Putting Food Up

Fresh produce is a lot of work! Sometimes I ask myself why I go to all of the trouble when I could pick up food at the grocery store for minimal cost and oh-so-much ease and convenience. I know the answer, even though growing and preparing my own food is a major undertaking and probably more expensive, I know it tastes better and is better for me than the mass-produced over-processed “stuff” I can buy at the grocery store.

Don’t think for a second that I don’t buy “stuff” from the store – I’m at my neighborhood grocery almost every day. It’s a bit embarrassing when the cashier or the carryout person says, “See you tomorrow.” But, I do try to grow and eat as much as I can from my own garden or from the farm or the farmers’ market. Growing the food is one aspect, but what I want to discuss today is bringing all of that fresh food into the kitchen.

Fresh fruits and vegetables come with dirt. I learned in my Master Gardener course that we grow things in soil, but what remains on the veggies when they arrive in my kitchen is dirt. Cleaning the produce is a major undertaking. Let’s compare lettuce for an example. Lettuce from the supermarket is either triple washed and sealed in plastic bags or sold as heads that were grown without benefit of soil in a hydroponic environment. There is not a speck of dirt to be had on store-bought lettuce. Lettuce from my garden goes immediately into a sink full of very cold water. The leaf lettuce is washed multiple times, each time leaving a residue of dirt, sand, and bugs in the bottom of the sink. In spite of my best effort there is still a gritty texture to most of my salads. Head lettuce is even harder to clean; each leaf must be removed and rinsed and there is usually a surprise at the core – a bug carcass or two. I’ve never found a bug in my store bought salads. But, really – how did we get so far away from the real source of our food that we would be freaked out by a bug in our lettuce? In theory a bug in our lettuce should be a good thing, indicating the lettuce was actually grown in natural conditions. Bugs or no bugs, my salads taste better than any of the pale, limp, watery excuses for lettuce I can buy at the store, but I will be in the produce section buying it along with the masses when I am unable to grow it due to weather.

Canning vegetables, or “putting food up,” as my grandmother called it, seems like a ridiculous undertaking in these modern times. I spent five hours yesterday canning jalapeno peppers and ended up with seventeen quarts of pickled peppers and eleven pints of sweet-hot bread and butter jalapenos. I could buy a jar or can of pickled peppers at the grocery store for about a buck! The time and money involved in home canning is not the issue for me. I see canning as another way to connect with my food, to appreciate the bounty, and to carry on a tradition which is fast becoming a lost art. I will proudly present gifts of my “put up” produce to friends all winter and I will take a great deal of satisfaction in opening a jar of tomatoes for a soup or stew, knowing I planted the seed that grew into the tomato that I harvested and processed in my very own kitchen. How many hands touched the tomatoes in the three-for-a-dollar cans at the grocery store? And how many miles did those tomatoes travel in their short life spans to get to my neighborhood store?

Whole foods, fresh foods are a lot of work, but worth it in so many ways; the taste, the nutritional value, the control over food safety, and the plain old satisfaction of it. Anyone can open a bag, a box or a can – but I take immense pleasure from growing my own food and supporting my local farmers. I’d write more on this topic, but I have a bushel of green chiles in the kitchen waiting to be “put up.” (I might even find a bug!)