On one of our trips to see family in northern Maine when I was a young girl, I noticed that some of my relatives had their kids’ winter coats and snowsuits hanging on the clothesline. It was August. To my seven year old self, such a sight seemed a little premature (always the domestic type), and I asked my mother why they were preparing snow clothes while we were on summer vacation? She told me winter was right around the corner for them, and there were many things to do to prepare. Laundering snowsuits was one of them. It’s funny the memories we store from our childhoods. I can still see the clotheslines with snowsuits blowing in the sunny breeze, clear as day.
My mother was right, of course; winter was just around the corner. As we enjoyed our rather autumnal “summer” visit, sweatshirts were donned daily, and because I stubbornly packed mostly shorts for the trip, I kept warm by hoisting long knee socks up to the thighs of my tiny legs. Toasty. The habits of my current neighbors prove similar to those of my Maine relatives. Just last night, Scout and I took a drive to the general store three miles down the road for eggs - a silly habit of mine because the eggs actually come from a neighbor up here on the ridge, and she’s told me over and over to just come to the farm to pick up, but I have this thing about making sure retailers know there is a demand for the goods of small makers and farmers. In addition to sales of chips, cigarettes, and candy bars, it's important that they know Melanie's eggs are wanted, too. Anyway, driving down the road, tasseling corn to my right and Burke Mountain on the horizon, a brightly colored object caught my eye and turned my attention to the left. Carmen and Mo have decided to hang one of those cheerful seasonal flags from their front porch; a cornucopia basket filled with pumpkins, gourds, and harvest wheat. Autumn in August. They get a pass though because Carmen’s thick Quebec accent feels like family to me. I suppose it is in her northern nature, as it is in my family’s nature, to see August as the turning point.
Today it is raining which is good for the carrots and beets, though a little unnecessary for the potatoes and tomatoes. This morning I harvested beans, kale, broccoli, herbs, and cucumbers before the rain set in. Then I planted some blue vervain. This year I have fallen in love with a particular preservation method for kale that includes quickly steaming it and pressing into muffin cups. Next you freeze, and voila, a few hours later you have kale pucks! It’s the handiest thing ever. Last winter we felt pretty deprived in the (semi-fresh) greens department. I learned of the kale puck method from Whole Fed Homestead and will explain below. If freezer space is at a premium for you, this has got to be the best method for putting up fresh greens. Normally we dehydrate most of our winter greens, which has its place, but really does not lend itself to use in quiche, casseroles, stir-fry, etc.
I don't keep careful track of how much kale I harvest, but it would not be a stretch to say that what you
see in the above photo is close to three bushels of kale. Such a space saver!
How to Make Frozen Kale Pucks
This method works for any cooking green.
- Gather kale. De-stem, rough chop leaves, and wash (I swish in a big bowl of water).
- Get a pot going with a steamer basket on medium-high (covered).
- Have a baking sheet, tongs, timer, and muffin pans ready. Crystal uses silicone muffin pans for easy removal once the pucks are frozen, which I imagine works great but I do not have any. I do have a couple of “muffin top” pans though, which are only about a 1/2” deep. I use those and with the gentle edge of a butter knife they pop right out. I do not think standard muffin tins would work well, but might be wrong about that.
- Once you’re all set up and ready to go, add three large handfuls of greens to the steamer pot, place the lid on and set your timer for two minutes. Let steam, giving the greens a toss with your tongs halfway through.
- After two minutes, use tongs to transfer greens to baking sheet. Quickly get your next three handfuls steaming. When the greens are still very warm but safe to touch, pick them up by the handful and press into your muffin cups. Greens must be warm for this to work correctly. Don’t be afraid to press firmly.
- Repeat process until your greens are gone.
- Freeze muffin trays for several hours or overnight. Pop pucks out of the pans and store in freezer bags. As mentioned above, because I do not use silicone pans, I give the edge a gentle nudge with a butter knife to release pucks from the pan. I also used a metal straw to suck the air out of the bags so they are better protected for long term storage.
- To use, run your knife through frozen or semi-thawed pucks if you’d like them to be a bit more chopped, or just crumble into whatever you’re making. And if it's a pot of soup, just toss a puck in if the kale is chopped to your preferred dice. Enjoy!
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Goodness you all know how to welcome a girl back! Thank you for such warmth, enthusiasm, and encouragement over the last week. I mentioned that I’d share more about the nuts and bolts of this new blog, and I will, but you’ve already done a great job on your own of noticing the archives, the navigation tabs at the top of this site, and the category buttons on the sidebar (still have a few to add). It was an interesting task to manually go through over 1,500 blog posts and decide which category they each fell under. I tried my best to keep categories limited for ease on your end; not sure I succeeded there! You may have noticed the handy catchall called “Heather’s Ramblings” which is my not so subtle way of lumping everything that had no specific theme into one hodgepodge location. I also tried not to assign too many categories to a post in order to prevent redundancy while you browse different sections. Sometimes it was unavoidable, as certain posts truly do belong in more than one place. However, I did not enthusiastically tag posts with six different categories just because so many kind of fit the theme; I tried to be a little more discerning than that. All of this to say, I set out to clean things up around here for your reading ease, and hopefully achieved that.
In my next post I’ll be sharing some tips on canning peaches, as I’ve been asked a few times about that this week. I’d hoped to have it out Friday, but I’m going to take a day trip to see Emily so it will need to be early next week instead. Probably Tuesday.
Okay, I have to get back to the kitchen. Kale pucks have finished freezing and need transferring to a bag, and I need to address the pile of cucumbers, green beans, and broccoli. Talk to you soon!