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Sustainable Stew

Sustainable Stew

• 2 large onions
• 3 Medium carrots, sliced into rounds
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 qt. frozon kale, chopped (optional)
• 6 whole frozen tomatoes
• 3 ice-cubes of tomato paste
• 1 cup dried apple, chopped into 1/2" chunks
• 2 cups apple cider
• 1 tablespoon fennel seeds (not mine)
• 1 tablespoon dried parsley
• 3 small sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 sprig rosemary
• 1 butternut squash
• 1 cup celeriac root, chopped
• 1-2 tablespoon olive oil (not mine)

Sautee onions and garlic in olive oil. Take whole frozen tomatoes and run under hot water and rub off the skins. Let sit 5 minutes, core and chop. Add to onions. Chop dehydrated apples and add to stew, along with apple cider. Cut celeriac root into half-inch slices and then peel with an ordinary potato peeler; Then chop into pieces and add to stew. Add spices and simmer for an hour.

About half an hour before serving, cut carrots into rounds and add to stew. Peel and chop squash into 3/4" chunks and add to stew. Chop frozen kale and add to stew. Simmer 30 minutes and serve with bread. This stew has a sweet-sour quality I found delectable.

Tomatoes use up much of my garden space, and when I tell people I grew 46 plants last year, they think I'm lying, but I'm not. Here's how I store them: first, I freeze tomatoes whole. I clean them and put on cookie sheets in the freezer. When frozen, I put them in gallon freezer bags, 9-12 to the gallon bag.

Although you can buy a machine to suck the air out of freezer bags for less frost in the storage bags, my gardening friend Doris LeVarn of Meriden, NH explained you can do the same with a straw: squeeze out as much air as possible, and close the zip right up to the straw. Suck out air so the bag contracts right around the contents, then slip out the straw and close the bag in one motion. I put up 15 gallon bags of tomatoes.

Next, grow extra tomatoes for making paste. I core them, squeeze out extra juice and seeds, and pop into a food processor and puree them. I fill a heavy cast-iron enamel pot, and simmer them for an evening. When a spoon will literally stand up in the paste, I turn off the heat and leave the pot uncovered overnight for a little more evaporation. In the morning spoon paste into ice cube trays, freeze and then put in zipper bags.

All serious gardeners should have a good food dehydrator. I use a Nesco American Harvester product called the Garden Master Pro. It allows me to dry cherry tomatoes, apples, hot peppers and more. I like the fact that it has a thermostat so I can dry parsley at a much lower temperature than tomatoes, for example.

And of course, you need a big freezer ˙ã or three, as we do. I have apples pressed and cider made each fall; some I make into hard cider and some of that I turn into my own vinegar. The rest goes in half-gallon plastic containers and is frozen. Eight gallons a year of fresh cider is what I store, and I use it not only for drinking, but in cooking. You can use it just like white wine in most recipes.

I keep my freezers in a very cold basement, which reduces the amount of energy I use. If I had a garage, I would keep the freezers there. The tale that putting freezers out in the cold ruins them is a myth; the freezers just don't run all winter. By now I have consolidated the contents of 3 freezers into 2.

I also have a root cellar for storing things like celeriac, carrots and potatoes. But in very cold times I move the buckets of produce upstairs and store in a pantry that stays about 45-50 degrees; they might freeze otherwise. Winter squash, garlic and onions I store in a cool upstairs room that stays very dry and around 60 degrees.

I usually have rosemary, thyme and parsley growing in flower pots on window sills all winter. I forgot to dig up chives, but they do fine inside, too. And I forgot to water my parsley and thyme, killing them, but I dried lots of parsley last summer. Most herbs dehydrate well.

So plan your garden with the thought of eating out of it all winter. In this economy you really can save a lot of money. It will take some investment - a freezer and a dehydrator - and lots of your time on summer evenings. And of course I will never become fully dependent on the garden for my food. But wow, what a treat it is to eat your own food when the snow is falling and the temperature hovers near zero.

Henry Homeyer is the author of 3 gardening books. You may contact him at www.henry.homeyer@comcast.net, or P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com