Local food

So, as some of you know, we're way into local food networks, these days. We're CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members, so every week we go to a nearby community garden and pick up a bunch of fruits and vegetables that are grown at a farm in upstate NY. Which is awesome, and it's nice to know that we're eating more locally, and seasonally, and organically. But sometimes it means we get way too much of, say, swiss chard, and we don't necessarily eat all of it. So this year, instead of letting it go bad and then feeding it to our worm bin (wanna ask about that? it's a whole 'nother can of... oh never mind, it was a bad pun), we decided we were going to be more organized. I took an online class on food storage and preservation, and we bought a few books on the subject, and voila. If you come over to our little Brooklyn apartment nowadays, you might have to deal with swiss chard leaves hanging up to dry in the hallway (once they're dry, you can store them in an airtight container and use them in soup), or cabbage lacto-fermenting into sauerkraut in our pickling crock, or grape juice fermenting into wine... Ok, so we don't get grapes from the CSA, but it's part of the same effort. Do it yourself, can it yourself, cook it yourself. Come on by, there's plenty of sauerkraut for all. You don't have to tread out the grapes, though, we already did that.