Preserving Food: When is enough enough?

Do you know when to throw in the towel and pack up the canning and freezing supplies? Do you know how to avoid a freezer full of uneaten frozen green beans or cauliflower? (I’ve had both!)

I was talking with a neighbor last week and she was explaining how she didn’t have a sense of how much food she needed for the winter. She admitted that she tends to go overboard when preserving certain crops. "How do you know when enough is enough?" she asked me.

As usual, I had plenty to say on this topic. Last winter, I wrote a blog post espousing the merits of record keeping in the garden. I am also a proponent of keeping food processing records as well. Why go through the trouble of remembering to write things down? Because I now know how much is enough, and when I hit that number I can let myself off the hook.

In our house we don’t need any more than 15 half pints of pesto. Even if there is still basil bursting from the garden, when I put that final half pint in the freezer I know I am done until next year. Food processing takes time and commitment, and while I enjoy it, I also don’t want to waste time on food I am not going to eat. My goal each year is to eat through my freezer and pantry so that we don’t have a lot of carryover. I don’t want to find jars of pesto from 2009 in the bottom of the pile. That equals wasted food, time and money. And the quality degrades over time as well.

Up until this year, I kept a journal in the pantry where I would create a page for the season and write down totals and notes whenever I froze or canned food. I noticed over the years that sometimes I would forget to take out the book and write it down, so I didn’t always have a full picture of what we put away for the season. This year, I read a great idea from one of my favorite garden blogs. I printed out her Freezer Inventory Form and taped it to my chest freezer in the basement. I stuck a pen on the shelf next to it and now each time I put something in I mark it on the sheet. Since I also store my canned goods and fresh produce down there, I can easily add those items to the tally. I don’t think one item has gone unrecorded this year!

Before, in my journal, I would total up each item at the end of the season so I had an idea of how many of each I put away. This year, I think I’ll total the items on the sheet and keep them in my journal so that I have a quick year to year comparison.

Because I have been a consistent record keeper for the past 10 years, I now have a pretty clear idea of how much food our two person household consumes over the winter. And on days like today, when I have a crate of tomatoes sitting in my kitchen, I can consult my inventory sheet to see what we need more of. Sauce? Roasted tomato soup? Or maybe I’m all done for the season…

How do you know when to quit canning, freezing and drying? How have your food preservation priorities changed over the years? Leave a comment below.