Voices of American Homemakers: Preserving, Pickling, and Purging: Trading up so so books for one great one.
I have been making a lot of headway clearing space for the things I love by getting rid of the things I’m “meh” about. Books are a hard topic for me because I love them so much in general and it’s taken me a long time to realize I don’t have to love each and every book I own just for the fact it is a book.There are so many interesting books out there, that the ones I do not really enjoy need to move on to another home.
I went through two shelves this week (very hard work for me) and purged a box of books I know I will never read. And I did something for the first time – I took them to FireHouse books and exchanged them for $12 in store credit, which I then turned around and used on 1 book I really enjoy. You see, I have put together a box of books many times, but they never actually make it out of the house, furthering the clutter issues.
The book I traded in for is “Voiced of American Homemakers”. It is a collection of interviews conducted by the Oral History Project of the National Extension of Homemakers Council.
Beulah Rawlings, 76, of Indiana said when asked about food preservation, “We raised what we ate, and ate what we raised. You didn’t go into town and buy it, so it really was important to put your garden out and really take care of it, and take care of it when it was ready to harvest.”
It makes me feel a little guilty about putting my garden out late, then only half assing it these past two months. If it was crucial to me vs a hobby, and granted I love that it is not and we won’t starve if the weather sucks, maybe I would have made it more of a priority. I do have a few cucumbers, but not as many as I could have if I would have planted them when I should and watered them like I knew I was supposed to.
“When I was a girl up North, before pressure canners, we never canned much vegetables because it was all put in the cellar. We canned fruits and tomatoes, but that was about the only thing we canned…. In our cellars we put in our carrots and potatoes and onions and turnips and we even had a big bin fixed up from celery…” – Elsie Gould, 86, Florida
I really like the idea of a root cellar. Mike (who owns the yard where the garden is and is in on it with me) has a nice semi finished basement and we are going to try to store all our potatoes and onions and garlic down there. I sure hope it works okay and we can enjoy our harvest as long as possible.
We have a load of basil, dill, parsley, and other herbs. Plus many cherry tomatoes and some peppers on the way. I decided to do some small batch preserving this week for the basil that is plentiful. Pesto was totally the answer to how to keep basil fresh for the winter months. Once we get more tomatoes, I’m going to make some marinara sauce and can that too – I’ll post about that when the time comes along with my favorite recipe for sauce.
You can read about my pesto exploits on Craft Leftovers, I posted about it today for the Thrift Kitchen post.
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