gleaning

There has been a lot of focus on gleaning in the press lately. Traditionally gleaning referred to harvesting what was left behind in the fields after harvesters did their job. Now gleaning also refers to picking what would otherwise be left to rot, whether on public or private property.

This piece courtesy of the Ethicurean has a few good links, and the NYT published this charming piece on the proliferation of urban foraging. Our town has started a gleaning network too, email me if you’d like details.

My lovely friend Kevin blogged about our recent saskatoon picking adventure. Although they weren’t gleaned from an urban area, they were going to go to waste. In total we picked about 100lbs each. Not bad! I canned 70 lbs, despite the 30+celsius temperatures. G built us a rocket stove, which we used to run the canning pot. It was almost as good as having a canning kitchen in the basement…almost.

What did I make with all those berries?

Plain saskatoon compote with honey, saskatoon chilli sauce, saskatoon raspberry jam, saskatoon rhubarb jam with lavender and saskatoon jam with lemon verbena (pictured above).

The first two items can be used either with a dessert or with savory dishes (think pork roast). I topped dark chocolate ice cream from Pinocchio with the chilli sauce the other night and it was a hit.

I froze the other 30lbs, which is my least favorite preservation solution. I try to freeze as little as possible because I feel there is too large a chance that a power outage or faulty freezer could ruin all my hard work. I also feel that freezing is a short term solution at best from an energy standpoint, so I try to reserve it for that which I can’t process any other way (right now this is basically meat, which I’m working on). If we had already built our solar dehydrator (must be completed before tomato season is upon us!) I would have dehydrated the remaining berries. Soon!