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Squirreling away

If you had seen our back porch last weekend, you’d probably think we were starting our own farmers market. But this is a typical sight for many seasonal foodies like us; when you swear off strawberries in January, you need enough fresh autumn fruits and veggies to last you until the end of April (notwithstanding my usual February freak-out where I cave in to a craving or two for salad).

We still have quite a ways to go yet, but we’re working hard to fill our root cellar, attic, freezer and pantry shelves with a wide variety of staples and goodies to keep our winter diet interesting. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

In the root cellar:
– 20 lbs. onions
– 10 lbs. apples (still need 2 bushels)
– 10 lbs. potatoes (still need at least 80 lbs., plus a bushel of carrots and parsnips)
– 9 bottles of wine

In the freezer:
– 4 lbs. locally cured, nitrate-free bacon
– 5 whole, local “Rosie” chickens
– various cuts of local, organic meat
– various cuts of venison, provided by my father-in-law

In the refrigerator:
– 5 lbs. fresh cranberries (for canning; more to come)
– 2 or 3 red cabbages
– 6 or so honeycrisp apples (which don’t keep long but are my favorite kind)
– 1 bunch celeriac root now in my belly—yum!
– 1 lb. garlic

In the pantry:
– 25 lbs. rolled oats
– 5 lbs. steel-cut oats
– 10 lbs. coarse-ground grits (not local, obviously, but the mill is definitely a mom n’ pop operation)
– at least 6 different kinds of rice
– 30 lbs. sugar (mostly for canning)
– 3 quarts local, single-source honey
– 15 or so different varieties of loose-leaf tea

The Tailor’s 2009 home preserving yield to date:
– 5.5 quarts dried blueberries
– 6 pints blueberry syrup
– 5 pints canned whole blueberries
– 9 pints blueberry jam
– 9.5 pints blackberry jam
– 8.5 pints raspberry jam
– 6 pints strawberry jam
– 15 pints canned heirloom tomatoes
– 16 pints tomato sauce
– still to come: apple butter, apple sauce, cranberry sauce, chicken broth

And then there’s the winter squash in the attic: one of my favorite parts of the season, and of living and eating in the Pacific Northwest.

In the attic:
– 14 sugar pie pumpkins
– 8 kabocha squash
– 7 delicata squash
– 6 carnival squash
– 7 acorn squash
– 6 butternut squash
– 3 spaghetti squash
– 1 mini hubbard squash
– 1 jarrahdale pumpkin

Okay, we might have gone a little overboard on the squash, but I never get tired of it, and it’s an important staple of a seasonal diet. We keep these babies in the attic because they last much longer there—pumpkins and squash prefer a cool, dry environment to the cool humidity of the cellar. Our squash colony is a big conversation piece, and we get a lot of questions about pumpkin storage, so I’ll share the scoop:

First, choose squash and pumpkins with intact stems—those that have had their stems snapped off won’t last long. Next, make sure your squash was harvested before the first hard freeze; post-freeze specimens rot fast. Check around the stem and on the bottom end for any mold, rot, blemishes, damage, or sogginess. Now it’s time to sock them away—an attic is best, but anywhere that’s cool, dry and dark will work fine (but never let them freeze! During a cold snap last year we had to haul them all down into the living room when the attic hit 32 degrees!). Don’t stack your squash; just like apples, a rotten squash can infect any neighbors it touches. Instead, we make little “nests” for them by crumpling up newspaper and cushioning each one individually, in a single layer. As long as they’re unblemished and in good shape, and stored carefully, many varieties will last until at least March. Spaghetti squash will often keep until April, but sadly, butternut (my absolute favorite) tends to have the shortest lifespan. So eat those first, and relish every bite.

I feel like a little pumpkin pie. How about you?