New Obsessions

For a few years now, I've been steadily becoming more and more obsessed with food. You may think this natural, considering that I live in San Francisco, snobbledy foodie capital of the U.S. But this started back in New Mexico, where the local cuisine is based entirely around one amazingly spectacular ingredient. The "localvore" movement that's come to the forefront over the past several years appeals to me, and I want to go ultra-local by growing my own food. Unfortunately, I live in an area with tiny, tiny "yards" for the most part, and I can't access the 1/2 acre that I was once told (by dry-farming New Mexico hippies!) it would take to supply two people with all of the food they need. Luckily for me, I live in the land of agricultural abundance, and have fresh, local, organic produce available year-round.

I still want to go self-sufficient one day, but I also know that it's not going to happen here. And there's the conundrum: by the time I'm able to supply myself with produce, I'll no longer be able to do so all year (as I'll live somewhere with a winter that isn't exactly like the rest of the year). The answer to the conundrum? Food preservation.

That long lead-in is to set up my big Christmas presents that I got this year. First, there's my brand-new, 23-quart Pressure Canner (Thanks, Alison!) and affiliated utensils. This guy can be used to can all kinds of food (unlike a water bath canner, that can't be used for low-acid foods like vegetables because it cannot reach temperatures above 212 degrees). My second acquisition is a fancy "Food and Jerky Dehydrator" (Jerky isn't Food?) (Thanks, Joan and Bob!). I'll be able to use this one to dry fruit, hopefully of my own production one day.

I'll be using my blog in the future to document my terribly novice attempts to keep and preserve the produce that I grow and buy (with picutres!). This will hopefully start in a couple weeks, when I will turn a theoretical delivery of surplus oranges (from DP) into something, probably marmalade (which I don't even eat) or orange slices or something. This time of year, about the only fruits available at the farmer's market are apples and pears, so there will be some applesauce, sliced apples and pears, and dried apples and pears prodcued soon (especially if my go-to apple retailer brings back the $0.50/lb bruised apple bin).

One more note about my motivation for this project. I jokingly told my brother-in-law-in-law last weekend that I was getting into this kind of thing to prepare for the apocalypse. While that is kind of sort of true (where are you going to get food when society breaks down if you can't make and keep it yourself?), there's another reason in addition to the localvore thing. I think most of us have parents or grandparents that once lived "in the country" if not directly on a farm, and growing and preserving food was a matter of course, which everybody knew how to do. When I was talking to my mother several months ago about doing this, I asked her if she had a food preservation cookbook I could have, and she told me that she didn't have one, as she just always asked her mother if she had any questions. Well, now grandma is gone, and the knowledge went with her. In this country, generations that knew how to be self-sufficient are slowly disappearing, to be replaced by children who think that milk comes from the supermarket, not from cows (or possibly rats, if you live in Springfield). I want to keep this knowledge alive, and, in the process, reduce my impact on the environment by not causing the shipping of apples from Chile, peaches from China, and oranges from Australia (and don't even get me started on bananas).

Let me know if you want to sample my wares (except during cherry season, because cherries are the single greatest foodstuff ever created (including the Twinkie), and I'm going to be very, very greedy with them), and you'll probably be getting something from my kitchen for Christmas if you're a gift-receiving-level friend or family.