Posts Tagged: food preservation

Healthy Garden Training Series from the USDA

The USDA People’s Garden Initiative has announced fall webinar garden training. These trainings are free and available to everyone. Once the series is over, the classes will be stored on this website for viewing.

These trainings focus on sustainable gardening practices and will be taught from experts from around the country. Topics are as follows:

• The Basics of Home Canning
• Introduction to Seed Saving
• Pollinators for Your Garden
• Food Stamps Grow Gardens!
• Extending the Growing Season

Register here for any or all of these free online classes.

Food safety, storage and preservation

Proper handling, storage and preservation of produce enables gardeners to further increase their food security and reduce the risk of food borne illness.

The correct handling and storage of produce can significantly extend the shelf life of these products. The UC Davis Postharvest Technology Research & Information Center has a wide range of resources designed to improve food safety in the home and garden, and also for commercial producers.

In times past food preservation was common practice, and as with gardening there is currently renewed interest in these activities. There are many ways to preserve excess food including: can, freeze, dry, cure & smoke, ferment, and pickle. Food preservation can be a time intensive activity. In the past, and the present, people often gather to preserve food together. Working together allows people to pool resources and knowledge while distributing the workload. Check online community forums for food preservation groups near you.

Home food preservation resources can be found at the National Institute of Home Food Preservation.

Home canning equipment

Home food preservation is in a period of renaissance.  Many people are preserving food for the first time, or bringing equipment out of storage and resuming a previous activity.

Some canning equipment requires occasional testing of the pressure gauge, but not all. Only the dial gauge models need testing. A dial gauge has a face with a pointer that shows the pressure reading. Weighed gauges do not need to be tested. The weighted gauges are a piece of metal that has 5, 10 and 15 engraved on it.

Often “Your local Cooperative Extension Office” is listed as the place for people to have canning equipment pressure tested. Unfortunately, our office does not provide this service. Shirley Peterson, Nutrition, Family & Consumer Sciences Advisor in the San Luis Obispo County Cooperative Extension office advises clients to send their dial gauges to Presto for free testing. Send your gauges by UPS and Presto will send them back with no charge for shipping.

Presto can be contacted in the following ways:

Consumer Service Department

National Presto Industries, Inc.

3925 N. Hastings Way

Eau Claire, WI  54703-2209

phone--1-800-877-0441

contact@GoPresto.com

Online home canning and preservation classes

The National Center for Home Food Preservation is now offering online lessons for those who would like to learn more about home canning and preservation. The course is free and self-paced.

Topics include:

• Introduction to Food Preservation
• General Canning
• Canning Acid Foods
• Canning Low-Acid Foods

To sign up, please click here!

Please note, the program mentioned above is currently experiencing funding challenges. It may or may not be available at this time. However, the Utah State University Cooperative Extension program has a self-guided online canning program available. You may access it through this link, http://extension.usu.edu/utah/htm/fcs/food-preservation-canning/. 3/19/2012

Fruit and Vegetable Preservation Class

The UC Hansen Agricultural Center will offer a lecture, Fruit and Vegetable Preservation—Safety and Quality Consideration, at April’s Saturday at the Farm event. Attendees will learn the basic principals of home canning to produce safe and high quality preserved foods.

The lecture will be held between 10:00 and 11:30 am. Space is limited and reservations are required. The speaker is Dr. Hany Khalil, Food Science and Nutrition Professor at Cal Poly—San Luis Obispo.

To reserve your spot, please call Susanna Bruzzone-Miller at (805)525-9293 ext. 214 or email to sbmiller@ucdavis.edu. There is a $5.00 charge to attend the presentation.

The farm will be open from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm on Saturday, April 30. Other activities that day include: Faulkner house tours; self-guided garden tours; and Master Gardener plant sale. There is no charge for these activities and no reservation is required.

Admission to the farm and parking are free. Additional information can be found on the UC Hansen Agricultural Center website.

 

 

 

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