Fresh Foods Blog Hop #1

Hello! Welcome to the first ever Fresh Foods Blog Hop hosted by me and by Kristy of Gastronomical Sovereignty.

Before we get going, a little word about storing fresh food. Each week I'm going to give you some of these little tips and tricks before we start the hop, in addition to my normal weekly CSA post (check it out every Saturday...) When you're not used to dealing with things like greens on your root vegetables or giant bunches of herbs it's hard to figure out what to do and how to store them.

First off, with root vegetables you should cut the greens off immediately and store them in a separate bag. Probably in a separate veggie bin. The root vegetables will last a lot longer. If you leave the greens on the veggies start to lose moisture and shrivel up. The greens can be cooked, pureed, whatever you'd like to do with them, really. Check out this post for more info.

Now for the herbs. The gigantic, ridiculous bunches of herbs that are, in my estimation, nearly twenty times the size of the herbs you buy in the little plastic packages at the supermarket. Maybe that's a bit hyperbolic. But still... The good news is, herbs can be stored in the fridge, in the freezer, or dried.

To store fresh herbs in the fridge: If the roots are still attached you can either put them in a mason jar filled with water and then cover with a plastic bag, or wrap the roots in a damp paper towel, cover with plastic wrap and secure with a rubber band.


To dry: Hang upside down. When completely dried out, store in an airtight container for up to one year.


To freeze: Chop up your herbs and place about a tablespoon into each compartment of an ice cube tray. Drizzle with a tiny bit of olive oil. Freeze. Once solid you can store the cubes in a freezer bag. You have a tablespoon of herbs whenever you need them. Remember: four tablespoons equals a quarter cup. You can easily come up with whatever amount you need by just using those one tablespoon cubes!


Hope that helps with some of your fresh foods storage needs!


Now on to the hop!

The Serious Business:

This blog hop is to encourage fresh food production, consumption, activism and awareness. Please feel free to link up any CSA collections, farmer's market treasures, home grown/raised hauls, and/or any recipes or DIY projects or tutorials related to the above. You may link up to 3 posts in a given week that you haven't shared here before by using the linky tool at the bottom of this post.

If you don't have a blog but still want to participate or don't want to write a post specifically on something you'd like to share here, feel free to comment with any thoughts, ideas or suggestions. You can post a photo to our flickr pool. Deadlines for photo submissions is the Monday before the Wednesday post.

Please do not link up any highly processed recipes or foods (i.e. white flour, white sugar), giveaways, etsy shops, advertisements, etc...  

Feel free to click on any of the linked up posts and say hello (leave a comment) to your fellow fresh food communitarians!

Please include a simple text link back to this blog hop in the post(s) you link up or add a button:

<center><a href="http://www.cookingmywaythroughmycsa.com"/><img src="http://i1196.photobucket.com/albums/aa411/gastronomicalsovereignty/DSC_0713-6-1.jpg"></a></center>

We want this blog hop to feature you as well as help each other come together to form a resource of good food ways for one another. In order to be featured on the weekly highlights, you must have a link back or button displayed in your post or on your blog.

You can link up via Kristy's blog @ Gastronmonical Sovereignty, as well as find her on her facebook page, twitter account, pinterest site, or email her@ kristygardner (at) gmail (dot) com.

You can find me here or follow me on Pinterest, or email me @ cookingmwtmycsa (at) gmail (dot) com.


Any questions about the Fresh Foods Blog Hop can be sent to freshfoodsbloghop (at) gmail (dot) com.

Okay serious business over - let's have some fun!