What to Do With All This Produce?

I am an avid vegetable gardener. My family spends much of the early spring through fall in the gardens planting, picking, and tending the crops. We have about 2600 square feet of vegetable and berry gardens. This time of year we are picking a LOT of food! And once you pick you must find a way to use all of those veggies as soon as possible. If you find yourself with too much fresh produce these are some ways to preserve summers bounty.

Blanching and freezing You can blanch most veggies like peas, green beans, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, corn, cauliflower, and beets. Blanching is basically quick boiling the veggies before freezing in order to stop the action of enzymes which make the plants grow. The University of Minnesota has extensive information on blanching, gardening, and preserving at the website http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/00053.html
I blanch my veggies, cool them quickly in a cold water bath, and drain them. I use vacuum pack my vegetables, but you can also put the veggies in a freezer bag, pressing out as much air as possible. I freeze berries for winter use by just cleaning them, coring if necessary and placing them on cookie sheets in the freezer. Once they are frozen I package them and freeze them for later. You can even freeze tomatoes whole! Just clean them and take off the stems, put them in freezer bags (even better, use a vacuum sealer) and freeze whole. When you need tomatoes for soup, chili or spaghetti sauce, just thaw your tomatoes and add. They will have the texture of a stewed tomato, how easy is that!

Canning If you have never canned vegetables before, I highly suggest either taking a class or finding someone who knows how and learning from them. Canning is a science and it requires proper equipment and meticulous habits. You must use a pressure canner for most vegetables which are low acid. The acidity in the food determines if fruits or vegetables are processed in a pressure canner or a boiling water bath canner to control botulism bacteria. Low-acid vegetables and meats contain too little acidity to prevent the growth of these bacteria and must be pressure canned. Acid foods such as fruits, jams and jellies, pickles, sauerkraut can be safely processed in a water bath canner. You can pickle vegetables using a water bath method, as adding vinegar brine creates the acidity needed for preservation. I always follow recipes carefully, and never add items or vary amounts in the recipe. I use the “Ball Blue Book of Canning” almost exclusively as there are TONS of great tried and true recipes in this book. For more information see http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ0516.html

Drying Another way of preserving veggies is drying. You can dry veggies in many ways. I inherited a dehydrator from my parents. Back in the 70’s it seems like everyone was making their own jerky and dried fruit. Dehydrators were all the rage. You can pick these up at rummage sales for a great price and they do work! I dry carrots, zucchini, peppers, herbs, onions, garlic, tomatoes (mine are even better than the expensive sun dried ones from the store) beans, potatoes, and apples. This is pretty simple. You slice or cube the veggies or fruit, set it on the trays, turn on the drier to the appropriate temperature and just check every so often. I then bag or place the food in glass jars and use in soups or eat out of the jar. You’d be surprised at how good dried carrots and zucchini are! My daughter loves snacking on dried carrots and apples. There is basic information on drying at http://www.pickyourown.org/dryingfoods.htm

Fermenting Do you like sauerkraut? Or old fashioned deli style garlic dill pickles? Ever tried Korean Kimchi? These are all fermented vegetables. Crock fermenting is becoming popular again as people are looking for ways to preserve foods without cooking. All you really need is a ceramic crock or a food grade plastic bucket. My first batch of sauerkraut was made in the crock from a crock pot, it worked just fine. This year I have stepped up to a polish pickling crock, and am currently fermenting 10 lbs of garlic dill pickles. Oh man, they are so good and were so easy to make! For more information on fermenting go to: http://www.wildfermentation.com/

A Creative Weekend

I've had a little time to do some artsy things now that I don't work on Fridays. Tonight I finished a very complicated bracelet made of seed beads and crystal rivolis. This was a very challenging pattern, and it took me weeks to finish. I really love the punkish, glamorous, glittery character of the piece. It's a pattern from one of my favorite bead designers, Laura McCabe. I suspect this piece would be ranked as an "expert beader" level design, "Bead and Button" magazine does not rank skill levels on their patterns. Probably a good thing, as I might have been intimidated by a ranking. One thing I really appreciate about doing a project like this, is that it reminds me that I have never assumed that I could not make something that I wanted to make. I'm not being boastful, it's just that I have always been able to decide what I want to make and then go about doing it. I haven't acknowledged my ability in a very long time. It feels really good to be producing something again!


Last Friday I took apart a glass decoration that had rotting feathers and fringes all around it. I just took some old beads that were a bit bigger than I like using, strung them onto the bottom and came up with a nice garden decoration.



Next I decided to dig out some junk from the basement and put together this:




It's an old bowling ball. I glued on glass pieces left over from a stained glass project and flat marbles. I had grout that was salvaged from the garbage at Home Depot (my brother in law used to work there...I don't dumpster dive!) I've never done a grout project and this was a bit tricky! I should have glued glass way under the ball, because grouting was harder over that large area on the bottom of the ball. If the grout starts to fall off..I'll know why! But, it was fun anyway and used up stuff that was collecting dust in the basement.

I've decided that I'll continue to try to take something out of the basement on Friday's and make something out of it. Should be fun!

Garlic Scape Pesto

We are eating from the garden just about every day now. Being a zone 3 gardener, the harvest comes late. Last night we had a stir fry with baby bok choy, zucchini, early onions, garlic scapes, and pea pods. Oh..that first meal from the garden is just so wonderful! It is also a reminder that the race is on. We work very hard to plant, maintain, nurture, harvest, eat, and preserve the produce from our garden. I won't be buying any more limp lettuce at the grocery store for a few months and I'm anxious to bite into the first tomato. Tonight we tried two things with the garlic scapes. Scapes are like the flower of the garlic. It's a curly stalk that grows up from the center of the plant. You have to remove the scapes in order for the garlic to form a nice bulb. Scapes have a very mild green garlic flavor. We tried grilling some, but unfortunately Mike left them on the grill too long and they were charcoal scapes! I didn't like them! The rest of the scapes were chopped and put into the food processor. I added olive oil, grated parmigiano cheese, kosher salt and pine nuts.









I simply processed it for a few minutes and it made a wonderful pesto!



I think this will be great on a roasted veggie sandwich, in a pasta sauce, on pasta, on fish, on a cracker, etc! I had some on my corn on the cob, and tried it on a burger...very good. It has a very fresh green flavor to it, with a good garlic finish. Yum! I used about 24 scapes, 1 cup of good olive oil, most of a small jar of pine nuts, two teaspoons of salt and about half a wedge of parmigiano reggiano cheese. Very very easy. I will freeze most of this in small containers for future use.

Unanimous vote on wireless communication facilities ordinance!

Last night our City Council voted unanimously to enact a new ordinance regarding wireless communication facilities. I am very pleased to say that we have jumped on board with hundreds of other communities who have said, "We will have control of where and what you build in our community!" I am not anti-cell towers or anti-cell phones, but I am against blind approval of cell towers. Prior to enacting this ordinance we really had no ordinance. This is not unusual as cell technology has exploded, and so has the proliferation of towers. The dirty little secret is that if your community has no ordinance, you will likely be a magnet for tower speculators, and before you know it, you'll have a few in places they really don't belong. Or a few at heights that are not really necessary and loom over the neighborhood.

I attended the committee of the whole discussion prior to the council meeting. This was a meeting where the planning department would introduce their ordinance and introduce the consultant and allow for questions. Partway through the meeting, one of the councilors said that she had just received an email from PCIA, (from their website: PCIA - The Wireless Infrastructure Association is the principal trade association representing the companies that make up the wireless telecommunications infrastructure industry. Its members include the carriers, infrastructure providers and professional services firms that own and manage more than 125,000 telecommunications facilities throughout the world.) and they want the council to delay action as they would like to have a say in the process. They claimed that this ordinance could violate federal law and that the council should delay it until they could give their side. Mr. Neuman from Center for Municipal Solutions explained that PCIA had sent a standard letter, which they send to nearly every community who is getting ready to enact an ordinance controlling wireless facilities. He stated that in over 700 communities who have put this ordinance in place, they have never had a legal challenge. Luckily when this came up at the council meeting, our Duluth CAO sternly stated that this was not a "stealth ordinance" and that there had been more than sufficient notice to the public. There had been ads published in the paper, it had been published on the City website for weeks, it had been presented for a two readings at City Council and it had gone through public hearing with the Planning Commission. In other words PCIA...tough shit. You came too late to the party. I find it highly arrogant of them to come so late and expect to stop the process. A lot of stakeholders who are Duluthians, worked hard to get some attention paid to this issue. You think you can sail in at the last minute, make veiled threats, and cow us again? Nope..didn't work! Councilors Stauber, Gardner, and Anderson tried to table the ordinance, but that was voted down. The final vote...unanimous passage!

My battle started because AT&T wanted to put a tower in my neighborhood that will directly invade the airspace of a significant and extraordinary migration of millions of songbirds. In attending council meetings I became aware that these "consultants" basically used the same justification for every tower. They have a narrow script. "People need uninterrupted in car coverage along the entire highway.", "911 calls are migrating to towers in Douglas and Lake County which could delay service", "People in the area have to stand by a window to get good reception.", "People have dropped their landlines and need uninterrupted service from all areas in their homes." I'm not saying these aren't all good arguments. What I am saying is that our city leaders needed a way to verify that what the company claims is actually happening. That was not happening in Duluth.

I began to ask, "Is there anyone in our planning department who has expertise in reading RF studies, is there anyone who understands these charts and graphs?" Well, no...no one did. And it's likely that might be the case in your town too. So, this means that the consultants for the cell companies come in and make lots of claims, but there is no one on local government who can verify those claims. The city takes them at their word...we all trust big business, right? (think BP!) This was pretty disgusting to find out. That we are approving towers that impact neighborhoods, probably will violate the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and gee whiz...we don't even know what we're doing!

So, it is gratifying to know that we have an ordinance that addresses migration, views, community notification, liability, annual testing, permitting fees, priorities on where towers can be sited, THIRD PARTY REVIEW! etc, etc. What had been a one page "ordinance" is now over 30 pages! All towers will have to go through a 3rd party review with consultants who can negotiate with the cell companies to make sure that a tower is the only solution for our community. Any tower that needs modification of any type (including adding antenna for co-location) will have to come in for another permit and follow the new ordinance!

So, get involved, in whatever suits you. Don't give up, victory is sweet!

And AT&T, thank you for being so disrespectful to our community, that's really what motivated me to get this passed.

Don't come knocking if you're thinking we're pushovers!

Hey cell companies...guess what, there's a new sheriff in town! The Duluth Planning Commission just unanimously passed one of the best wireless communication ordinances I've ever seen! Click on the title to read what will likely become law in Duluth! BIG thanks go out to the Center for Municipal Solutions for helping to make this happen.

2010 Veggie Garden is Perking!

We are going great guns here with the garden. We've got nice garlic coming, which was planted last fall. Strawberries and a few blueberries are blooming. The darn deer ate most of the blueberry plants but the ones that survived have blossoms. We put in peas and potatoes in mid april and they are coming up nicely. Last weekend we planted 35 tomato plants and 7 tomatillos. Mike had started those in the greenhouse and they were over a foot tall...they are looking great! Marlena planted the beans. I planted lettuce, onions, spinach, bok choy, radishes, beets, and carrots. We still have to put in cucumbers, eggplant, peppers ( we have 50 various pepper plants!) squash, zucchini, and cabbage. We started by loosening the soil and they laying on 4 inches of 4 year old manure. It's very weedy...but man do the veggies love it! I am planting buckwheat between rows as a green mulch. Once everything is in, we get a short break and then go right into canning and freezing mode. Oh...and of course we eat fresh stuff all summer!

New UDC will address cell tower issue

I am encouraged that the City of Duluth Planning department has contacted a local researcher for advice on how the new zoning code should address cell towers and our unique bird migration area! There are real signs that they are listening to citizen input about cell towers in our community. The proposed UDC also prohibits antennas over 50 feet, I sure hope that proposal makes it to the final plan! I'm sure a company could apply for a variance, but they'd have to prove they need it. According to City of Duluth CAO David Montgomery, the city is also planning on requiring third party reviews of all tower proposals. Currently no one on city staff understands the technical aspects of the proposals. I find it ironic that the city of Duluth has been basically doing what the federal government has done with offshore oil drilling proposals; taking the industry's word for it. There is no one on City staff who understands the documentation that communication companies submit to justify need for a tower. This comes directly from the CAO. Perhaps they are realizing that blind trust in the communication companies might not be a good practice. Especially when one of those companies plans to build a tower in what is on of the most significant low altitude migration paths in America. Let's tighten up the code now, and hold communication companies accountable to prove need over want!