Visit Jenny 25 and 29 November 2014

On Tuesday 25 and Saturday 29 November we visited Jenny's kitchen and garden at Howrah

Unlike previous food garden visits, the emphasis this time was on Jenny's kitchen where she introduced people to pickling and preserving using a microwave. This food garden visit was also the first one for which people had to RSVP and people could choose between a Tuesday and a Saturday session.

Those who arrived early were invited to help get things ready. On Tuesday it was Jan, on Saturday it was Joan, who pounded shredded white cabbage for a considerable time, to get it ready for the sauerkraut demonstration.

At the start of the demo Jenny handed out notes documenting what she was going to cover, notes that were very much appreciated by everyone.  With Jenny's help I will make the page she handed out into a blog post.

Below you see on the left the measuring can with brine that Jenny used, and then in the middle and to the right some of the end products. Notice the use of two types of jars, glass jars with rubbber bands, and jars with plastic tops and gaskets. Both types of jars allow gas to escape during the fermentation process.

Jenny showed how to keep all shredded vegetables down in the brine by putting a plastic bag with brine in the top of each jar, or, like in the photo, a cabbage leaf cut to size.

The second part of the demo was showing how quick and easy it is to preserve fruit in the microwave. In the photo below Jenny is filling a jar with a mix of fruit and juice for this demo.

Jars, with metal lids (nothing will explode if you don't put the lid on tightly), then go into the microwave for a precise number of minutes. Microwave preserving is quick and easy and allows you to preserve small quantities.

We then had morning tea. Many thanks everyone for their yummy contributions!

Then it was time to explore Jenny's garden. We saw, for instance, two Feijoa trees that most summers produce so much fruit that Jenny sells them to Eumarrah whole food shop. Below is a flower in one of the Feijoa trees.

Jenny also has a Kiwi Berry plant that produces small fruits very similar in appearance and taste to normal Kiwis. As with Kiwi you need a male and female plant to get fruit.

Jenny's pear tree looked healthy, with a lot of fruit on its way. Pollination would take place with next door's pear tree that was close by. Jenny's garden can be quite warm, but is also exposed to winds, so like with every garden, there are challenges.

Thanks everyone for the contributions to the produce table!

Many thanks to Jenny and her husband for hosting this really worthwhile visit. Well, really, they deserve 'many thanks twice' because they were happy to have a group on Tuesday and then another one on Saturday.

All who came had a wonderful time and we like to thank Jenny for sharing all her knowledge on pickling, preserving and food gardening. Many of us will now have more confidence to begin to experiment with pickling and microwave preserving.

This text was previously published on the Food Garden Group blog. It was written by Max Bee.