Last time I featured a short piece on how Leslie Haslam changed her lifestyle and started eating more local food. We continue Leslie’s story now with some tips for preserving food.

Leslie the Locavore

Learning how to preserve food has made another big change in Leslie’s lifestyle. “We have worked hard at preserving food from spring, summer, and fall harvests so we don’t have to rely on food that came from far away.” She freezes lots of vegetables, from beans and broccoli to carrots and shredded zucchini.

Here are Leslie’s instructions for preserving kale and similar greens, which she finds easy to store and puts in “every omelet or egg affair” that she makes:

1. Prepare the kale (or chard) by cutting out the stem.
2. Wash it.
3. Chop it.
4. Spin it dry (to avoid freezer burn).
5. Put it in a ziplock bag and freeze.

And here are her tips for preserving carrots:

1. Wash.
2. Slice. (She keeps them pretty thick because she likes to use them in soups.)
3. Blanch. (Put carrots in boiling water for 3-4 minutes – don’t overcook.
4. Cool.
5. Put in a ziplock bag and freeze.

Leslie also cans some fruit and makes jam, peaches and applesauce. This past summer she froze 20 quarts of blueberries as well as peaches, blackberries, and strawberries. She says her peaches her canned peaches are like “sunshine in a bottle.”

Storing onions, garlic, potatoes, and winter squash is also easy, she says. Leslie doesn’t have a cold cellar, which she says is the ideal environment. So instead she uses her attic.

Leslie also stores farm-raised meat in the winter. But she’s pleased to see more and more winter farmers’ markets in the seacoast area, with an abundance of meat, eggs, and winter vegetables. Goat has been the latest addition to her meat menu. Goat, she says, is a common meat. “It’s a new food in the U.S. but not the rest of the world.”

Eating local doesn’t have hard and fast rules. Leslie makes exceptions for such things as tea, coffee, oranges, and olive oil, all available from the U.S. market. She has made a conscious decision not to buy bananas and pineapples, neither of which is grown in the U.S. But she did confess to buying limes for her green tomato salsa!

Time is a big issue in putting up food, especially when you’re picking and packing your own products. “Everything is a choice,” Leslie says. “If we really want something, we can find time to do it.” When her children were younger she turned berry picking into a family outing, bringing along her son and daughter. She used it as a learning opportunity, and taught her children how to count as they picked berries and plopped them into baskets. At home Leslie multitasks by pulling the leaves off her thyme while she watches the Boston Red Sox.

Thanks to Leslie for sharing her story!