While self sufficiency is great. Can we realistically expect everyone to butcher their own chickens? Grind their own grains? Make their own candles? I just don’t think we can be a great nation with a few million self sufficient islands that never talk to each other and need no help from each other to make it through the week. Local farmers and gardeners are the first thought that comes to mind when people think “Eat Local”. The reality is that the farmer is but one link in a local chain that needs to be reestablished if the local food movement is to gain any significant ground. Small local bakeries, mills, deli’s and creameries need to be established and utilized if the movement if to gain ground.
As a community we need to find a balance between buying bread baked in Kansas City and shipped throughout the US, and everyone having their own little patch of wheat, grinding it into flour, and baking it into bread in their back yard. Maybe if farming isn’t your cup of tea you need to consider becoming a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.
A couple of weeks ago when Texas grapefruit was in season I picked up about 40 pounds of it for canning. I think I paid less than $7.00 for the 40 pounds, making it a pretty good deal for Michigan. I’m guessing it’s a lot cheaper in roadside stands down south, but with the snow still above the top of the boots up here, it’s not very likely to show up in many road side stands. You’ve heard me rant about the relativity of local food in previous entries, so just let me leave it at: I’m fine buying my grapefruit from Texas. 1000 miles away is a lot better than 5,000 miles away in Brazil. ’nuff said?
Anyway, to keep the Texas grapefruit around and useful until it comes in season this time next year, I wanted to put as much of it up as I could. The idea of dehydrated grapefruit just didn’t hold the appeal that moist, tangy-sweet grapefruit served ice cold does. So I decided to can it. Home canning grapefruit has its ups and its downs, but over all I am very happy with the process.
Preparing the Grapefruit
The most important thing to consider when canning grapefruit is the removal of as much of the white pithy material as possible. This is what makes grapefruit bitter. The grapefruit were peeled by hand by the whole family. This was fun and much better smelling than the onions we dehydrated a few weeks ago.
The next step was to remove the hearts from the membranes. This was a bit tedious and time consuming. Unfortunately I had not heard of this easy method of cleaning grapefruit before we canned these up. Next year we will use this method and probably be willing to put up more because of the speed that the membrane removal goes using the method in this video.
The sectioned and peeled grapefruit is very easy to process. Being an acidic fruit, you don’t even need to break out the pressure canner. Simply fill the jars and top with a weak sugar solution leaving 1/2″ head space. Process quarts for 10 minutes in a water bath canner. That’s it.
Canned Grapefruit
I find the texture of canned grapefruit to be a little disappointing, but not detrimental. The flavor is excellent. I almost prefer it to fresh, but I think this is mainly the ease with which it can be eaten vs. fresh grapefruit. I also think watermelon that has been cut up into little chunks and de-seeded tastes much better than big slices of watermelon. The wife has never been very happy with my mother for spoiling me like that.
Once you have the canned grapefruit you can simply eat it. I like to mix it with other fruit that is in season or stored for an almost fresh fruit salad. Cubed apple mixes well with it to give the dish a bit of crunch. Grapes of course are wonderful as are cherries. One thing I haven’t tried is to add a bit of dried fruit to it and see how the texture feels. I’m thinking a dish with canned grapefruit, dehydrated strawberries, apples, and some raisins. Maybe top with a bit of granola for a good breakfast.
You can also turn the canned grapefruit into a juice very quickly or juice it and then use the juice to make a delicious grapefruit jelly.
Grapefruit Jelly
3 Cups grapefruit juice
4 cups sugar
1.75 ounce of box pectin
3 drops red food color (obviously optional, but improves look)
Add pectin to juice and bring to a boil. Add sugar and bring to a rolling boil for 1 minute. Add food color. Skim and pour into six 6-ounce jars. Skim again and seal.
That’s my adventure with grapefruit from a couple of weeks ago. Keep workin’ for the simple life!
4 Pounds of Dehydrated Lemons Ready for the Pantry.
Lemons were on sale really cheap. I picked up a couple pounds and dehydrated them. the process for dehydrating a lemon isn’t any different than dehydrating a lime. If you recall I did a blog entry on limes a few weeks ago and you can read about ithere. Basically the process is to clean the lemon, slice it thinly and uniformly, and then place it on the dehydrator tray until brittle and it will snap. These took about 12 hours to dry on a fairly low setting. I try to use a low setting to avoid cooking the food and boiling off any of the essential oils in the food. I’m particularly concerned when I dry lemons because I want to maintain as much of the lemon oil in the pieces as I can.
Today’s post isn’t really about the dehydrating process for the limes but more about the using them. There is a product on the market called True Lemon you can read all about it at www.truelemon.com. In fact you can get a free sample of the product here. I just tried signing up for a free sample, but I obviously havent received it so I don’t know how long it will take them to send it out.
Regardless I love lemons in a lot of things but especially in my tea. I couldn’t help but think that drying some lemons for use in the tea has got to be a lot better for me, the environment, and the wallet than buying these little foil packets of crystallized lemon from the True-Lemon people. Please permit me to elaborate…The label for the True-Lemon says it contains maltodextrin. I know that maltodextrin is derived from corn, but ya’ know…I just want some lemon. The packaging, the foil packets, the freight involved in trucking the lemons from God knows where to the True-Lemon plant, the freight involved in trucking them to my local store, the waste at the True-Lemon facility, etc…If I dry my lemons I use it all either in the dehydrator or in the compost bin for my worms. I use as local as I can get lemons for a guy in Michigan. And finally 4 pounds of lemons was a dollar. The packets which will last me about 1/3 as long as these lemons are about 3.00. Don’t get me wrong. I think the True-Lemon stuff is a great tasting convenient product. If you aren’t excited about eating local or drying your own food, please use it. I’ve just decided that I want to make my own storable lemon product instead of buying someone else’s from now on.
Tea and a Dehydrated Lemon Slice
To use my dehydrated lemon for a cup of tea it’s pretty easy. Boil up some water. Drop a slice of dehydrated lemon into the cup. Add the boiling water and brew as usual. Enjoy the tea! The lemon will rehydrate and add lemon flavor to the tea in the process of rehydrating. When you are done drinking the tea, you can make a second cup and still get a surprising amount of lemon flavor out of the slice from the first cup. When you are done with the second cup, you can eat the rehydrated lemon. It will be a little mushy. Then you can toss it into the compost bin for the worms.
Mug O Tea with Lemon!
I’m probably violating some tea purists rule by putting lemon in my tea, but it’s how I enjoy it!
Simply in Season, by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert describes itself as a collection of “recipes that celebrate fresh, local foods in the spirit of More-with-Less. But goes on to do much more than that. Following the preface and a brief introduction there is a produce guide arranged alphabetically. Common items like apples, onions, and pears are represented, but so are more uncommon(at least to me) foods like persimmons, tomatillos, and celeriac. In this introductory section each of the foods is described as a Spring, Summer, Autumn, or Winter food and tips on storage and handling, cooking, serving suggestions, and nutrient concentrations are presented. It is a great place to look should you find yourself with an abundance of some particular produce and are not sure what you should do with it.
Following the food description chapter are 5 chapters that present the meat and potatoes of the cookbook. There is a chapter for each of the seasons and a bonus chapeter titled, All Seasons. Each of these seasonal chapters has a list of produce considered to be in season during the featured season. This list is repeated on every page of the chapter and recipes highlighted on that page are in a bold font. This typographic feature makes it really simple to flip through the chapter and locate a recipe featuring something you might have on hand. At the bottom of the recipe pages in each chapter are tid-bits of information, devotionals, and the occasional how to factoid. Provided you aren’t offended by references to the Bible or God, these are an enlightening way to breakup the reading of a cookbook.
The recipes themselves are straightforward and simple. They represent a good food with few to no prepackaged additions. For example a recipe that could be completed by stating to use seasoning salt is instead listed as using salt, onion powder, paprika, garlic powder, and celery salt. I personally find this wholesome and complete, but if you are looking for a way to open a few packages and microwave them this cookbook isn’t for you. At the end of each chapter is a sample menu or two focusing on the foods found throughout the season. Four or five of these menus are presented in each season. They help spark inspiration for seasonal menus, but if you find yourself continually challenged to complete interesting and balanced menus, the small selection presented in this cookbook will disappoint.
The recipes themselves use meat sparingly. The use of meat as the main dish is not sustainable for the homesteader in my opinion and is a skill that must be mastered. Learning to cook meals where the meat accents the food instead of the other way around is vital to creating a self sufficient homestead. I am impressed that the cookbook doesn’t completely abandon meat as many resources of this type are apt to do.
The cookbook comes with a thorough index. This is a must in any book in my opinion. I am always frustrated in a world of word processors that an index would not be included in any hard copy book published since about 1990. It is printed on a good quality glossy paper with a lot of full color photos. It is a good glued binding and has held up well in my kitchen since the spring when I aquired the book. There is nothing to indicate that the book was printed on recycled paper, which may turn off some people off. Personally I would prefer to buy a book that is printed on recycled paper if that is the option, but the lack of that option would never prevent me from buying one on principle. And sadly, the book isn’t available on Kindle.
Overall I rate the cookbook at 7 stars as a cookbook and 6 stars as a resource for sustainability.
Eat local. If you haven’t heard of this theory, you probably will soon. Eating Local is about restricting your diet to foods grown close to your home. This is often some arbitrary number. 150 miles from your home is a number that I often hear thrown around. That may be on the high side to a lot of purists, and sound ridiculously small to people like me in the upper Midwest when daytime temperatures are in the teens and night time temperatures are in the single digits.
In America, the weighted average distance that food travels from the point of production to the point of consumption is 1500 miles. That is about the distance from the middle of Michigan to the southern tip of Florida. Shipping food that far takes a lot of money for fuel. Most of that money goes to the government for taxes. Shipping food that far involves several middle men. That add value to the food along the way. That might mean that they “Cook it up real nice” and put it in a cardboard box for you to microwave. It might mean that they store it a warehouse for a few months and then ship it your way. It might even mean that they do nothing more than put it in a shiny bag and stamp it with a fancy logo. Regardless they all charge something to do these things. Ans if they are charging you something to do these things. You can be certain that our government is charging them something for the privilege of doing those things for you. Taxing you indirectly if you are new around these parts.
So a benefit of eating local is paying less to an entity like the government. Another benefit is reducing the energy consumed in making that apple. If you live in Michigan and eat an apple grown in Michigan, a lot less gas was burnt than if you ate an apple grown in Washington State. Less gasoline means less carbon emitted. Less gasoline means less tax revenue for Sam your chubby uncle. Less gasoline means cheaper apples or more money into the farmers pocket and less into an advertising executive’s pocket that decided to put up billboards that read Got Apples?
Regardless of your reasons for doing it, I imagine that it is easy to eat locally in California, Arizona, or Florida. Sunny most of the time; the temperature falling below freezing only once a decade and then only for half a night. What do you do when you want to eat local and you live in a Great Lakes state? That is when you rely on your own food preservation. Those apples that were harvested from a local farm in September would be all mush if you left them in a bag on top of your refrigerator until now. But you have so many options for preserving them: Canning, Freezing, Cellaring, Fermenting, Pickling, even Dehydrating.
That is what we need to be all about here at the Retro-Revolution. Making due with what we have and not relying on an apple being sent here from 1500 miles away. If we take the time to learn the skills to reduce how much money we send to Washington D.C. we can foster the growth of change and inspire a revolution. How’s that for beating sword’s into plowshares?
I want to start to populate the titles on my bookshelf to the website with a review and a link to Amazon. This summer I picked up a cookbook called, Simply in Season. Tomorrow I am going to try and write a review of it. I do like the back cover text. It provides us with 6 reasons to eat foods that are in season: Freshness, Taste, Nutrition, Variety, Environment, and Local Economy. A good list even though they leave off fewer taxes.
Thanks for reading and look for a review of the book tomorrow.
