling is the process of preserving food through fermentation in a brine. Many vegetables get pickled or made into relish including cucumbers, okra, peppers, summer squash, unripe cantaloupe, watermelon rind, tomatoes, eggs, onions, garlic, etc, etc. Pickling lowers the PH to less than 4.6, which is sufficient to kill most bacteria and is somewhat easier to do than canning in that the vegetables do not have to be completely sterile to pickle.

You will need to buy some equipment up front but after your initial investment, you should not need anything but a few ingredients to pickle your food. You will need a large pot that is big enough to boil water and mostly submerge the jars in order to seal them. You can seal the jars one at a time or get something big enough to do several at once. Buy as many 1 QT canning/mason jars as you think you will need (I buy them by the case), just make sure they have rings to seal the lids. Though the process is not too difficult, it makes sense to make as many jars as possible at one time, given you have enough vegetables.

Now that you have your equipment, and hopefully picked some fresh veggies from your organic garden, you are ready to pickle. There are thousands of recipes for pickling, and different nuances according to the different vegetables. It would be impossible to cover everything, but there are numerous detailed books about pickling available to give you ideas and guidance. My favorites are a combination of multiple recipes that I have tried over the years. What follows is a very basic recipe that will work for just about vegetable, but it should be considered a pickle recipe:

Pickling Ingredients:
- 7 wide mouth quart jars, lids & rings

- fresh dill (keep the heads on the stems)

- cucumbers (washed/scrubbed). I use pickling cucumbers, about the size of the average pickle.

- garlic cloves (jalepenos, small peppers and onion can also be added)

Brine:
- 8 ½ cups of water

- 2 ¼ cups white vinegar

- ½ cup pickling salt

Pickling Directions:
Do all of this before filling your jars -

1. Wash the jars in hot, soapy water. Rinse and fill with hot water. Set aside

2. Fill canning kettle half full with hot tap water. Set on burner over high heat

3. In a medium sauce pan, fit lids and rings together, cover with water, bring to a simmer (you are make them sterile).

4. In a large pan, bring the brine (water, vinegar and salt) to a boil. After it boils, turn off the heat.

5. Fill jars - place a layer of dill at the bottom of every jar, along with a clove or two of garlic (if you are using it). Tightly load cukes from your fresh organic garden into the jar to the neck of the jar. You may need 2 layers to achieve this. Put a few more sprigs of dill & garlic to the top.

6. Pour in brine, leaving about a half inch from the top.

7. Screw on lid w/ ring gasket, making sure it is tightly sealed.

8. Place jars in a pan (or canner) with water just to the neck of the jars

9. Bring water almost to a boil (should be about 15 minutes, depending)

10. Remove jars, set on a dish towel and cover with dish towel & let cool.

11. Check for seal (indented lid). If they are not sealed, you can try re-sealing them in the near boiling water.

12. Label the jars/lids with content, date, recipe (so you will know which ones you like better).

13. Store in a cool, dark place

Your cucumbers will be ready to eat after 2 weeks and will keep for months. You will find that there is some variance in texture and taste as they age, so you may wind up preferring to age them longer. If you were not able to get any of the jars to seal, you will want to refrigerate them immediately and you can eat the contents after a couple days. Unsealed jars will not keep well for very long.

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Posted in: Pickling,Preservation,Vegetables

Fun Facts About Fruits and Vegetables For Kids

Did you know that there are purple potatoes? They get this colour from the anthocyanins in them which are also found in berries such as blueberries, blackberries and blackcurrants, as well as purple or black carrots? These anthocyanins have powerful antioxidant properties which help protect us against cancer. The poor potato was not well received in Europe when it was first introduced in the 15th century and in one town in France and edict was passed forbidding people to grow potatoes because it was thought (wrongly) that they caused leprosy. Later the queen of France, Marie-Antoinette and the ladies of her court wore potato flowers in the hair.

Across the English Channel, the ladies of James I's (James VI's of Scotland) wore carrot tops in their hair as decorations. You can eat carrot tops as they are rich in vitamin K which carrots do not contain. Purple and red carrots are wonderful and taste sweeter than orange ones. There are yellow carrots too, but all carrots were purple until the 16th century when the Dutch bred the orange ones from mutant carrots in honour of their royal family the House of Orange.

Broccoli and cauliflower are actually flowers, although we eat them as vegetables. George W. Bush hates broccoli.

Peas were eaten dried by European peasants as the fresh ones were very expensive. They kept them for the winter months when they were dried, and even when eating fresh peas became popular in Britain in the 17th century, the ordinary people couldn't afford them. When Catherine de Medici left Italy to marry Henri II of France, she took piselli novelli with her. These were the tiny peas that the French instantly took too and called them petit pois (little peas) by which name they are still known today. Here's an anonymous rhyme about the difficulty of eating fresh green peas:

"I eat my peas with honey,

I've done it all my life.

It makes the peas taste funny,

But it keeps them on my knife."

Did you know that Norma Jean Baker, who was better known as the actress Marilyn Monroe was crowned Artichoke Queen in 1947 in Castroville California? The artichoke grows on a plant that looks like a thistle and is considered a gourmet vegetable. It comes from Italy originally and the head of the plant turns towards the sun just as sunflowers do.

In Southern India, eggplants cooked over a flame with onions, chilies, salt and rice are thought to prevent you from catching chicken pox. Eggplants or aubergines are related to the tomato and potato.

Fruit can be interesting too, for example, there is a snake fruit which is called this because its skin looks like a snake's, with scales (or it looks as though it has scales). The fruit itself is actually white, like a lychee.

A banana doesn't actually come from a tree, but a very tall herb which can grow to around twenty feet high. These plants don't have a very stable root system so you can actually knock over a banana tree.

An apple a day may very well keep the doctor away, especially if you eat the skin as this contains most of the nutrients. There are more than 7,000 varieties of apple grown around the world, and if you were to plant 100 apple trees from the seeds taken from the apples of one apple tree, none of them would be exactly the same.

The tomato is a fruit although we use it as a vegetable, and it was once thought to be a "wolf peach" described by ancient Roman writers. The wolf peach wasn't a peach at all but something that looked pretty and contained poison to kill the wolves which ate them.

The only fruit to have its seeds on the outside is the strawberry!

There are a lot more interesting things to discover about fruit and vegetables, they aren't as boring as you might have thought.

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Posted in: About,Facts,Fruits,Vegetables

Getting Children to Eat Vegetables

There are several ways of getting our child to eat fruit and vegetables, but you should think carefully about why your child doesn't like them; is it the texture, or the flavour or just the appearance that is unappealing? Think back to when you were young, while your parents might have forced you to eat a particular vegetable, why didn't you like it? You may love things like asparagus and brussel sprouts now and cabbage too, but did you when you were a child? Perhaps not. Our tastes change as we grow older, but there is not much point in trying to get a child to eat a strong-flavoured vegetable when others might be more palatable.

Try taking your child shopping and if he or she shows an interest in an exotic fruit or vegetable, buy it and get the child to taste it, after all the curiosity was there, so it may be to the child's taste. You may have to learn how to cook it if it is a 'new' vegetable. But you can enlist your child's help in the kitchen. Children who cook will take more of an interest in what they have produced than in whatever you have cooked for them. They can cook baby carrots or corn under supervision and can learn how to make a dip for these veggies too. You can try hummus, made from garbanzo beans (chickpeas) and sesame seeds, as this often appeals to children.

Buy fresh peas in their shells and ask your child to help you prepare them. When children are involved vegetables become less alien to them. Do the same with broad beans, and get your child to help prepare French or green beans too.

You can get your child to juice carrots and beets and make their own fresh fruit smoothies. I have never known a child refuse strawberries, or a banana, and if you pretend that you are monkeys, bananas usually go down well. You can nibble on carrots and lettuce like a rabbit with younger children and work your way through things that you can honestly claim that animals can eat. If you can make a game of eating children usually respond positively.

Buy a recipe book for kids and start allowing your child into the kitchen to cook under supervision of course. You can sit with your child and create a menu on the understanding that everyone will eat the food that has been cooked. Encourage your child to make a face with vegetables- red tomato or pepper strips for a mouth, a piece of cucumber for the nose, small radishes for the eyes and grated carrots for hair, with hard boiled eggs for ears for example.

A study undertaken at University College London by Lucy Cooke et al in 2010 found that children who were rewarded for eating fruit and vegetables, either with a lot of praise or a sticker, actually continued to eat the vegetables and like them even when the reward was no longer forthcoming. This may not be the ideal way of getting your child to eat fruit and vegetables but it seems to work.

Juice fresh fruit and vegetables and mix this into your baking products, muffins and breads, or make banana bread and carrot cake to tempt your child's palate.

Make pureed vegetable soups and mash carrots, or swedes or rutabaga with potatoes. Most kids love mashed potato and mashed vegetables are good if your child just doesn't like the texture of them when they are raw or boiled or steamed. Try to wean your child off junk food and give pieces of fruit instead of things like popcorn. If the child sees you eating things too, he or she will be more willing to try them, so be a good role model and eat your fresh fruit and vegetables too.

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Posted in: Children,Getting,Vegetables

How Juicing Fresh Vegetables Benefits Real People

Pressing the juices from produce, juicing, benefits you by allowing you to combine very good nourishment together with a hectic style of living.

"Eat your veggies," your mommy told you. We all know we need to, all of us even would like to, however...

Getting real, washing, peeling, as well as artfully arranging veggies for a salad requires time that is very scarce in your life. Next, you have to chew all this -- consuming more time than the preparing. Plus the selection is pretty minimal -- lettuce, all kinds of peppers, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes. Truly, what else? Sure, you'll find the "other" highly recommended vegetables; those dark green and leafy ones, and the ones with funny names (along with funnier tastes) which you could purchase, but do not. Boredom beats the unknown.

Juicing helps to solve many of the difficulties of eating your vegetables while maintaining the assets of salads. The two versions, salads and juices, keep the produce raw. No one disagrees that raw is actually the ideal way to go. With no cooking, valuable and fragile micronutrients will be preserved.

The overall health benefits of specific fresh vegetables tend to be highly recommended, albeit by numerous questionable "authorities" and many fewer reputable sources. However it is most likely that you at least operate on the "it can't harm and may help" belief regarding these kinds of claims, so that's one more reason to consume all that excellent produce -- if you simply had the time.

Here are a number of ways juicing benefits you:

Juicing benefit 1 -- Preparation time reduction is very genuine. In the juicing world, you still need to wash fresh vegetables going into the juicer, however, you can quickly chop all of them -- simply no art or even much uniformity is needed. Small or softer items may require almost no dicing, depending on the juice extractor. Little skill and little time is needed.

Juicing benefit 2 -- Eating time will be minimal. You can easily drink the juice in a quite small fraction of the time you will need to eat a salad! The juice can easily be imbibed all day long -- something you almost certainly don't want to do with a salad. And a glass of juice will go down much easier compared to a slippery concoction of those artfully carved salad pieces!

Juicing benefit 3 -- Boredom will be eradicated. Flavor combos from a juice maker are just limited by what is at the grocers. You can try things out. There are absolutely no criteria -- for instance "lettuce is the basic component." You'll be able to juice a single item or possibly a dozen, based on your tastes. The majority of recipes seem to use a half-dozen or fewer, but it is up to your taste buds alone.

Juicing benefit 4 -- You are able to cover up the disgusting stuff, but still get its nutrients. Juicing makes it easy to include a lot more variety in your diet plan. You know the list of those oh-so-good-for-you veggies you should consume, but do not, right? When you are juicing, it isn't difficult to also include the products you are not so fond of alone, for instance perhaps kale or collard greens. Actually, juicing is the one practical way you can access the wheat grass benefits. It can be astonishing just how much good-for-you stuff you can cover in a juice heavy in carrots or tomatoes. Do not like tomatoes -- simply no need to use them. Remember, there are no rules.

Juicing offers you real freedom, real taste, real fast. It is not only for "health nuts." Juicing benefits actual men and women.

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Posted in: Benefits,Fresh,Juicing,People,Vegetables

Buying Cheap Organic Vegetables

Do you love organic vegetables but find that they are too expensive? Well with a bit of research you can enjoy the great taste of organic vegetables without breaking the bank.

Firstly whilst your local supermarket may stock organic vegetables, it is probably the single most expensive place you could wish to buy them, the reason for this is supermarkets want to put you off buying them as they actually make less profit than on their cheaper goods, which they buy in bulk at a much lower price.

So stop shopping there for organic goods today!

The best places to source organic vegetables are specialty delis, farmers markets, farm shops and even car boot sales! Other good places to buy them from are local co-operative groups that grow them, although often to do this you will have to join one and get your hands dirty helping out planting and looking after the vegetables.

Shopping around can really pay off and these days you only need to look to the Internet to buy cheap organic vegetables, with many organic suppliers offering a box service, whereby you pay a fixed price for a box containing a variety of vegetables. These are great if you live in a city and there is no farmer's market or farm shop in sight.

Sometimes organic vegetables can seem expensive but only if you do not shop around for the best deal. It can take more time and effort but in general the food quality outweighs the downsides. Most people are happy paying a bit more for organic produce but do not want to pay double.

Shopping around for organic food normally means you will only end up paying a few pence more for the privilege of eating great tasting food.

For the very cheapest produce then look for people with honesty tables of produce outside of their houses, or go to car boot sales, which can often result in some really low priced organic goods.

Buying things when they are in season and then freezing them is also a good way to keep the cost down, and then use the frozen ones when they are out of season.

Joining an organic buying club is also a good idea as by buying in bulk, collectively you are able to get them at a very good price.

Alternatively you could simply look towards growing your own vegetables if you have the space. Indeed many people even in inner cities are now growing lots of vegetables in containers.

Just remember that to be organic you have to grow everything without normal pesticides and without using man made fertilizers.

Why not find out more about reasons to start Eating Organic Vegetables, and learn the secrets of Growing Organic Vegetables, also my site has a great vegetable calendar giving advice on exactly what vegetables to plant month by month, ideal for those new to vegetable gardening, as well as step by step vegetable growing guides.

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Posted in: Buying,Cheap,Organic,Vegetables