Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Home Canning Season, 2007


As I posted earlier in July, we made the commitment this year to eat locally all summer while the produce was fresh and in season. At some point we also made the decision to stock up on all the beautiful, fresh, local stuff and try to save some of it for the winter. (This decision came shortly after we noticed that the pickles we were buying were grown in India, and the tomatoes we depended on all winter were from California...) Our Wiens Farm CSA share gave us our veggies for the week, but we also made it out to the St. Norbert Farmer's Market almost every Saturday morning this summer to supplement the frenzy to 'put food by'.

And yes, it became a frenzy. Lots of food made its way into the freezer, which is currently full of kale, swiss chard, beet greens, corn, strawberries, freezer jam, gooseberries, raspberries, apples, and sorrel, but the most time intensive effort was devoted to canning preserves.

The diced zucchini, peppers and onions pictured above were diced by hand. As was everything else processed in my house. I don't know why I keep resisting a food processor - I'm paranoid that everything is going to be sliced down to mush, I think. If you're going to make everything from scratch, let it have some character! Yay for chunks!

My kitchen was continuously filthy. Simmering pots on the stove for hours and hours at a time... boiling pots of water going for hours and hours at a time...
All I can say is, thank God August wasn't as hot as July was this year. This project would definitely not have come to fruition if it that 30+ heatwave would have continued.

Slowly but surely, the little batches of tasty things collected up...

In the end, this was the approximate final tally:

  • 2 pints zucchini and pepper relish
  • 4 pints curry pickles
  • 3 pints bread and butter pickles
  • 4 pints pickled baby carrots with oregano
  • 4 pints pickled cauliflower
  • 8 pints baby dills
  • 3 quarts big dills
  • 12 pints tomato salsa
  • 10 quarts diced tomatoes
  • 10 quarts tomato sauce
  • 9 pints carrot ikra
  • 10.5 pints green tomato chow (all from Stiles Street tomatoes!)
  • 1 quart apple cider

I'll keep ya'll posted to see how long all this stuff lasts us!

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Pembina Valley Manitou Honey Garlic & Maple Syrup Festival

Please welcome our second ever guest writer to Planet Borscht - Ms. K - an individual who truly knows the Manitoba food scene in and out.


I am delighted to be a guest blogger here at Planet Borscht....
home of down home Manitoba food culture!



September 7th found us flocking to Manitou for the Pembina Valley Manitou Honey Garlic & Maple Syrup Festival.

The festival featured a Pancake Breakfast, Craft Show and Sale, Farmer’s Market, Display Booths, Honey, Garlic & Maple Syrup Vendors, Free Stage Entertainment, Cooking Demos, Historic Town Tours, Soap Box Derby, Gourmet Alley, Beverage Gardens, all topped off with a delicious Buffet Supper. The highlight of the day was the soapbox derby. Below is a video to give you a taste of the action!




There was even transportation to tour one throughout the town! An enterprising Manitouarian was holding a garage sale and we missed out on purchasing a nearly new 1950's accordian for $50!



The evening was lovely with a Deadwood Saloon in the arena and an excellent dinner.

In the realm of fall suppers the dinner was something of a gourmet meal and well worth the $17. Here is the visuals on the dinner..our eyes were much much bigger than our stomachs and I regret to inform you we wasted some of this lovely food


Veggie option



Meat Option



The buffet featured

  • Plain or garlic roast beef

  • Honey lemon crusted chicken

  • Dry roasted garlic pork ribs with wild cranberry jelly

  • Honey mustard glazed farmer sausage

  • Garlic mashed potatoes

  • Herb sauteed mushrooms

  • Orange honey glazed carrots with fresh dill

  • Manitoba maple syrup baked beans

  • Tomato salad with basil garlic dressing

  • Honey coleslaw

  • Cucumber onion salad

  • Dinner rolls

  • Roasted garlic in olive oil and herbs (my favorite)

  • Pembina valley apple crisp with manitoba maple syrup

In closing here is a clip from the Deadwood Saloon compete with saloon piano player

We give the Pembina Valley Honey Garlic and Maple Syrup Festival 4.85 stars out of 5!

Sunday, September 09, 2007

MCC Relief Sale, Morris MB

The MCC Relief Sale in Morris, MB is the ultimate kick-off to Autumn each year.
MCC puts on this combination of farmer's market, craft sale, bake sale, flea market, auction and fall supper every September as a fundraiser for food, water, and other missions projects for the Mennonite Central Committee.

You can find hand-knit winter mittens, cottage cheese vareneki, damson plum jam, giant homegrown watermelons and Manitoba apple cider and quilts and antiques... and so many other exciting things.

Then you can eat yourself into a stupor! What more can you ask for?

The jam table and the mittens table. The jam went pretty fast this year, but the mittens were plentiful. The fresh produce and food tent.
It's a little different from a farmer's market in that you don't actually get to talk to the people that grow or produce the food - it's completely run by volunteers. Some of the food is produced by large companies - farmer sausage is donated from Winkler Sausage and the noodles are donated by a local pasta company. But most of the produce comes from regular folks' gardens.

Noodles and apples.

The food is cheap as borscht....

And so tasty at 10:30 in the morning!


This is the booty from this year's trip. 4 liters apple cider, 4 dozen frozen cottage cheese vereneki, a link of Winkler's liver sausage, a bag of windmill ground rye flour, four jars of jam, two pairs of mittens, 9 pounds of tomatoes, 5 pounds of apples, a head of romaine lettuce, a giant watermelon, 3 green peppers, 2 big onions and two dozen eggs.

Everything is cheap, locally produced, and all proceeds went to the MCC.

For more info on MCC Relief Sales, check out this link: http://mcc.org/manitoba/morrisreliefsale/