Hey everybody.

Welcome back to another show.

I'm Nancy May, along with my co-host, Sylvia.

Lovely.

And she's down, well, she's up in the good old fashioned country,

bluegrass state of Kentucky.

Hey, Sylvia.

How you doing today?

Hey, I am doing just fine and I'm really excited about our show today.

About putting up for the harvest, , , but we don't wanna

talk about just ordinary things.

We're gonna talk about a little bit off the beaten path.

We are, we are talking about harvesting and, , three different types of

preservation methods, which, , there's so many different things that we

can do today, We really wanted, I mean, listen folks, if you're, I hope

you're listening, Sylvia and I really wanted to also look at the things that

everyday ordinary people could do.

Not that you're everyday and ordinary, but some of us just don't

have big gardens and, and backyards.

Some of us are in the cities and we just have window boxes and

herb gardens, and you know what?

You can do some preservation there too, or.

Preserving, maybe not preservation, because I think

I wanna . Preservation myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we talk about things that you, like you said, on window boxes and things

like that, like herbs and all of that kind, or maybe even just your yard or, or

wherever you're kind of looking around.

You don't have to have massive gardens.

So let's, let's talk about shrubs.

Shrubs.

We're not talking like you're shrubs in your, like there's a shrubbery

I'm thinking, , Monty Python?

Shrubbery?

No, we're not talking about shrubberies.

We're talking about drinking vinegars.

Ugh, well, whatever.

Sounds kind of yuck.

, But here's an interesting thing.

I wondered, where did shrubs come from?

'cause it's not about those bushes things, you know, but it's arabic for sharabe.

To drink.

Yeah.

So, but fruit, sugar, vinegar, or even alcohol, and we all know that has

preservation qualities or preserving qualities, in a jar that turns

into a really good flavored syrup.

. My grandmother in the Kentucky hollers didn't make shrubs, , but she had

her own versions , of drinks . And this one's kind of exciting.

, Appalachian style tonics is what she did, , she had jarred,, grape juice.

I don't know where she found the grapes.

I hear they grew wild.

But, a, here's a story, Nancy, and I think you even have one

to share with about this one.

My mother often spoke of getting into the hills.

Picking wild sassafras and making teas and soups and preserving , , the

leaves by freezing them.

And she loved that tea and she spoke of it so often.

And then the FDA banned.

, The sassafras because it was deemed car.

Car.

Carcinogenic.

Carcinogenic.

Okay, there you go.

It sounds like I've had a little bit of that Alcohol preservation.

So, , you can think of my mother's tea as the equivalent of moonshine, which

Appalachians talk about as if it were religion, and that's a preserving agent.

You drink enough moonshine and you'll , be preserved forever, as they say.

But don't you have a, , sassafras story

Yeah, I decided I, I would've liked your mom because the two is probably

would've been sitting in the moonshine, bathtub, drinking that stuff.

But yes, sassafras.

So up in the woods in Connecticut, and I haven't seen sassafras down here.

It's kind of interesting, learning, all the different sort

of flora and fauna in Florida.

, Which is beautiful, but it is totally different as far as zone.

We're in zone nine and I think they were zone six or seven up there,

but Sassafras grows wild up in the woods pretty regularly, and we'd hike

around the woods, especially in the fall time, and he'd take a branch and

skin the bark back and you smell it and it's, oh my God, it's root beer.

It smells so good.

Right?

You've done that, haven't you?

Oh yeah.

Yeah,

I mean, what, child hasn't done it and even, I'll say adults, but the

interesting thing is that , you can actually make homemade root

beer with it kind of like soda with sassafras root, not the branches.

'Cause you would think that the smell on the bark , would be what you want.

But , remember the show where we ate the Christmas tree?

Yeah.

Right.

You did.

I, well, I drank the Christmas tree back to back to those roots with your mom

, And the moonshine.

Although Christmas tree moonshine doesn't quite work.

But anyway, you can make homemade root beer and you wanna know how to do it.

And it says Root in the very name,

Right, . , But like you said, yes, it was banned.

, But however, I have to laugh back in college years back, the, , the

aspartame, you know, like that sweet and low stuff had the same thing.

, They had said that it was carcinogenic and I was dating this guy in college and he

said, you shouldn't drink so much of that.

, It's poisonous.

And I said, yeah, it's poisonous to lab rats and I'm not a

rat and I'm not in a lab.

So, yes, thank you very much.

I will stick to, to drink and eat.

Sweet and low, but , back to our root beer.

So here's how you make it.

First of all, you gotta dig up the trees.

Well not the big trees, but the small ones,, the small little saplings.

And then you take the root and you cut the root into little.

Pieces, little small like chunks.

. Then you add that to a big pot of water and you add all sorts of spices like

ginger and cloves and star anes and all spice berries and a cinnamon stick, and

you let it boil for about 30 minutes.

It's gonna get kind of dark and syrupy looking, and then you turn that down for,

well, once it's all boiling , sort of.

Gooey looking.

Then you turn it down and you add anywhere from between a half a cup to

a quarter cup of molasses and let that simmer for another five to 10 minutes.

So now you've got this really good broth going.

Then you take it off the heat and you strain it, get all that stuff of

it, like just kind of as you would be making tea, like, , loose teas.

And then you put the liquid in a fresh, clean pot, and

then you add one cup of sugar.

And simmer that till all the sugar is dissolved.

Kind of like making a simple syrup concept.

Mm-hmm.

Then you take that, it's a long process, but trust me, it's worth it.

, And fill a glass of, with ice cubes and you put one portion of the concoction that

you've made to two portions, so one to two to sparkling soda or sparkling water,

and there you've got your root beer.

Wonderful.

know, , we had cousins who used to make that in Massachusetts and they'd buy the

syrup already made and then they'd add it.

But they used a fermentation method.

I'm not exactly how sure how it worked, but it sat in , basements for a couple

of weeks till it started to bubble, then you just add the soda to it.

Same kind of thing.

But oh my God, the smell is intoxicating.

Oh,, I wish sometimes I could go backwards and interview my grandmother.

You know, so many cool things going on.

But anyway.

And then we have other stuff like you mentioned.

And also my mom and dad used to make rhubarb wine.

And rhubarb it's a vegetable, it's not a fruit.

So you know, I guess vegetable wine, but we talked about that in another show.

And then of course there's always peaches.

This time of year I just bought a whole bunch of white peaches that

are just delicious and you can make,.

Peach brandy.

With that, you just add a bunch of peaches that are sort of, on the

rotting stage , cram 'em into a jar and fill it with vodka and throw it

in the dirt for a couple of weeks.

I'll bury it and, , you should have a few more other intoxicating,

delicious ways to put stuff up.

Is that fermentation

and I guess it's a kind of fermentation.

I mean, it's, alcohol, so I don't know.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Then can I tell my peaches story?

Yeah, tell your

From Letcher County, Kentucky.

Please, please do.

So on the news this morning, there was a young woman who worked for the

health department in Letcher County.

Now that's the home of Loretta Lynn.

I mean, these are country folk, right?

They take good, great joy in nature and what's out there.

So anyway, she goes out and I cannot replicate her voice.

Uh, maybe a little bit.

I went out and I found.

Two raccoons in the dumpster.

And so she goes on to say that she goes out with a friend and they fish these.

Two raccoons out.

One's a baby, and the mom is face down in water and they can't

figure out what happened to mom.

So they get her out and the woman announces that she did CPR, which

Mo totally made me gag a maggot.

I mean, you know, okay for a moment.

And she said no.

She said, I didn't do that.

She said, I wouldn't do that.

They have rabies.

But she said she, and it shows on the news clip of her compressing the chest of this.

Upside down raccoon.

And then she says, . It finally came back to life and I'm so happy that

I was able to save those raccoons.

And here's what she thinks happened.

There was a distillery nearby and they were distilling peaches to

make a peach flavored spirit, I assume, and they had thrown out

some of those fermented peaches.

The raccoon was drunk.

I love that.

A drunk raccoon.

He saved the raccoon

down in the barrel of

Yeah.

I mean, you

peaches.

Oh my God,

only in Letcher County.

Only in the, well, I don't know, maybe the name is appropriate, Letcher County,

Yeah.

but Grandma's Wine and, and Bob's Peach Brandy always had

a few extra bugs in it too.

Which of course you can drink.

The Bobs Bugs.

B Bob's Bugs.

I think we should do a show called Bob's Bugs.

Yeah,

What's a few gnats between friends and family, right?

Well maybe you probably have other bigger right bugs, but still we

did that in another show too.

Anyway, back on the subject of shrubs, I think I keep on wanting

to call 'em scrubs, but, , colonial days, you know, they were kind

of like the go-to in taverns.

Mm-hmm.

And,, I think we should probably do a foodie episode on what happened?

Well, we already talked about taverns, but in the day, apple cider vinegar was mixed

with cranberries and currents to make it safer because the water wasn't good.

We kind of said that earlier, but you know, scrubs here in Florida or

shrubs, scrubs, you can wanna call 'em

the scrubs here in Florida.

I think I haven't made anything like that and I haven't seen anything like

that, but I've done something similar with a simple syrup where you add herbs

and oranges, and now that's a go-to in my pantry because I've got, this simple

syrup with oranges in it, and it's been sitting there for almost a year now.

It is.

It's a beautiful orange color, and you throw that in a little bit

of hot tea or a splash of seltzer and or proses, proco, Prosecco.

You know,, maybe I'm having too much pe, too much peach brandy during this show.

No,

You and the raccoons.

right.

It just sounds like it's, you ready to start a party anywhere, right?

Yeah.

yum.

Now that's a drink that I'll sit on the porch and raise a glass

to a raccoon who knew how to drink peach, whatever, you know?

But, , seriously, we forgot and we have forgotten how perilous

life was in colonial times, , and.

, I still keep wondering about Arabic, but go on Sylvia.

So back on track.

, You don't need a garden for this.

And as Nancy has described a lot of different things, grab a bag

of rosemary, oranges sliced up or cranberries at the grocery store.

Little sugar, little vinegar.

Or alcohol, wink, wink.

And you've got yourself a fall shrub, low effort, big payoff.

And it sounds a little bit like those mocktails that we grow,

listen to me in the restaurant, it's like growing them.

I mean, they're concoctions of a lot of different things.

, So we , flavor the water,

Well, and, good things do tend to multiply, don't they?

Especially if they're on the bar.

, , So , that's one type of preservation.

But then we've also got the smokehouse idea, right?

And you've talked about , your family smokehouse in

Kentucky, and we had actually.

Our neighbors up north.

Hello Jackie and Keith.

I'm gonna make sure they get a hold of this show episode

so they can listen to it.

But our neighbor Keith, used to smoke turkeys and he'd dig a big

pit in the backyard or in the front yard, and we lived in the woods.

So I was always worried that, oh my God, we're gonna start a root fire in it.

Anybody has ever seen the damages done by root fires?

Please be very careful.

Oh yeah.

The whole hill's up by West Point when you're.

We're totally inflamed because a root fire had started and the fire

actually , goes underground from tree to tree in the roots, and the

trees get destroyed and damaged.

So if you are smoking something in the ground.

Not in your hand.

Another form of preservation, then, , please be careful, , where the roots are.

, However, before we go forward, let's, we smoke this one out a little further.

Let's take a quick break and we'll be back.

So Sylvia, we're back at the Smokehouse , and I'm really interested in hearing

a little bit more about Kentucky Smokehouses because they're not

typical in New England, I guess, unless you're smoking fish, but even still.

Yeah, you know, there's probably different versions of this kind of thing, but

here's about smokehouses because , it was part of a culture of Eastern Kentucky

and probably Appalachia in general.

It was actually a structure the size of a shed.

I never looked inside.

Because probably was like, I think by the time I was around they weren't

using it very much 'cause food was more available and it was like out

of a Stephen King novel, I'm sure.

But the ritual would go like this.

, You'd get a hog in the spring, fatten it up until November, and

then it was slaughtered and put up for winter survival of a family.

, And it was up above the house a little ways.

, And why was it called a smokehouse?

Well that's interesting 'cause it was, there was a small fire usually

kindled for a certain amount of time until the air was saturated with smoke.

Why?

Well smoke is another preservation method.

So it assisted in the salt curing that they went through.

But it was also, this is interesting to ward off thieves and vermin.

The smoke.

Yeah.

'cause people would steal your hog.

Think about it.

so I'm gonna stop here a second.

'cause I'm thinking, you hear the smokehouse, or you see the

smokehouse and you see the blue smoke.

I kind think like electing a Pope, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Electing a pig, a hug.

I would think that would be a sign that your pig is ready to eat if

somebody's smoking it in the smokehouse and you would steal it right.

Yeah, I think it was just for a little while and that it

was helping and preserving it.

, , , but, , it's, , the smoke and the chemicals provided extra preservation,, and.

My mother said that the hog was really their only source of meat.

And so they would keep slicing, , pieces and parts off this hog.

I don't even wanna picture it., And , it was just an interesting way that

families in that era, , lost to us because, you know, I would, if I'd known

if I could go back in time and take.

Photographs and do the kind of thing that, , would bring it up.

And I know there's probably Facebook pages devoted to smokehouses.

There is for everything, isn't there?

So anyway, that's , kind of the general story of the smokehouse.

I'm thinking Appalachian, prosciutto,

Yeah.

Instead of Italian, prosciut or prosciutto, oh, depending upon

how you pronounce it, so that the Appalachian, Kentucky, that

actually sounds pretty good, but.

Anyway, we'll leave that to Stephen King and he can figure that one out.

But salt, you mentioned salt preservation, that's another

type of form of preservation.

Do they actually do the salting and the smoking together or was

that a totally different method

No, I think they are usually used in tandem, but it takes a lot of salt to

preserve meat, and that's why you have country ham to this day is very salty.

Or you have city ham and that's a very different thing.

, But 10% or more of the animal's weight.

Is the salt that they use, salt curing.

And it's used on other meats as well.

And so then a lot of meat has to be desalted.

And you have to soak the meat in order to do that.

I'm sure there's a more elaborate

You soak it in water or do you soak it in alcohol.

It's water.

Yeah.

Right.

Let's say water for now.

country ham known for its saltiness, and if you're salt sensitive, it's really

good, but city ham may be your jam.

It's curated by injecting brine, which is sugar, salt, and maybe

preservation of, other kinds.

, And that's, , well, such as sodium nitrate, which is very,

again, talk about carcinogen.

And that's why you see now in the grocery store.

Uncured.

Yeah.

We only buy the uncured stuff.

Well, we do too, but you know, this needs to be researched sometime.

Is that they say it's not that much different from sodium nitrate?

Really The salt.

Curing versus the sodium nitrate,

huh?

the sodium nitrate is added as an extra preservative in food, , in

city ham and, other things.

Bacon and whatever.

, So anyway, it's just interesting 'cause I always buy the uncured.

I mean, I just do, , 'cause I, I, long ago knew sodium nitrate is not necessarily,

again, as you said earlier, it's kinda like, enough lab rats get fed enough stuff

Yeah.

And enough sweet and low

Uh, , but salt is and is a way to preserve food.

And it wasn't just for hogs.

, We did it with other meats as well.

And,, in the deep south, people packed citrus and salt to stretch the

harvest, preserved lemons, ended up flavoring greens, beans and fish dishes.

And so there's , a lot of iceberg berg below the tip on preservation,

but that's sort of the high points.

So,, I'm gonna ask you this little question.

You may not know the answer.

So they put, the lemons in the salt or the green beans in the salt with

I don't understand how that worked

I think it is that the citrus is put in salt to preserve it, and then

it's added to flavor, the preserve.

Lemons.

You have that, as a flavoring agent for greens, beans and fish dishes,

ugh.

is how I think that works.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, and then,, I guess it depends upon where you're located.

Salt was the preservation method based on a regional thing in the

coastal areas, primarily in the south.

, I'm thinking like salt pork, right?

But.

You didn't see a lot of it up north.

Again, I, I'm, I think most of our preservation was done in root cellars and,

, I guess maybe we just went hungry in the cold up north in those day and age,

but, . Most of our preservation was done with canning, as I remember but,

, that I'll talk about canning with my

Which is, you know, yeah, we'll talk about that because they're

actually canning is coming back,

making a comeback.

'cause they ha they have more equipment now for canning.

But I would not touch it with a 10 foot pole.

But if you're looking at tr yeah, if you're looking at traditions around

this time of year in other parts of the country, , thing is, it's a

much simpler process for home cooks.

You're not gonna salt an entire hog and put it in a smokehouse.

It's just not.

Going to happen?

Is it like in the southwest?

Do you know those really beautiful, , what they call RAs?

Yeah, the

That's the peppers, little chili peppers, those gorgeous, and

they're not just for decorations.

They're sometimes dried in well ventilated areas and made into decorations and then

repurposed to spice up winter stews.

I love that.

And they're so beautiful and even.

Thought about how they're preserved.

and one of my favorite Appalachian preservation methods

is 200 years old, maybe more.

And I saw this, , in action once in Berea, Kentucky, which is a very artsy community.

, A lot of, natural ways of doing things like green beans, green beans,

you string them up in a dry area.

And during the harvest, and they eventually dry out as a lasting treasure

if they're kept in a cool, dark place.

And I love the name, they're called Leather Britches.

I had never heard that term leather britches before, but after talking to

you, I did a little, , checking and looking at the pictures to see how the

beans were strung up on the strings.

Kind of like those peppers they're beautiful.

So I get how that is, a

I love.

Yeah, and I love the Appalachian kind of way of naming things.

I think it's our Irish heritage.

, Ireland is filled with folklore, magical kinds of labeling and stuff, so you

know, they look like leather britches.

And that creates an image in your mind, doesn't it?

It certainly does.

, , I looked at those pictures and I don't see quite the connections to

how they look like leather bridges.

But, , the Irish is big in Boston area too, and.

I think they just stuck to drinking beer as opposed to

naming things in the weird ways.

that's different kind of Irish, but the key words that we're talking about

right now are just dried and salted and, , salting can be used on a small scale

where you can, drying on a larger scale.

, It's interesting to see how the two are used in the different methods and, how

they're popularized, but now also dehydration.

, We've got a new kitchen as we moved in.

We've got this double kitchen.

It has a dehydration kind of option on it.

I haven't tried it yet, but I have one way to dehydrate things and which.

People may not know.

It's pretty easy to do if you just turn whatever it is you want to dehydrate

on, , into the oven, and you turn the oven light on and just leave it there and

put it on like a, like a rack, like a, like a cake or a cookie,, cooling rack.

Give it a, I say give.

24 to 48 hours and you're gonna see them desiccate and they will dry out.

It's interesting.

So we've done that with olive leaves and you make olive leaf tea , and other herbs.

But anyway, a few years back, back up in Connecticut, Bob got the dehydrator

machine from, I don't know, somewhere on

Yeah.

Yeah.

our oven back there was 1955 oven Frigidaire made by General Motors.

So no, it did not have a dehydrating device on it, and

the light wasn't so good either.

So he decides to dehydrate all these onions in our kitchen.

Need.

I tell you more, our entire house stunk of onions for probably

about a month and a half.

It was, oh my God, you couldn't get the smell out of the house.

But now he's into experimenting on other things.

So he we're taking rosemary, 'cause rosemary grows like a weed in

Florida., It doesn't die out in the wintertime like it does up north.

And he's been.

Drying out the rosemary and adding it to salt.

So it's like rosemary salt.

Not a big fan of how the flavors come out.

I prefer just the straight rosemary, but it's interesting and it certainly

tastes a little bit more interesting that what you get at Publix or Winn-Dixie.

So, anyway.

now drying, drying iss a whole nother thing.

Of course, we've all been to the fancy, well, you may not

have been to a fancy steakhouse.

I'm not a big steak eater anyway, but the big steakhouses, you always see

how they have the drying rooms and how those are dry cured and aged.

I guess it's a combination of rubbing salt and other spices

and vinegars and sugars into it.

. And then brining, we are big briers.

bring your brine.

if you ever wanna taste a a really good brine Turkey, come to our house

at Christmas time or Thanksgiving.

So the first time we did it, we just got a giant bucket.

And so now we're always keeping the big buckets from Home Depot.

And you can get those buckets by the way, just so that they are actually food grade.

And then you put all your brining water and we put a. I guess it's

apple cider and all the other things, lots of salt, and then you brine

it, , for about 24 to 48 hours.

The Turkey is delicious.

Trust me, it's one of the best ways to , Put up a Turkey that you wanna cook and

make sure it's really good, but now we need to move on to something else because

these are fermented nuts and seeds and , a whole new world of other things that

I hadn't even heard about before, other than a friend had something that she used

with nuts, with egg whites and spices and sugar, and she called those Mosettes.

I'm not sure it was a form of preservation because I have to

tell you, they didn't last long.

So.

Reservation was not in the MO even when they were sold at Stew Leonard's, but

you've got some ideas on what to do there.

Yeah, with walnuts, pumpkin seeds, walnuts are interesting to me 'cause

I still have an image of my father.

We have lots of walnuts here.

In fact, on some trails in the fall, you have to be very careful

not to get knocked on the, noggin, they can do serious damage.

Uh, big old walnut falls from high up in a tree and, I, actually

avoid a trail that's near my house.

Because there so many walnut, trees all there around there.

But my father would be sitting out, , he called his garage his barn hearkening

back to his old days in eastern Kentucky, and he'd be cracking his walnuts.

I'm sure he never heard of a modern spin on the walnut, wisdom.

But we also chestnuts, , we are big into,, chestnuts here.

But anyway, tell us about making nuts into paste.

So I'm thinking Walnut was in wisdom.

Say that three times fast, right?

If you get knocked, knocked on the head with a walnut.

Anyway, making nuts into a paste is actually an ancient way of preserving

and enjoying nuts for longer thought you could freeze them, but I guess this

is a different kind of way of doing it.

. So here's what you need to do.

There's a big interest, first in these and . The fermentation process inhibits the

bad bacteria that might grow in this goo.

So first of all, what you do is you simply grind the nuts.

You can use a peanut, sesame, soybeans, any kind of nut that would work . Maybe

the chestnuts or the walnuts that.

You get knocked and you're knocking with or pumpkin seeds, and then you

soak them in warm water for oh, 24 to 48 hours, and then you add a tablespoon

of acid, something like lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to the cup

of nuts, and then you drain them.

Make sure , the liquids out of it.

And then you start smoothing them, or grinding them by adding a little bit more

water, and , the water actually ferments them when they become a smooth texture.

Then you add some natural sugars, like, actic acid and then you

freeze them, and that's it.

But, , I thought that maybe peanut butter is the same thing, but

apparently it doesn't do that, which it's just ground peanuts like you

can get in the grocery store too.

So I'll have to give this one a try.

Maybe , I'll try this on other friends, kind of like the zucchini pie or not.

Yeah, keep in mind too that,.

The peanuts used in the Jif peanut butter plant here, which has a whole history,

are not made with fermented peanuts.

' cause you ferment stuff first and then you do it

into the paste.

Yeah, You just roast peanuts and to make the peanut, it probably can make

that, probably can easily do that.

, Actually, Nancy, I gotta observe in life what little scientific

knowledge I have of this.

More and more people are making their own stuff.

be it quilts, be it, pencil holders, , or be it food and I don't

know what . Is in the atmosphere.

, But , I think it is about heritage and reaching back, even younger

generations and especially younger generations want that sense of nostalgia

and doing things with their hands.

, 'Cause we've gotten so away from it.

Our hands are just about genetically going to be, , built.

So that only our thumbs work, , 'cause that's what you use on these devices.

But I just have noticed it.

It's very interesting.

, But.

Anyway, I wanna go back to chestnuts.

Think about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

They're making a comeback.

Oh, they are, , smelling chestnuts.

. In New York City.

, It just always brought me back to the holiday times and , I'm not a fan of

roasted chestnuts, but Bob loves them.

And, , you were looking for a roasted chestnut recipe, I think for

stuffing at one point, weren't you?

Yeah, I keep trying to find, that's another thing I would admonish every one

of you out there, get those recipes now.

Trust me.

If you don't, you will regret it.

, , of dressing that my mother-in-law made, I mean, I would have a plate

of dressing and a couple of things of Turkey, but it was that dressing that

I loved and she didn't have a recipe.

She just made it.

But I could have badged her till she gave me one.

, There's something , that's really nice about going back and looking

to all these stories that our families or inherited families or.

Married in families , have given us over the years, whether it's shrubs

or salting or smoking or dehydrating, onions, it could be this generation.

Certainly the memories are, strong and , you talked a little bit about

heritage , and what we're doing in the kitchen and other places, just other

ways, making things with our hands and.

I don't know about you, Sylvia, but, there's something that is

very satisfying about having.

Something you can show that you've created versus just on the computer.

Certainly we love doing the podcast, but , it's not as tangible as

being able to, to make a, cake or a pie or, , maybe grandma's rhubarb

wine or your mom's grape juice.

There's something that's just very satisfying to be

able to have that at the end.

Yeah.

And , I'm not a big, , the good old days kind of person.

' cause I do think that technology has brought us the ability to

do a podcast that talks about things that can reach anywhere.

so that's good.

, That's real good.

So you couple that with the old.

You actually have a pretty good marriage there if you do it right, , you can't

just spend all your time exercising your thumbs, , you need to go in and

exercise everything, , in every way.

So , I'm a big proponent of moving forward, but with some of the

good stuff that we left behind.

Yeah, , a little bit of the old and the new go a long way because we

can't forget where we came from.

if we did, I think we'd all be pretty boring.

So on that note, we are not boring.

I'm just letting you know, right Sylvia?

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

So with that, thinking about what we're gonna do to preserve our

heritage Preserve stories that we can share from time and time again.

And that's what Family Tree Food and Stories is all about.

We hope you'll join us in the

Oh,

but wait a minute.

Okay.

were gonna tell us a canning episode?

Alright, so before we go, I will tell you a canning episode back in Massachusetts

when, , my mom and dad were living there and my sister and myself, we

moved from Long Island to Massachusetts.

, When, I was in high school, mom was, , trying to preserve a little bit

of what dad was making in the garden.

We went through some hard times and they were really good about

not letting us kids know about it.

We ever thought everything was fine.

We didn't know any difference.

So mom decides to can.

Well, that was the, that was back in, I'd say , the late seventies before

there were really these electric,

. Mm-hmm.

cookers that, that were safe.

Mom didn't have a safe pressure cooker, so we're boiling up these things,

these, these jars, and scared to death that , the whole lid was gonna go splat

out of the kitchen, but the amount of work that goes into canning, We did

it once and mom and I sort of looked at each other and said, Hmm, okay.

That was an adventure that I think we can do without.

But my sister does a lot of canning.

She's out in Oklahoma, they can, I say can, it's in jars and bottles,

but their meat and their cows and the cattle that they put up.

And I don't know, I don't, I don't wanna go, into her pantry

and say, this one's name is Joe

Mm-hmm.

they have all sorts of things that they put up and, no, I

don't think that's my thing.

Yeah, there's like three things that are trending right now

and , and they are fermentation.

That's huge.

Making your own stuff and drinks and kimchi, isn't that what that stuff

is?

Anyway, we've

talked about that before.

Sourdough.

There are clubs, sourdough clubs, so it's growing, dehydration.

is a growing phenomenon too.

, Think jerky and I used to think jerky wasn't good for you, but it actually is.

Okay.

You could eat jerky, dehydration, pickles.

Pickling is the rage right now too.

So interesting stuff that's

I, I tried pickled eggs for the first time a couple months ago.

That's actually pretty good.

Yeah.

They're, they're not so pickely . Yeah,

but

Yeah.

So anyway, there you have it.

. We've had a good time today.

We have had a great time and we preserved memories and stories and

given you hopefully a few new tips that you can add to your own book

of My Family Tree Food and Stories.

So on that note, Sylvia, I think it's time to wrap this one up and tell the folks to

say, Hey, tune in, listen in, share, and.

Tell us your own stories of preservation or that you've made and shared.

And we hope you'll tune in next week as every Thursday we drop a new episode

of Family Tree Food and Stories.

We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.

Take care.

Bye-bye.