my pantry

This is my pantry that doubles as a root cellar. I store my jars and vegetables here at a cool room temperature. Vegetables I have here are shell beans, popcorn, coriander, garlic, potatoes, and winter squashes.

I spend a lot of time in the pantry. It has a little work shelf. Also storage shelves with garden books and garden supplies. In the middle are plant shelves with lights that I can wheel around. The room is off the garage, well vented, and has its own temperature control. It's a tight space but it does the job.

Other things I've stored this year are,
Freezer: green beans, basil pesto, roasted chiles, pizza sauce, raspberries, and dried pears
Refrigerator: carrots, beets, cabbage, and winter radishes
Kitchen: dried beans and dried chiles
Boiler room: honey

my larder

It's the end of another gardening season. My larder is as full as it's going to get this year. I have vegetables stored in different locations: my freezer, refrigerator, and new food storage pantry.

My new food pantry is separate small room just off our garage. Similar to a root cellar, we built it here since we have no basement. My husband build pine shelving to line the walls. With a cement floor it stays about 50 degree F like a root cellar, though we put a temp regulator in just in case. This room has squashes, potatoes, canned tomatoes, pickles, jams, and jellies. I have several batches of pickled beans, dill beans and three bean salad. I have pickled zucchini squash and pickled garlic scapes. Lot's of canned tomatoes. My garlic (I ended up with very tiny garlic heads this year) popcorn, and a few last onions hang in bunches behind the door. (Sadly, no fruits from this year ... pears or apples ... because of a late hard frost.) Oh, and there's also about 100 ponds of honey on the shelves.

In the refrigerator I have several jars of sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil. Also carrots, beets, and celeriac in plastic bags.

My frozen garden produce includes lots of pesto. We put away a quart this year. It's stored a ground basil and pine nuts in olive oil. We add cheese and dilute it a bit with pasta water to serve it. I have baggies of frozen pizza sauce and roasted chile peppers. I also still have raspberries and dried pears from last year's bumper crops.

vegetables in my larder

While rearranging shelves where I'm storing my winter vegetables, I spread out everything on the patio. Suzie even posed too!

I have metal shelves in the dining room for storage now, but am looking forward to building a storage pantry in the spring.

imagining a new pantry for storing vegetables

I have this vision of a pantry full of stored homegrown vegetables. Shelves full of canned pickles and tomatoes. Baskets full of winter squashes and potatoes. A fridge with carrots, beets and cabbage. And a freezer with pesto and red sauce. Onions, shallots, garlic and dried chili peppers and herbs hanging from the ceiling. And jars of dried homegrown herbs on the shelves.

In our old house, I used a section of the basement for my winter pantry. Some years I filled it up pretty well with potatoes and squashes. Occasionally canned tomatoes too. Always pesto in the freezer.

Our new house currently has no storage space. I have onions stashed in the utility room and the shed. Pickles are lined up on the kitchen counter. But we have plans to build a garage that will have a room specifically designed to store my larder. We will design the size, shape, shelf configuration, etc. We are in the planning stages now and hopefully will break ground on the project mid September. Until then, I am enjoying imagining.

january larder

I have a pretty minimal larder this year. Mostly because I spent more time cleaning the house and seeding the grass so we could sell our house last summer. The good news is - we have a beautiful new home. And the bad news - I have to go to the grocery store a lot more than I'd like.

I have a good supply of garlic - I got that crop in the ground before we started the home-selling stuff. Its really nice, with big cloves and holding fine (even though we don't have a cool place to store it - that's another story: our new house doesn't have a basement yet. We'll build one this spring.)

I also have a couple nice shallots left. (I grew shallots for the first time last year and was really pleased with these. I'll grow them again this year.) I have a lot of dried chilis. I grow a cayenne and a Thai hot chili every year. These thin-walled chilis air dry easily on a plate my counter top. I also have a couple bags of dried herbs. These are plants I cropped short when we left our old house. I have dill, sage and oregano.

And I have a little bowlful of dried beans. I tried to grow crops of Jacobs Cattle beans and black turtle beans, but only ended few of the former. And, then I grew Fortex green beans, but didn't harvest them in time so they matured and dried. So I have a fairly unattractive and very small bowl of dried beans. Nevertheless, I'm saving them and looking forward to a special chili meal. I do have great plans for next year's larder (“A garden is never so good as it will be next year" - Thomas Cooper ). I am hoping for shelves full of canned fruits, tomatoes, pickles, dried chilis and herbs, baskets full of potatoes, sweet potatoes, squashes and dried beans, a fridge full of beets, cabbages and carrots, and maybe even a freezer with pesto and roasted peppers. OK, a few winter radishes too for my martinis....

my larder

(I'm taking some pictures now....)

Finally - the photos....



My larder this fall includes: Winter squashes: Butternut, Long Island cheese, Acorn and Delicata. A couple small orange pumpkins. Potatoes, and lots of sweet potatoes. Onions, garlic. My chile ristra has grown and is drying well. My root cellar (a small basement refrigerator has about 5 lbs of carrots, 10 lbs of beets, some celery, and a head of purple cabbage.

In past years, I kept my potatoes and squashes in baskets in the basement. This year I was disappointed I couldn't see the ones at the bottom of the basket. My husband made the perfect solution - shelves. Now I can admire all my stored vegetables!

Most of my vegetables are from my garden. Some are from Piccadilly Farm, whose CSA distribution I hosted this year. A nice acorn squash I got in trade for a big bunch of dill. (I love the idea of trading! I will try for more trades next year using our new bulletin board that is being installed this winter.)




My onions and carrots will not last the winter. These I should try to grow more of next year. Looks like I have plenty of potatoes sweet potatoes, squashes and beets.

cheers to the March larder

After checking on the produce left from last years garden, I enjoyed a martini with a thin slice of crisp white celeriac and winter radish. Ahhh....

what's left in my larder?

The other day I went down to check....

Let's see. I have a small refrigerator in the basement that I filled last fall with fresh garden beets, celeriac, winter radish and cabbage. I've been grabbing a few from the top as I need them, but it was time for checking the bottom of the bags. The cabbage was in need of composting. But the rest has stored great. I took everything out of the baggies, washed, removed spots that didn't so look good, and repacked in fresh baggies. I amazed at how well beets, celeriac and winter radish store.

Also, I have a basket full of potatoes and butternut squash. The potatoes are sprouting like crazy in the basket. The reds and fingerlings are way shriveled. But the Green Mountain and Russets are OK. Actually, grilled, they are much better than OK. They're delicious. I love "good keeper" potatoes come March.

And I found about 6 heads of garden garlic I didn't realize I had. Most were thrown right into the compost bucket, but a few cloves were still crisp and yummy.

And the last thing is the bag of baby carrots in the fridge. The only reason they're still there is I didn't want to put the time into scrubbing such tiny ones. Tonight I did that - on our first grill event of the year. Very yummy to eat the first and last carrots of the year.

And I still have one BEAUTIFUL ORANGE Jarrahdale pumpkin. Its like the saying about "have cake and eat it too" - I love having it on the counter, but would love to eat it before it too late. I think I'll wait a bit more. Once I see a little sign of it starting to go bad, I'll make pumpkin bread.

I think all-in-all, the garden has feed us well this winter.

Next year, lets see:

Less: non-keeper potatoes, little fat carrots
Same: Beets, celeriac, pumpkins, butternut squash
More: Keeper potatoes, big carrots, garlic
And much more: Popcorn

Photos:

taking stock of my larder

© Skippy's Vegetable Garden

I've been mostly just stuffing vegetables from my garden into my larder this fall. Thought I'd take stock.

My larder (Merriam-Webster "a place where food is stored") is mostly in the basement. It consists of a root cellar (a small 'fridge), a deep freezer, a couple big baskets, some hanging small baskets, and shelves for jars.

(Wikipedia "Very few modern houses have larders since the convenience of modern grocery stores obviate the need to store food for long periods." Love that word "obviate" - to make unnecessary.)

My "root cellar" is a small refrigerator we bought a few months ago. I thought seriously about digging a real root cellar out back. I tried keeping roots in bags in the coolest spot in the basement. But in the end, an extra 'fridge is easiest.

Contents of my 'fridge: 11 lbs carrots, 12 lbs beets, a few winter radish, 4 heads of cabbage. I'll soon add the dozen parsnips and several celeriac that are still in the garden.

Contents of my freezer: 2 gallons red sauce, 2 gallons pesto

Baskets: 25 lbs potatoes, lots of squash and pumpkins (~40 lbs), only ~2 lb onions left

Popcorn: 4 pints

How long do vegetables last?

In plastic bags in 'fridge: (These vegetables will desiccate unless in sealed containers. Check every couple weeks and remove any bad vegetables. Leave bag open a while if there's too much moisture inside.)
beets: Chiogga 2 months, Lutz and Detroit 3-4 months
cabbage: 3 months
carrots: 3-4 months
celeriac: 6 months
parsnips:3 months
winter radish: 6 months

In cool dry location:
potatoes: Red Gold 2 months, Russet: 6 months
winter squash: 3-6 months
onions: Frontier 3 months
garlic: 3 months

In sealed jars:
popcorn: until its eaten

One reason to take stock now is to get an idea of whether I can use everything before it goes bad. I brought a bunch of squash down to the food pantry last weekend, and may need to bring more. I can't imagine we can eat all those beets! Better to do it sooner, while its fresh. There was a long line of people picking up food at the pantry last week. Nice to provide them fresh organic produce.

(Back to that word "obviate". Supermarkets obviate home vegetable gardening. Cheap prepared foods obviate cooking. Cars obviate biking/walking. Modern conveniences obviate just about everything.... )