I’m a planner personality. When the pandemic began, I saw the effort for people to grow their own food this year. I anticipated that preserving all that garden produce might prove challenging for newbies. Now I am reading through comments on various Facebook pages and think it will be amazing if there is not a lot of foodborne illness in the next few months. There are SOME safety rules that need to be considered, people, really.
As there are many people who would love love love to preserve their own food but do not have the time nor inclination to do the work, I would like to offer a very limited opportunity for the coming year.
I can help you plan what you would like to eat in late 2021 and in 2022. Do you want canned goods or dehydrated foods or a mixture? Do you want meals that need minimal heating or raw basic ingredients you can mix and match to produce your kind of cooking? Do you want instant meal prep for camping or those days when cooking is just too much?
For our household, we start by thinking about the foods we like to eat. Once we can account for all the pasta, pizza, soups, and more that requires an ingredient, say, tomatoes, we understand the ways to process the garden offerings. We can clearly see what supplemental ingredients we need, such as garlic, and can make decisions NOW about planting our own or making arrangements to purchase from local farmers.
FOUR slots are available to have Can-Do fill your pantry.
IF you live within driving distance to me, you can consider an option where you provide all the raw ingredients and pay me for only those items I supply and my time and expertise.
IF you live more than an hour from me, I can obtain ingredients and all items needed and you will pay a higher fee, of course.
The early bird may not get the worm in this case, but cherry chocolate ice cream sauce is doable.
I keep our dehydrators running almost all the time now. The Asian pears are in there as I write this (plain and cinnamon) and the peaches will go in next. (Onions after that probably)
The onions……oh my. We add onions to our Loaded Pasta Sauce, so some will be used on Monday when we prepare that. But I’ve made a few very small batches of caramelized onions for our home kitchen and one friend’s and I suppose you might be able to enjoy after I get some of these 100 pounds cooked up and then dehydrated.
Plum Roll-ups 
We will be drying slices from zucchinis that grew too large for the farmers to sell. Since we know many people spiralize zucchinis for use in the summer, this will allow a shelf-safe product for use during the winter when zucchinis are imported and a lot more expensive. It helps people who want to have pasta but avoid the carbs and is delicious with our dehydrated pasta sauce. Additionally, if you are a backpacker, rehydration of the zoodles takes only a few minutes.
Late each year, after the first frost, Ranee Solmonsson of Sunshower Hill Farm harvests her garden huckleberries. These differ a bit from wild huckleberries because they are actually a different genus. The berry is large and not sweet at all. But when sugar is added, the flavor is that deep rich blueberry flavor we love. Can-Do Real Food prepares a culinary syrup for Ranee to be used on pancakes but especially wonderful in a beverage. Well, when we prepare it, we put the berries through a mill that separates the solids from the juice. The juice of course goes into the preparation of the syrup. The solids are “waste”. But this past December I tried to dry it as a fruit leather. It was too lumpy to roll up, so I ended up grinding it finely and it is absolutely amazing added to oatmeal or yogurt!
Another item we make that I would guess you might never see anywhere else is membrillo buttons. I first learned about membrillo when I moved to Oregon but apparently quince trees grow in many places around the world. In Spain, membrillo is made by preparing quince paste and then air drying it in deep containers. Before I became a commercial food processor I used a cookie sheet with sides and left the membrillo to air dry for a couple of months. Well, food safety regulations will not permit me to prepare it that way for you, so I put small dollops of the quince paste on a dryer sheet and voila! buttons. They are sweet and tangy and are shelf-safe, something you can carry in your bag or car and have for a easy snack.
I try to make other unusual things. For example, it is now July and I can see we are going to have a bumper crop of apples from my Gravenstein tree. Besides dried apples, I plan on making a mixture that is a recipe we use for the Passover Seder in the spring. Charoset is a sweet mix that symbolizes the mortar used by the slaves in Egypt. The recipe I grew up with included grated apples, nuts, cinnamon and wine. I will be making a dehydrated version that can be used as a simple snack or rehydrated with a little water to have a soft condiment that would be superb with chicken any time of the year.