Food Sharing in Our Community

The 33′ Employee Dome at Growing Spaces and my personal 26′ Dome are in full harvest mode now and it’s a little tough for even the most enthusiastic veggie lover to consume as much produce as is ready to eat! For weeks now Richard Miller and I have had a little “co-op” going on, he brings in his fresh veggie overstock and I make something out of it and share back half with him. So far this cooperative effort has produce about 16 jars of fig jam and 10 jars of homemade salsa. Some of which I pressure can for long term storage and others we just toss in the fridge and eat almost as fast as I can make it. You may think that doesn’t sound like much but as things are just now in full harvest mode, those numbers will continue to grow. Personally, it’s a lot easier for me to knock out 4 jars of fig jam in an evening than to set up my kitchen and be in cooking and canning mode for a whole day. It just never seems to work out that I have a full day to designate for any one thing!

Today as the abundance of cucumbers, jalapenos, banana peppers and green peppers are in full force we’re going to have a little pickling session here at work. One of my favorite memories is opening a jar of “the end of the garden pickle” put up by family. It’s those random veggies, that you get usually towards the end of the summer growing season, or for me, the “good stuff” any time during harvest, you can combine almost any group of veggies, cauliflower, bell peppers, carrots, onions, garlic, chili peppers into a lovely pickling liquid and stash for a month or two. It is so wonderful when snow is on the ground to open one of these jars and bite into these lovely summer veggies all easily preserved in a fresh tasting pickling juice. Hopefully the people I am sharing this tradition with will feel the same way! Who says you have to eat all of those veggies raw or in a salad?!! Cook them, sauce them, make green veggies drinks, grate and freeze them, just don’t let them go to waste!