MSU Flathead Reservation Extension teaches food preservation
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POLSON — Piles of red, yellow and green peppers, crisp green beans, onions, carrots and zucchini are Friday’s assignment in Montana State University Flathead Reservation Extension kitchen.
Rene Kittle, Extension Agent, teaches classes called Food Preservation 2011. Today the group is making End of the Garden Pickles, kind of a gathering up and pickling of all the vegetables ripening now.
Master Food Preservers Christine Laskody and Jean Tchida prep the vegetables while Kittle presents information on pickling complete with handouts and answers questions. One discussion was about sauerkraut and the correct container in which to prepare it. Others included pickling problems, such as overcooked pickles or wrinkled pickles.
Laskody and Tchida took the class a couple of years ago. They learned so much and “Rene is so kind,” Laskody said, they are returning the favor and came to wash and prepare vegetables to give the class a head start.
When the class is ready for the lab, they “glove up” and tie on aprons since they are preparing food for a group. The recipe is posted on several cupboard doors, and students carefully measure spices and vinegar and chop vegetables into similarly sized pieces. If the vegetables are different sizes, the smaller one will mush up and the larger pieces may not get pickled, Kittle cautioned.
The Food Preservation series was offered at the Extension Office at 701 B 1st Street E. on Fridays from Aug. 12 to Sept. 9. Cost of the class is kept low, from $5 to $15 per class, “whatever it costs us,” Kittle said. The previous two weeks’ class work produced jars of canned green beans, apple butter and apricot jam.
Adapting a Colorado curriculum for master food preservation, Kittle and program assistant Brenda Richey cover freezing, drying, canning using a hot water bath and/or pressure cooker, pickling and jams and jellies. All the work is hands-on in class with no homework or tests.
“We let them choose from week to week what they want to make,” Kittle explained, adding that the class usually tries recipes they haven’t attempted before.
Food preservation has come into vogue again with all the emphasis on local, fresh food, but this new group calls it ”jarring” instead of canning, Kittle noted.
Kittle grew up canning and gardening but took about 20 years off before she got back into the cycle.
Kittle and Richey offer stand-alone classes for groups of friends. They held classes for the St. Ignatius Church of Latter Day Saints and for the Brushfires of Freedom, who are interested in emergency preparedness.
Summer and fall are not the only times of year for food preservation, Kittle explained, since they present classes year round, “when things go on sale or are harvested,” hunting season, during the mack attack and citrus in the winter, such as the marmalade they made during the Christmas season
The rewards for food preservations classes are shiny jars of beans, beets and corn, tasty jams and jellies and dried fruits and the skills to do it all again.
