Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook!
This week, I had intended to feature strawberries, but when I got to the farmer’s market this weekend, I saw this:
Table after table, bulging to overflowing with bright, ripe, gorgeous, plump tomatoes, peaches, nectarines and sweet basil.
And my inner squirrel awakened with a jolt and made its first appearance for the year, squealing with delight. I was suddenly filled with thoughts of pasta sauce and chutney simmering on the stove, filling the air with pungent, sweet and spicy aromas; of pesto coating plump tubes of pasta, and of jam slathered on toast and marrying with peanut butter for the perfect afternoon delight.
And with that, I decided it was time to start filling my larder with winter stores. Then and there, I bought about a bushel of peaches, tomatoes and sweet basil.
Preserving seasonal foodstuffs is a time-honored tradition practiced by most animals, it seems. “Hoarding” or “caching” is done seasonally to store food that is plentiful at the time for use later. Squirrels do it, birds do it, and I do it, too. For the pioneers, food preservation was a matter of survival. A good portion of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s first book “Little House In the Big Woods” is devoted to fascinating and detailed descriptions of not only the foods they preserved for the winter, but the processes they used. They smoked meats in tall smokehouses that they stoked with green hickory chips around the clock for days; they strung onions and hung them in the attic alongside strings of peppers and barrels of pickles; they gathered nuts and they hulled and washed field corn to preserve as hominy. All this work had to be accomplished in a short amount of time when the summer’s harvest was burgeoning, ripe and ready, and before the winter winds began to howl.
I like to think I would have made a good pioneer, but then I remember how much I like indoor plumbing…and antibiotics…and electricity. And the list goes on. But I do think I would have been pretty good at the winter food prep, or caching. It’s also known as hoarding in the animal kingdom, but since that word has a rather sinister connotation since the pandemic, we’ll stick with “caching,” shall we?
There are two types of caching: larder caching and scatter caching. I’m definitely in the former category: I have but one small freezer in which to lay in my stores for the winter, not multiple caching spots to keep track of and defend against predators. Because my freezer is very small, I have to plan judiciously for my needs. Last year, I got it pretty much right: I made about 3 quarts of pesto, portioned out in 8-oz jars, about 1 quart of peach chutney (also in 8-oz jars), about a gallon of fresh tomato sauce, about a gallon of ragu sauce and a couple of pints of tomato jam. Additionally, I always freeze several gallons of cherries and assorted seasonal berries and I always oven-dry and freeze several quarts of san marzano tomatoes. Last year, I also canned about 6 quarts of tomatoes with my friend Em.
When I took inventory, I found a couple of jars of peach chutney and a jar of tomato jam left from last year’s preparation. Additionally, I lost some of the berries and cherries when our refrigerator gave out unexpectedly last August. But basically, I used up what I cached, so I will put down about the same amount this year.
Yesterday, as if on cue, our weather pivoted from the July heat and turned cool and breezy: it was the perfect time to make big batches of Basic tomato sauce and ragu sauce:
Click here for the recipe for the basic fresh tomato sauce. And click here for the recipe for ragu sauce.
The house smelled so good and I felt cozy and immediately comforted. My inner squirrel tail swished with delight.
I packed the sauces up in individual packages and delighted in the knowledge that my larder was starting to fill up with yummy, bountiful summer delights that we will enjoy for the rest of the year:
Tune in tomorrow for more larder-filling fun!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
