Foraging Fall Foods – and Trade with Others

Foraging is fun, it’s self reliant, and provides opportunities to trade within our community for items that we don’t have in our vegetable garden. After making many jars of a sinfully deep-flavored jam from a huge patch of wild blackberries, I traded some of the finished product for a big basket of kale, two huge parsnips and some cabbage.

The parsnips are in cold storage for a few weeks to sweeten up. In the meantime, I canned the kale for later use in making Miso soup, and turned the cabbage into a daily cheap lunch – cabbage soup. Here’s how I can kale and make Miso and cabbage soups.

Canning Kale

You need a pressure canner to can non-acid food. I got a large one that holds five quart jars, fourteen pint jars or eighteen 8-ounce jars.

Be sure to follow good safe instruction for canning greens.

Some tips from my recent experience:

• 4 and 1/2 pounds of well-sorted kale (no big stems or bad leaves) yields 17 cups of processed kale.

• I canned nine 8-ounce jars because I use it to make Miso soup, only two servings at a time. One jar is just the right amount for a batch of soup.

Quick Miso Soup with Kale and Carrots

Ingredients:

• 1/4 pound of fresh kale, steamed till tender or 8 ounces of canned chopped kale

• 1 heaping teaspoon Miso (fermented soy paste)

• half a carrot, thinly sliced

• 2 cups boiling water (drained kale liquid)

Directions:

1. Bring the liquid to a boil and stir in a heaping teaspoon of Miso (fermented soy paste).

2. Add the carrots and simmer till tender.

3. When the carrots are tender, add the chopped kale.

Makes two bowls

Cabbage Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 large onions
• 1/2 head of garlic
• 2 stalks of celery
• 2 large carrots
• 1/4 cup olive or grape seed oil
• tablespoon of sea salt
• lots of black pepper
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• 5 bay leaves
• 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• large whole cabbage
• parsley fresh or dried

Directions:

1. Boil two quarts of water in a kettle.
2. Dice 2 large onions and 1/2 head of garlic.
3. Slice 2 stalks of celery and 2 large carrots.
4. Cover the bottom of an 8-quart pot with olive or grape seed oil and stir-fry the garlic and carrots. Add at least a tablespoon of sea salt and lots of black pepper. When hot, not tender, pour in the boiling water and boil another kettle of water.
5. Add tomato paste, 5 bay leaves, 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar and 1/2 cup of brown sugar to the pot and boil.
6. Slice a whole cabbage as small as you’ll be comfortable eating. Put it in the pot as you get it sliced, and add the second kettle of water after it’s boiling.
7. If you have fresh parsley, chop a good bunch in. Otherwise throw in a handful of dried parsley.
8. Cover the pot and boil the heck out of it. It’s done when the celery is no longer hard and the thick parts of the cabbage are a bit translucent. The pot can cool overnight on the counter before you store it in the fridge.

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Makes 10-12 bowls, and keeps a week in the fridge. If you freeze it, the cabbage won’t be as firm.

Our foraging and trading this season has given us ideas about what to get serious about growing next season. In any event, we’ll be sure to grow extra to trade and share with our neighbors.

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Lynn Shwadchuck is a guest poster here at the Self Reliance Exchange. She is a Canadian watercolor painter and illustrator/designer. She and her mate live in the bush north of Kingston, Ontario, foraging, growing and preserving food, and building local resilience through community networking. Creator of 10in10Diet.com, Lynn is an inveterate penny-pincher and organizer.

Categories: cooking and recipes, foraging | Tags: canning, cooking and recipes, foraging, self reliance, trading | No Comments »