Southeast Area Farmers Market opens in a couple week! If you learn how to can and freeze the fresh Michigan produce you buy there, you can feed your family good food all year ’round. Tonight’s class highlight African American Cuisine. On June 23, learn how to make jams and jellies. And on July 7, learn how to can. Click here for information and registration.
Are you thinking about preserving food at home this summer? Join MSU Extension to learn best practices for safe home food preservation and receive valuable resources to ensure the safety of your home preserved foods.
Classes offered at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. each of the following Thursdays:
July 8 – Preserving Berries
July 15 – Preservation Methods-Safe or Unsafe?
July 22 – Pickling-Not Just For Cucumbers
July 29 – Water Bath & Atmospheric Steam Canning
August 5 – Shopping & Storing MI Fresh Produce from the Farmers Market & U-Pick
August 12 – Peaches-Can or Freeze?
August 19 – Picked a Peck of Peppers-Now What?
August 26 – Filling your Freezer
September 9 – Too Many Tomatoes
September 16 – Salsa 101
September 23 – Drying Produce and Fruit Leathers
OKT peer-educators, Belinda Harrison and Fatima Lee, traveled with OKT’s executive director, Lisa Oliver-King, to New York City Oct. 25 to present a session at the Black Urban Growers (BUGS) conference in New York City. Ms. Lee created the program, “Canning’s not just for Grannies: Preserving the Harvest” to share basic canning skills with conference participants.
Click on the links to view pdfs of the presentation’s PowerPoint and handout.
Cook Eat & Talk presents Preserving the Harvest: Canning
10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Oct. 11, 2014
Sherman Street Church kitchen
1000 Sherman St. SE 49506
As the food industry separates us farther from the sources of our foods—and the nutrients real food
provides—people seeking more sustainable and healthier mealtimes are taking up the nearly lost art of home
canning. Some of us remember the jars of peaches, pickles and tomatoes lining our grandmother’s pantry shelves. Sadly, others have been brought up on foods jarred, canned, boxed or frozen in factories—and know nothing else.
As the industry’s mouthpiece, the news media has Americans convinced that it’s difficult to cook from scratch and
dangerous to can your own foods. But guess what? It’s easy and it’s safe. You don’t have to worry about those six-syllable food additives poisoning your family. And, canning your own food can save you bushels of money. (That can mean less time working to live and more time working at life.)
Learn how this Saturday, Oct. 11, at OKT’s Cook, Eat & Talk. It takes place from 10 a.m. to noon at Sherman Street Church kitchen, 1000 Sherman St. SE. OKT cooking coach, Toni Scott, will be joined by veteran”canning-man” and OKT garden coach, Jeff Smith. Together, the group will can applesauce and learn canning basics that can be used for any number of produce items.
Join the urban farmers at Well House, 600 Cass Ave. SE, for a workshop on how to make and can applesauce. The workshop takes place at 6 p.m. Monday Oct. 21. Participants will can regular and spiced applesauce and take a jar home.
The suggested donation is $20 for this workshop, but Well House welcomes everyone, even if they can’t contribute. Funds collected help sustain Well House’s Urban Garden Project.
Please register by sending an e-mail to contact@wellhousegr.org or calling 616.245.3910.
Do you wish you had access to the produce sold at the farmers’ market all year long? Beginning Saturday, OKT will host monthly “Preserving the Harvest” skill-sharing sessions in conjunction with the Saturday Southeast Area Farmers’ Market.
The Saturday skill-shares will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. so you can shop at the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market and the stop by to learn how to preserve the produce you just purchased. OKT especially hopes that learning how to preserve produce will add even more value for folks making purchases with Double Up Food Bucks. Also, if you learn how to preserve fresh produce, you don’t have to worry about it spoiling before you have a chance to eat it.
Our Kitchen Table 