Food Preservation

What a disappointment! I opened up my acorns to find the last 3 gallons of them, along with a couple pounds of dried Toyon berries, molded. Food preservation really is an art…figuring out how to store, package and otherwise preserve foods for home use can be challenging. Not all of us have a wise old Grandma around telling us how to do things, but a nice resource is the National Center for Home Food Preservation. Although they don’t cover a lot of wild foods specifically, you can usually fit your wild foods into their cultivated foods model. Someday we’ll have a Wild Foods Center for Home Food Preservation.

To keep up with using all that wild fennel right now try the recipe below for some marinated olives. Adams Olive Ranch sells delicious olives/olive oil/tapenades/etc., which they have been growing and curing for 5 generations.

Wild Fennel Olives
extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups olives
orange rind, roughly 2 long strips
fennel leaves, several small sprigs
1 T fennel seeds
6 cloves garlic, peeled

Stuff jar with fennel leaves and seeds, garlic cloves, orange rind, olives and pour in olive oil. Make sure olives and completely covered in oil and store in refrigerator. You can also lightly sauté all ingredients, except olives, for about 5 minutes and then cool and place into jar. Again, store in refrigerator.