Local and scavenged produce is filling up the fridge, and ferments of various sizes, dates and smells are taking over the kitchen. There is still a box of cucumbers sitting on the floor, four heads of cabbage waiting to be made into sauerkraut, and about a pound of scallions waiting for who knows what. Tomorrow is going to be a big soup and sauce making day. I also hope to get those heads of cabbage into a crock.

I didn’t bring home any vegetables from the farmer’s market today. I picked up some more goat cheese from Nature’s Way, some pork sausage from Grassy Ridge and some raw honey and eggs from Honeybell Farms Leland, NC (7 miles). I used most of last week’s honey when I put up some pints of blueberry jam – no local sugar – and I needed more eggs for my lunches. Jim Janovetz from Honeybell is new to the farmer’s market this year. He sometimes has duck eggs but was sold out this morning when I came to his table.

Although I didn’t work at the Black River Organic Farm table this week, Kristin, Lynn and I hung around there like the farmer’s market groupies that we are. The table was busy as always, but Kristin managed to get to the table and pick out some corn and a tomato.

When we got home from the market, I made up a quick dinner to take with me to work (a hard-boiled egg, a container of gazpacho, some Stoneground Bakery sourdough bread, and a chicken-garden tomato-lemon cucumber-goat cheese sandwich), and fried some potatoes for mine and Kristin’s lunch.

Tonight from work I brought home an unclaimed CSA box, a couple very overripe pears, a squishy lemon, and yet another quart of cherry tomatoes from the co-op garden. Yes, tomorrow is going to be a very busy cooking day as I try to figure out how to preserve this overflowing bounty for the lean days of winter. This diet has possessed me with its adventure, and I have no intention of giving it up in three months like the rules say. Time to change the rules…

Two weeks ago while visiting Noel and Danielle at Black River, I picked up a forty pound box of #2 cucumbers that were going to be composted. According to the North Carolina Cucumber Outline, the grades for cucumbers -

“ …are U.S. Fancy, U.S. Extra 1, U.S. 1, U.S. 1 Small, U.S. 1 Large, U.S. 2. Cucumbers are graded on their color, size, form, diameter and defects.”

US #2 are the least desirable because they are off color, have bends, nick, scratches, rough spots, etc. The cucumbers in the box looked fine to me – I’m not about to pass up free local food, #2 or not.

After making 14 quarts and 7 pints of dill pickles, I still had about 20 pounds left. I gave 10 pounds away, which left me with enough for another project. So yesterday I made some gazpacho.

Digging around in the fridge, I found most of the necessary ingredients for the cold soup. I took a can of tomatoes from the cases on top of the cupboards, a handful of cherry tomatoes from the co-op garden (5 miles), a big cucumber (45 miles), an on-its-way-out green pepper (45 miles), some scallions from Linda Kerr in Rocky Point, NC (19 miles), some elephant garlic from John and Belle Shisko in Holly Ridge, NC (34 miles), some basil from the yard, and some other seasonings from the bottomless seasoning cupboard.

Here is how to make a very simple summer gazpacho -

1 – Puree a can of tomatoes (or 6 fresh slicers) and 3 cloves of garlic together in a blender or other mixer.

2 – Add chopped bell pepper (any color and size that you have), a half cup of chopped scallions or any other onion, a chopped cucumber (remove the seeds if you want), 1/3 cup of basil, 1/4 oil (whatever you have – if you don’t have oil, skip it), 2 tsp salt and some pepper to taste.

3 – Use the “pulse” on the blender to reduce the chunks a bit.

4 – Empty into another container and refrigerate for a day to let the flavors blend.

5 – Serve cold with bread or crackers. Many people like this soup with cheese, so sprinkle some cheese if you have some. I used some Nature’s Way (29 miles) goat mozzarella with mine.

A couple years ago I was talking with the grower who supplies spring garden transplants for the co-op. He was telling me about places to get free fruit trees and berry bushes that “just had to be dug up and hauled away.” I was skeptical, but I listened further as he told me about an abandoned blueberry farm on county property. All I needed was a ladder, he said, and to not care about bugs and heat. I continued the conversation, but shrugged off the blueberries.

A few days ago my friend A. called to tell me about the same abandoned blueberry farm. He had also heard about it from the plant grower, but unlike me A. had gone out to the patch and seen the berries a few years ago. He didn’t pick any then because they weren’t ripe, and he never went back that year or the next. He did go back a few days ago. His report to me got my curiosity boiling, and I was ready to go whenever. Yesterday morning A. called with an update – berries were looking ripe.

I wasn’t able to go with him, but he was kind enough to give me directions to the place. After work, Kristin and I loaded up a 12 quart stock pot, a couple small containers and a sheet and drove out to the place. Battling rush hour traffic was a horror show (I rarely drive), but after 20 or so minutes we managed to get to the parking lot near the berry plot.

To get to the berries we followed what seemed like directions on a treasure map. Turn left at the old house foundation, right at the trail fork, look left for a downed tree and go straight ahead into a clearing. My friend told me I wouldn’t believe it when I saw it, that it was so out of place and out of the context of the rest of the area. That is how I knew we were there.

Kristin and I were talking about something when we entered the clearing. Mid-sentence I looked up and practically yelled “berries!”

We stood at the beginning of a 1/2 acre of 10 to 12 foot tall blueberry bushes, arranged in perfect rows in what looked like staggered plantings of various varieties. The bushes were definitely old, maybe 30 or 40 years old, and most certainly abandoned. They hadn’t been pruned or cut back in quite sometime. But the great thing was that there were ripe berries and plenty of them.

After gazing and grazing for a few minutes, deciding where we might start, we walked down a random row and spread out the sheet. I immediately started shaking the branches. Berries fell everywhere, landing on the sheet and everywhere around it. Berries bounced off heads and shoulders.

Kristin scrambled to pick them up as they fell. This quickly gave way to the two of us shaking opposite sides of the row and then gathering all the berries. The berries were everywhere. We couldn’t pick them up fast enough.

With the berries came all sorts of debris – twigs, old leaves, flaking bark – and my sweaty skin was soon covered in an itchy coating. Along with the debris, we managed to shake loose all sorts of creatures. Small flies, crickets, inch worms and all sizes of spiders came down on the sheet and on us. We swatted and flicked them away as we loaded up with the little blue treats.

Kristin sampled way more berries than I did, probably because I was still in disbelief that this place existed. I still can’t believe that we weren’t surrounded by other people picking. I kept saying to myself, surely people understand what is back here, surely the county has some people come pick this, surely we will get yelled at when we leave the clearing. But the patch obviously goes unpicked by anyone except random scavengers like us. In the next few weeks there will be enough berries to fill several freezers. Most will go unpicked.

After just an hour of work, Kristin and I hauled off about 10 quarts of berries. It doesn’t sound like much, but think of 20 pints of berries stacked on a grocery store shelf. That’s a lot of berries for an hours work. At the end of our picking session, looking at a full stock pot of blueberries, us sweaty, itchy and giddy, we wondered how long it would take before we would both be out here again, on hands and knees, piling berries into our little plastic containers.

I have identified several food items that I currently use that will need to be replaced, replicated or removed from my diet in the near future. Many of these things are basic condiments such as mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard, which I can most likely make myself if the proper ingredients are available. Other things such as olive oil and balsamic vinegar are out of the question, as their travel log comes in at several thousand miles.

I use vinegar with oil on my salads primarily, and I can see using vinegar in homemade condiments as well when the time comes. I am currently out of balsamic vinegar, which I could drink by the glass if need be. It is very smooth, and I can tell it has been aged well. So I am now relying on the last 1/4 of a bottle of Bragg’s Organic Apple Cider Vinegar for my salad topping. Apple cider vinegar is way more harsh than balsamic. This particular brand is also raw and unfiltered, which I think gives it more of a bite. The bottle label also has a picture of a lady with a weird hat on that makes it an interesting conversation piece on the dinner table. I dilute this apple cider vinegar substantially with oil and seasonings when I make a salad dressing. It still has an edge to it, but it blends better with the other flavors in the salad.

The apple cider vinegar might last another month. In anticipation of running out of this vinegar I turned to the pages of Wild Fermentation for instructions on making my own. With what I had available I was able to start three different types of vinegar in order to do some taste testing and experiments on fermentation time. The first is a blueberry based vinegar using local berries from Newberry’s Blueberries (19 miles) and local raw honey Olsen Gardens (48 miles) as the sugar source instead of the rapidly disappearing organic raw sugar in the cupboard.

The beginnings of vinegar fermentation are the same as the beginnings of wine or beer brewing. At a point in the fermentation process, the blueberries could be dumped out and the honey water could be capped with an airlock to create the anaerobic environment necessary for the mixture to become an alcoholic beverage. I would end up with a honey wine that could be bottled and aged or consumed then and there. We’ll get to that project soon enough, just as soon as the airlock arrives.

Instead I’ll dump the blueberries in about a week and leave the mixture open to the air as the aerobic process continues and wild aerobic creatures (yeast like Mycoderma aceti and bacteria in the Acetobacter genus) exhaust the developing alcohol and make vinegar. The whole process should take about three weeks.

Already the second mixture, a bruised apricot and “floor grape” concoction, is fizzing dramatically. A “floor grape” is a grape that fell on the floor at the co-op. Yes, I rinsed them. The bubbling is audible at this point, just a little over 24 hours into the ferment. I used raw sugar in this jar, and I think that makes a bit of difference. Sandor writes in Wild Fermentation that honey based ferments might take a bit longer.

You can see the red and green grapes dissolving. The apricot is floating at the top of the jar. The nectarine/apple mixture is also fizzing audibly; it is another raw sugar mix. The apple is a golden delicious that was bruised and wrinkled in the case it came in and never made it to the shelf. The yellow nectarine had a small bit of mold on its side and a bruise. It also never made it to the shelf. These fruits were destined for the compost bin, but now they are serving a higher purpose on the kitchen counter.

I think the apple/nectarine jar is the prettiest at the moment. The fruits aren’t dissolving like the grapes or just hanging around in a darkened liquid like the blueberries. Here are the fruits up close -

Don’t put your vinegar ferment in the windowsill. I just did this to get a decent photo. So, if you are curious about how to make fruit scrap vinegar, here are the basic instructions:

1 – Ask a worker in a grocery for some bruised or damaged fruit. Ask someone at a local food co-op or natural food store and you will have much better luck. Grocery stores aren’t interested in giving anything – including unfit fruit – away for free. They would rather see it in the dumpster, which is another perfectly good place to find your starter fruit.

 

A second option is to just eat a piece of fruit or two and save the skin and cores. These are a perfect start for the vinegar.

 

2 – In a quart jar, mix a 1/4 cup of sugar or honey with almost a full quart of water. Leave enough space for the fruit. Completely dissolve the sugar or honey in the water then add your fruit.

 

3 – Cover the jar with some fabric or cheesecloth and hold it in place with a rubber band or two. This is to keep the flies and dust out but to let oxygen in.

 

4 - Dump the fruit in about a week or when the liquid begins to darken a lot.

 

5 – Ferment for another 2 or 3 weeks, stirring the liquid whenever you have the chance.

 

6 – Enjoy your vinegar. At this point it will be stable and can be kept in a cool cupboard or in the fridge.

These steps are adapted from the fruit scrap vinegar instructions in Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz. This won’t be the last you hear of this book on this blog, so if this all sounds interesting, please order a copy. You won’t be disappointed.