Making grape juice - the easy method

This year is proving to be THE best grape harvest yet in all our seasons living and gardening here.  Ironically, the falling of two large beautiful old trees in a high wind storm a few weeks ago has helped immensely in the grape success.   Now, where there used to be deep shade for much of the day, we get full sun shining down on our ripening grape vines all day long.  With all this bounty we needed to find quick ways to harvest and preserve. Having a young baby here to care for, means limited time for long canning projects - so we discovered this easy and quick method of making grape juice.  12 beautiful litres done in 30 minutes today!

Easy Grape Juice Method

1) Fill litre jars with 1 cup grapes (cleaned, destemmed and washed).  Concord, or other grapes.
2) Add 1/4 cup sugar to each jar (upto 1/2 cup if you want a sweeter juice).
3) Fill each jar with boiling water, leaving 1/2 inch head space.
4) Top jar with clean lid and canning ring.
5) Process according to canning procedures for 15 minutes.

When you are ready to serve the juice, simply strain it into your glasses and compost grapes.
Makes easy, delicious, beautiful juice.

September sorting and saving

Our kitchen seems to be filled with piles of all kinds this month - that need sorting, saving, drying, processing, preserving.  There are seeds from the garden to be packaged, herbs on the racks to be dried and labelled, last tomatoes to be canned, peaches to be preserved, plums to be dehydrated, garlic to be bunched...September is busy, though the weather is starting to wane, and there is definitely a shift in mood, energy, and pace.  We are preparing for the hibernating months ahead, and this feels good.

Harvest foods

Now that our Symposium is over and the calendar page has turned to September, it's time to work on finishing our garden harvest, canning & preserving, drying, fermenting & pickling for the winter months.  The greenhouse shelves are stacked with drying racks layered with herbs; our kitchen counters are lined with jars of beans and cucumbers that are being lacto-fermented; our counters are covered in bowls and containers brimming with tomatoes, basil, eggplant and beans to be preserved into sauce, pesto and ratatouille.

And our meals these days are simple, but fresh and glorious with the abundant garden harvest - kale, chard, beans, various pestos, tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes every day!  Using these veggies on different kinds of pizzas has been a fun way to experiment lately.  We were recently at a wedding in Muskoka where pizza was served by All Fired Up, a portable wood-fired pizza catering business.  We loved their pear-pesto-arugula-goat cheese pizza, and made our own version of it last night using all these ingredients sourced from our yard (we even have our own pears this year!).  Yumm!

Fresh Pear-Pesto-Arugula Goat Cheese Pizza
Ingredients:

Fresh pears, 2 sliced thinly
Freshly made Pesto (our version uses fresh basil, sunflower seeds, olive oil, garlic, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, sea salt)
Fresh arugula, about 20 leaves (we used Surrey Greens, a spicy arugula-type leafy green)
Fresh soft goat cheese

Roll out thin whole-grain pizza dough.  Let rest 15 minutes on your pizza pan, pizza stone, or peel.  Spread with thin layer of pesto to cover whole dough.   Cover in concentric circles with sliced pears.  Sprinkle with arugula leaves, and dot with clumps of fresh soft goat cheese.  Bake at 500F for about 6 minutes!  Serve hot with fresh arugula leaves tossed on top.

Basil Pesto - lots of it!

Now we are in the thick of it.  Preserving. Yesterday was pesto day.  The first of several pesto days.  I had planted 40 basil plants in the spring, and set out another 40 more plants only a few weeks ago.  What was I thinking?  I do love basil, and the first batch of seedlings had a serious set-back when we had that extra late frost at the end of May...but seriously, pesto from 80 plants....We also dry the basil leaves, and have eaten it with virtually every salad, egg dish, and pizza that has graced our table since mid-June, but it really takes pesto to make much of a dent in a basil garden.

Our favourite recipe is our own version of a vegan pesto - made with olive oil, fresh garlic, sunflower seeds (or pine nuts, whatever your budget prefers), nutritional yeast (in place of parmesan), sea salt, and a little lemon juice, plus basil!  We pack it into small glass mason jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace, then store them in the freezer until use.

Lacto-fermenting workshop

We held our annual lacto-fermenting workshop a short while back.  This is a great workshop to do in the spring or fall, as it is such a great reminder of the simplicity of preserving (and enhancing!) the nutrition of foods through the lacto-fermenting process.  We brought in Jackie McMillan again as our facilitator to guide participants through the basic understandings of the health benefits of lacto-ferments, and how to prepare these delicious foods at home.  Jackie is a local whole foods educator and wild food enthusiast.  As part of the workshop we were treated to all manner of lacto-fermented pickles she had prepared in advance (dilly beans, whole cloves of pickled garlic and ginger root, cabbage kimchi, beet kvass, and more) and then prepared a root vegetable kimchi together using rejuvelac, a salt water brine, and all kinds of great seasonal root veggies that we can still source from local farms at this time of year (daikon radish, beet, turnip, carrot, onion, garlic, red and green cabbage)...

Great Food Swap!

We held our 2nd annual Great Food Swap today - what a glorious array of homemade and homegrown foods filled the tables.  It was hard to decide what to bid on as everything was so beautiful.  There were salsas and "fireside tomato sauce", jams and chutneys, preserved peaches and pears, lemon and lime butters, hot chili pickle, artisan breads, lacto-fermented beans and root vegetable kraut, pickled beets, "nightshade curry", organic sourdough starter, "first honey" from a new beekeeper, kale chips, raw fruit and nut biscotti, homemade crackers and double chocolate raw truffle balls, dandelion syrup, spelt banana bread, and herbal tinctures, plus garden goodies like the hottest peppers, baskets of tomatillos, fresh stevia, dried herbs, wild grape leaves, heirloom tomatoes, bunches of chard, elderberries, and rhubarb...

The way the food swap works: participants display their items, then place "bids" on items they wish to take home, and finally work out a barter among themselves for what seems a fair value to swap (e.g. my jar of kimchi for your jar of salsa).  A nice way to share foods you love (and may have too much of), and stock your pantry with preserves you did not have time to make.

Thanks to everyone who took part!  We are honoured to share the bounty of this year's harvest with all of you.  Happy harvest season.

Autumn is here

These days...

~ firing up the woodstove for the first cold nights...
~ covering our still-growing basil, eggplant and tomatoes in case of frost...
~ preserving last jams, jellies, salsa, pickles, hot peppers...
~ preparing foods to share at our annual Great Food Swap this Saturday...
~ harvesting beans, basil, tomatoes, lemon cukes, nasturtiums, kale, chard...
~ drying herbs for winter teas...
~ eating warming soups on cool evenings (our favourites: lentil dahl, kale-potato-bean, or miso...)
~ collecting - count them!- 5 fresh eggs each day from our lovely laying hens...
~ making soap to get ready for our neighbourhood Art Walk & Studio Tour in October 20-21...
~ enjoying walks through crunchy leaves wearing warm woolens...
~ anticipating our part in the exciting new local Forest School project taking place in Oct-Nov...
~ baking fresh breads for the last remaining weeks of our neighbourhood CSA...
~ watching the bees humming among the goldenrod, cup plant, oregano...
~ savouring wood-fired pizza with our friends near the cozy cob oven...
~ feeling the turning of the season...