Put It By

“Eating locally in winter is easy,” writes Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. “But the time to think about that would be in August.”

Well, Saturday is August. Anyone who’s ever grown a vegetable garden or frequented a local farmers market knows that we’re moving into the height of summer’s bounty right now. My weekly CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box now holds more goodies than I can eat in a mere seven days, but I don’t want to let a scrap of that veggie goodness go to waste. Canning is an obvious solution, for those familiar with the process, but I haven’t signed up for Remedial Domestic Goddess classes yet. I need something easier, with less investment in time and equipment. For me, the fewer hurdles to overcoming inertia, the better.

To the freezer, Robin!

Now, I’m not one of those people with a freezer the size of a Volkswagen; I just have the unit in my refrigerator. It won’t hold enough to keep me eating 100 percent local until next summer, yet it can hold enough fruits and vegetables to make me feel virtuous.

Any of summer’s berries can be easily frozen. When strawberries were in their full flourish a month ago, I set aside a quart from the farmers market to save for later. After washing the berries and removing the green tops, I placed them in a single layer on a cookie sheet, covered the sheet lightly, and stuck it in the freezer. When the berries were frozen, I scooped them off the cookie sheet and into freezer bags for storage. A couple of weeks later, I did the same with a pint of raspberries gratefully gleaned from a friend’s garden. Blackberries, blueberries, huckleberries — same process. Now, sometime this winter, I will reach into the depths of my freezer and retrieve not just fruit but a bag filled with memories of companionship and warm days.

Stone fruits like cherries, apricots and peaches can be frozen as well, although they need to be pitted first, and most food-preservation experts recommend freezing them in a light sugar syrup (or fruit juice) and ascorbic acid to prevent freezer burn and discoloration. (Visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation’s Website for recipes and tips.)

Most veggies require simple blanching (a brief bath in boiling water) before freezing, but they’ll then freeze quite nicely. Or, cook them and then freeze the finished dish. When my fridge was overrun by several bags of mixed cooking greens (kale, collards, mustard greens, beet greens, swiss chard and spinach) a couple of weeks ago, I cooked up a mess of greens then froze them in serving-size portions for easy retrieval.

The most precious of summer vegetables, for me, is a fresh tomato, plucked straight off the vine and eaten while still warm from the sun. Homegrown tomatoes are one of the divine pleasures of human life — tomatoes from the farmers market are a close second — and there is no way to capture their fleeting beauty.

Yet tomatoes can be preserved. Canning, of course, is an option for those more knowledgeable (and ambitious) than I. But raw tomatoes can be frozen, too: Dunk ’em in boiling water for 30 seconds, slip off the skins, then pack ’em into containers leaving 1 inch of headroom (for expansion during freezing). After thawing, use them for cooking.

Just this week, I stumbled upon another method for tomatoes. As reported in Grist online, tomato halves or slices can be slow roasted (six hours at 250 degrees) to “reduce excess liquid, concentrate flavor and increase acidity.” After roasting, store the tomatoes in olive oil — up to three months in the refrigerator, or up to one year in the freezer.

Even without my Domestic Goddess certificate, I can stash a bit of summer for the gloomy days to come. Every time I dig one of my stored treasures out of the freezer, I’ll feel just a little bit smug, knowing that I’m being frugal while supporting local farmers — even under a mantle of snow.

National Farmers Market Week runs Aug. 2-8.