Veg Bags

            Twenty five years ago, I wanted a salad spinner, but did not have room—or the money—to buy one. So, I made one. I took one of the cloth storage bags I had made for backpacking (why buy fancy ones when you can sew them for free from scraps?), put the washed greens in it, took it outside, and swung it around my head by the drawstring. Voila— clean, dried  lettuce with a pre-soaked storage bag for the left-overs. And it was fun.I never looked back.

            Now, I have a whole series of bags. The old ones finally died, so I broke out the sewing machine last summer and made some new ones. I made several from old—or kind of tacky—dish towels that I was not using. The thicker terry cloth material works really well for salad greens. I have a large one from an old tablecloth with a hole in the middle that holds huge leaves of mustard and kale, as well as smaller cooking greens. And then there are some scraps of cotton cloth bags that corral carrots, beets, and mushrooms from market to table. I weave shoelaces through a tube in the top of the bag for drawstrings so that I can pull the bag closed.

            I have found that these cloth bags work much better than plastic. Greens rot and grow slimy in plastic bags because they cannot breathe. They dry out—or tumble out of the refrigerator at awkward times—when left unwrapped and held together by the wire wrappers, which bruise the stems. But in a dampened cloth bag, greens last for over a week—which is all I ask from a vegetable. Even root crops are happier.  If one does dry out, or grow nasty because it was pushed to the far back corner of the shelf, I toss the bag into the wash and use it again. And then, when we go hiking and I need one more bag to hold the last day’s food—there they are, ready and waiting to hit the trail.           

Shepard's Pie

Boil and mash four or five medium sized potatoes for the crust.

Saute two portbello mushrooms, a mediums onion, carrots, cauliflower, and peas or corn. Add salt, pepper,  and dried basil. Throw in a handful of grated cheddar cheese at the end, if you feel decadent.

Put cooked veggies in a casserole, top with the mashed potatoes, and bake until bubbly. Eat with salad.

Winter Storage

The end of August and beginning of September is harvest time here. The house was not designed to hold a wide variety of winter stores—we do not have a root cellar—so finding good storage places for all of the winter foods can be tricky.  This is where various foods are stashed.

Basement wall, warm and dry:

• All canned and dried goods, in mason jars
• Wheat, oatmeal, and barley in large tin containers (there ones that held Christmas popcorn mostly).
• Beans in mason jars.
• Bulk pasta and teas in the original containers
• Honey in mason jars

Basement by the door, cooler and damper:

• Apple crop, laid on one layer thick in seedling trays

Stairwell of the basement, constant temp:

• Potatoes, sorted by variety in bags and then resting in milkcrates
• Next years seed stock is in bags, tucked way back in so we do not eat them by mistake
• Garlic hangs above the stairs

Larder, which is an insulated space, vented to the outside, accessed in the stairwell:

• Squash and pumpkins
• 60 pounds of onions
• loose garlic
• longkeeper tomatoes
• Fruits waiting to be processed
• Seed tin

As the weather grows colder, the larder also holds:

• Greens from Sunbow
• Leftovers
• Soup for the week
• Box of oranges over Winter Solstice

Garden Beds:

·        Greens

·        Parsnips

·        Leeks

·        Sprouting Broccoli

·        Not carrots—slugs eat the tops and I can’t find them after early November.

 

Late Summer Pasta

Roasted eggplant (cubed, rolled in olive oil, and roasted in 350 oven for about 45 minutes)

Half pint jar of roasted tomatoes (I use the one that did not seal…)

Sauteed onion and garlic

Can of the Good Tuna from Sweet Creek

Fresh basil

Toss them all together and serve over whole wheat pasta with  lots of Parmesan cheese.