99. The Ayurvedic Guide to Preserving Summer's Bumper Crops [VIDEO]

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Welcome pod pal.

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Today's episode on the farmer's market haul.

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There's a great question I got from one of you about how do you preserve all the foods when the bumper crops are happening, you know, in the late summer, early fall? So that's what we're gonna talk about today is sort of the kitchen tricks, the, the foods that I'm buying, how I'm keeping them, you know, what Ayurveda says about preservation of food, and freezing food, the et cetera, that I know you guys are gonna ask me, the frozen food question.

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So let's get right to it, how to preserve the farmer's haul and what's on the menu in the late summer right after this.

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Welcome to Everyday Ayurveda with Kate, a podcast that translates ancient wisdom for modern lives.

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I'm your host, Kate O'Donnell.

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I've been living and teaching Ayurveda, India's traditional medicine, for over 25 years, and I've authored four best-selling books on bringing Ayurveda practices into our lives.

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If you're tired of battling digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, menopause symptoms, or are seeking a deeper spiritual connection and purpose, you're in the right place.

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Let's do this.

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All right, so before I start downloading all the things that I do in my kitchen, I gotta give you a disclaimer that I'm not a big gardener or farmer, and I know that there's a lot of you out there who know a lot more than I do about how to preserve food.

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And what I'm telling you is sort of this is coming from somebody who lived in a city for decades basically, and now sort of li- you know, lives in a suburban area where there is, uh, the...

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a ton of farm fresh food.

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And I grow a tiny little bit of food.

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I have a garden that is about, uh, eight feet by two, a raised bed.

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I have a couple tomato plants on the porch, and then I do keep fresh herbs all around, which we'll talk about that.

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And it's not, like, a big part of my life, you know? There's people who grow a lot more food than I do.

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This is something that's dear to my heart.

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We are gonna be talking about soil health and growing food, uh, pretty soon, in, in a month or two on this podcast with a special guest.

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But meanwhile, let's just...

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let's talk about, you know, kind of a normal, um, somewhat city-living person here who really values the prana, the high prana of fresh food in an environment where the growing season is really, really short, right? So that's the thing about where I live and have lived most of my life in New England.

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Of course, when I'm in India, you know, they're...

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the food's totally different.

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You know, there's so much of it.

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You're...

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You can eat fruit all year long.

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There's all different kinds of vegetables and gourds.

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It's part of what I'm so excited to, to teach in February's culinary training that is happening in India because there's just this whole other pharmacopeia of available food.

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But what I'm gonna talk with you about today is sort of what's happening in my New England world.

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Now, some of you might live in climates where you don't need to actually do this, that you can get fresh food any time.

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However, maybe some of you aren't able to get to a farm store, a farmers market, et cetera, more than, say, you know, once a week.

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I mean, that's my goal is to try to get fresh produce.

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I, I'm usually aiming for more like twice a week, but I know there's a lot of folks in busy situations who are, are hitting it once a week.

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And so then you wanna make sure that your freshies are going to last for seven days about for you, and those are all kinda tricks that, that I'd like to share with you today, and there are some things that will preserve food for longer.

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So the question I get all the time whenever I talk about sort of, like, saving food, you know, or freezing things, you know, people, "But Ayurveda says, you know, you can't leave leftovers and you can't eat frozen food," and it's like Sure.

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If you live in a climate where you're growing fresh food 12 months out of the year, that's, you know, that's great.

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I live in a climate where we're growing fresh food maybe four months out of the year.

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I mean, that yes, there's incredible work going on in hoop houses throughout the state of Maine where people are Y- I can actually get, like, fresh, you know, greens, mesclun mix in the wintertime now.

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Not that I eat salad in the winter really, 'cause it doesn't digest well for me.

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It just makes me bloated.

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But there are options.

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You know, there are other things that one can do to grow fresh food all year round, so we can talk about, the sprouting for sure.

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That's one of the ways that I get around not having access to a lot of fresh vegetables.

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But another thing is, you know, living in a very seasonal climate like I do, I, I really do embrace eating a lot of the fresh food when it's there, and kinda sucking it up that I have less of that for many months out of the year, right? So it's, it's You zoom out and you look at the foods that you're eating in sort of a, a seasonal perspective on a whole annual cycle.

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So maybe there's times of year where I'm eating more kind of fats and proteins and stored things like nuts and seeds and, uh, boiling legumes and grains and root vegetables.

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And In, in light of all that, I'm also a kind of person who if there isn't something green there, it doesn't look right to me, you know? And yes, in Ayurvedic nutrition, we are always looking to get the six tastes.

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I would say in varying, um, amounts depending on the season.

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So yes, we want more of the lighter taste, the cleansing taste in the warm weather, and more of the sweet, grounding, um, y- the root vegetables, and the meats, and the dairy, and things like that in the wintertime, of course.

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And we talk about that together on this podcast as we go through the wheel of a year.

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What we're looking at right now is this specific moment in time where the earth is giving the bounty of fresh food, and then you're looking down the barrel of, you know, six months coming to you, fall/winter, potentially six months depending where you live, that you're not really gonna have access to that.

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So when people ask the question about, you know, Ayurveda says not to eat frozen food, I stand firm in my belief that if you're growing food or you're getting food from l- local farmers, there's so much prana there that goes into the creation of that food, the healthy soil that it was grown in, you know, the love that goes into it, that if you are taking that local food and preserving it, if that, say that's freezing, I say that that is better than going to a store and buying it fresh that came from hundreds or thousands of miles away, right? Like if I go buy my California kale, right? So I, I do feel that in this case, for those who live in these kinds of climates, that freezing is a good option.

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I have heard modern-day Ayurveda physicians talk about short-term freezing.

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You know, so say you make a bunch of a big soup, you know, and then you put some away that you're gonna eat in, like, a week.

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So it's not like this deep freeze that's going on forever and ever.

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I do sort of subscribe to that.

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So when I talk here today about preserving farmer's market haul by freezing some things, like, I usually do try to eat them, you know, sooner than later.

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And then as I get, you know, a month or two goes by and all...

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there's no more of that happening, then I go into sort of my winter diet, right? So when it comes to freezing, here's what's on the menu.

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we've got root vegetables.

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Those will be coming pretty soon.

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We've got all the greens, and we've got all the herbs.

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We've got tomatoes.

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Yes, you can Make sauce, you know, like, uh, spaghetti sauce type of thing, tomato sauce, and freeze that.

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I personally don't really do a ton of that, although that would be better than buying, uh, tomato sauce, uh, in a jar, right? We don't eat a ton of that anyway.

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But, for me, when I'm gonna eat tomatoes, you know, 'cause that's the, that's the August crop, are your cherry tomatoes and your...

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I eat the heirloom tomatoes.

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You know, I find that the, the yellow ones are actually less acidic than the red ones, so I'll...

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When I see those yellow ones, uh, orange ones going on, I buy those.

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You know, I just slice 'em.

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I do, sourdough toast.

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It w- it's like my favorite thing, with, avocado mayonnaise actually, and then I sprinkle gomasio on top with seaweed in it, so it's, uh, it, it's kind of an amazing thing.

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And I'm eating those, heirloom variety of tomatoes basically for, like, a couple weeks i, in August.

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Cherry tomatoes are a really fun one, because you can roast 'em.

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Roasting cherry tomatoes.

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So if you have too many of them or you, you have a bunch, that is something that I think one could roast a batch of cherry tomatoes, and then they kind of, like, implode, right? And then you could l- you just, like, scrape them up and they're like this compote.

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I...

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And that could be frozen in glass jars, and then tossed in with pasta, grains, et cetera.

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And that's a great way to preserve those cherry tomatoes that are really only amazing, insanely amazing, when they're fresh.

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I think that's the case with tomatoes, right? So you know, I don't eat 'em all the time.

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Ayurveda's not a huge lover of tomatoes, just due to the high acidity.

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of course the traditional method of preparing tomatoes is to parboil, remove the skin, strain out the seeds, and then you've actually removed a good amount of the acidity and the part that's hard to digest, and that bothers people and potentially causes inflammation when it's not digesting well.

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So if you are gonna preserve, uh, tomatoes, that's a great way to do it.

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Parboil.

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Those skins slide right off, and then you can sort of, press the flesh through a strainer, get some of those seeds out.

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And then just, then you just have like straight tomato flesh, right? So then I would jar that and, and save that.

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Now some of you might be canners.

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You might have the setup in order to, preserve by canning.

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I think that is so cool.

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It's, to me it's like Little House on the Prairie, though.

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It's, it's not something that I have the setup for and do here in, in my home, but I think it's very cool and I love those of you who do it.

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Please drop me a comment or send me a, a message.

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You know, I love to hear how cool you are that you do that.

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Um, tell me about it.

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I think it's awesome.

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So there's your tomatoes, right? And then we have greens.

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So I'm buying greens all the time, you know.

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Like, I eat lettuce in the really hot time of year.

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I, I get into this thing with romaine where, um, I grew romaine last year, so I had tons of romaine leaves.

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And so I was, like, making wraps.

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So instead of using, like, tortillas, I was just using romaine and putting basically you name it, anything inside the romaine.

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I definitely went through a tzatziki phase where I was rolling tzatziki up in, in little, like, romaine burritos and packing them into, into glass jars and taking them to the beach.

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So you know, that, that ship has sailed.

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Uh, I feel like the lettuces are...

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You know, they're on their way out as we get into more root vegetables, but we're always gonna have the chard and the kale and that sort of thing.

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That being said, did you know that you can parboil and freeze kale? It's kind of crazy.

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I recently met some farmers, nearby who are doing some really amazing work with soil health, and I got really excited about their produce.

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And she said, "You know, I've a couple bags of this, these huge kale leaves, you know.

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Do you wanna parboil and freeze them?" I was like, "Really?" And so I, I did.

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I just kinda Googled how to do it.

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And you know, you just submerge them in hot water and then stick them in ice water for a second, and then I stacked them up and froze them on a baking sheet, and then transferred them from the baking sheet into, big kinda Ziploc bags.

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And they remained in a leaf, which is crazy to me.

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So you can separate each leaf and it's like this frozen fan.

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So it worked, and so now I have that kale frozen.

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And what I'll probably do is use that in soups, dals, things like that.

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And I've been eating a ton of kale 'cause I'm, I'm...

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That's one thing I'm growing and, you know, this friend is giving me kale, so there's just kale everywhere.

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I just am sauteing it.

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I often will saute it with eggs or tofu, like make a, kinda like a scramble where there's like a to- 50% kale in there.

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So kale can be frozen.

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That's interesting.

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I'm also a fan of kale pesto.

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So if you're growing basil, you know, you make, make a pesto but using, um...

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Look up a recipe.

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Easy to find.

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Use some kale in there too.

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That's a great way.

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And then if you freeze those in little jars, you can then just take one jar out, and it's already got the olive oil in it and everything, and just, like, put it on top of, you know, um, a grain or a pasta or what have you And that's, pretty great.

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So preserving the kale, yes, I'm not gonna like have the kale in there for months on end.

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Like I'm gonna eat it within a month probably.

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What I do to keep kale fresh though, that will make your kale last for, I'm not kidding you, three weeks, and this is true for all of your hearty greens and your fresh herbs Is you, when you get 'em home, when you get your greens home from the farmer's market, chop off, a c- a couple inches of the stem on the bottom.

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And if there's any kind of band around it holding it together, take that off, let it breathe, kinda fluff it up, give it some space.

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And then put it in a wide-mouth, glass jar, and put water in it to cover the stem by a few inches.

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Better if the leaves of the greens are not also in the water 'cause they will start to kinda rot, and then everything gets funky a lot faster.

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So if you can have enough stem on there that you- you've cut off just the bottom or two, the same way that you would if you brought home flowers, right, and we're gonna put 'em in a vase.

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You- you kinda cut off the, the little bottom of the stem.

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Stand it up in the wide-mouth jar with enough, water to cover the, the stems, like, you know, two, three inches.

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And again, no band around it.

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You gotta take the band off as soon as you get your haul home.

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And then cover it over with a plastic bag l- or any kinda bag.

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It could be, like, a muslin bag or something.

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But I use the bulk bags, you know, from, like, when you buy vegetables at a grocery store.

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I save all those bulk bags, and I put that over the top of it and tuck it in around the, the inside of the wide mouth.

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And you just stick that in the fridge.

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Change the water every other day or so, and your greens, your kale, your chard, your mustard, those things will last a really long time like that.

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Uh, and I do the same with m- bunches of cilantro, bunches of, uh, parsley, that kinda thing, if I'm buying bunch herbs.

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And sometimes I'll even p- like mix the herbs together into, like, a bo- like, you know, stick them together, take the bands off, stick 'em together, and stand 'em up all in water.

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And then when I'm cooking or w- or even when I'm, like, garnishing, I just pull the jar out of the fridge and, like, kinda grab a few sprigs of this and that.

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And I, it's really fun for me, and it makes me feel like I have this fresh food, right? So fresh herbs I really can't say enough, uh, about, especially those of us who don't, don't live in a tropical climate where spi- a lot of spices are growing, you know? But we're definitely growing, you know, sage and thyme and oregano and parsley and cilantro, all of these things that have amazing digestive properties.

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And always be using those.

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And I'll use fresh herbs like that kind of all winter long.

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That will be I do pull some of my herbs inside.

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I've been successful growing parsley inside, g- thyme inside.

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Uh, I'm gonna try oregano this, this winter.

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So having a little indoor herb garden.

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Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but I will, at the end of the season, take a couple of the herbs that I'm growing and put them in a pot and bring them inside.

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And they don't always, as I say, they don't always last, but sometimes they do, and it's amazing.

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Because then I can be eating sort of this, like, winter spread, but have little flecks of green going on, and I do that a lot with, um, parsley.

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If it's not growing in the house, I will buy my herbs from however far away they are coming from just to be able to have, you know, that parsley, you know, which is, like, a really hardy plant that grows in all sorts of adverse conditions and, and weathers.

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So I'll keep that around, again, in the glass jar with the, with the bag over it, and it, I'm telling you, will last three weeks.

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So that's pretty amazing, especially if you're, like, trying to get more greens in your, in your world.

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So if you're doing a farmers market haul and you're bringing home a bunch of hardy greens and herbs, please do this with them.

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If you run out of space for the jars, what the next thing you can do is dampen a dish towel.

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So you take a clean big dish towel, dampen it, whether with a spritz bottle or I just kinda, like, run it under the sink a little bit and then kinda wring it out so it's damp, not, like, dripping wet.

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And then, again, cut the bottom of the stem off and fluff it up, spread it, spread the leaves out.

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So I sorta spread them out over the dish towel, the damp dish towel, and then I roll it up burrito style, and that will also stay for at least 10 days.

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That will stay.

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You might, you know, if, like, five days go by and you haven't eaten it yet, You might need to spritz that towel again, get a little more water on there.

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but make sure that everything's kind of enclosed in the damp towel and there's no, like, parts sticking out, and your greens are gonna last a really long time like that as well.

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So if you don't have room for all the jars standing up in there or you're afraid someone's gonna knock them over, which does happen, then I, I do this other trick, you know.

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So the produce drawer on the bottom of the fridge has the, like, towels full of, you know, this, that, and the other thing, and that'll work for, uh, lettuces, romaine leaves, um, your red leaf lettuce, things like that as well.

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I've also been known to wrap up, like, big handfuls of, um, baby greens like baby kale, you know, and spinach and that sort of thing in the damp towel.

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So that's a great...

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There's your greens.

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So you've got fresh herbs.

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Please keep those going, you know? And then you've got all your hardy greens and potentially even some of your lettuces.

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Everything stored away is gonna last you definitely more than a week, right? Yeah, if needed.

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So this is like, there's no excuse.

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You know, even if you can't get to the store often enough, like, then you've still got fresh vegetables, which is amazing, right? So great thing.

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You can find it at banyanbotanicals.com/kate,

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and I will include a link for you in the show notes.

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Then we have the summer squashes, you know, like your, your zucchinis and such.

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Um, don't have any great tricks for them.

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I feel like you just wanna eat 'em fast.

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So I'm always just sauteing those.

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I puree them.

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I, saute 'em in ghee, puree it into a soup.

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I love zucchini kitchari, especially the yellow crookneck squash.

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I will throw, like, two big squashes into a pot of kitchari and just pressure cook that thing, and you don't e- the squash kind of, like, disappears in there, and it's, it's amazing.

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I love it That's so you can do soups, you can put it in your khicharis, your dals, things like that.

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And I, I I just, with the zucchinis, I just eat them in that form.

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I'm always putting them in dals and khicharis basically, you know, 'cause you know how they get big, and then you're, "Oh my God, what do I do with this?" So that's what I do with it.

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I put it along with, split mung bean or red lentil, uh, and just, just cook it all down, right, with some ghee and some spices, a little turmeric.

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That's amazing.

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And then we're gonna start having our beets, right, and our carrots, our kohlrabi, all the, the kinda under the ground stuff.

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So beets, I love a beet pickle.

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So that's one of the ways that you can get beets to last a really long time.

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I've got recipes.

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It mi- those of you who do fall cleanse with me, you're getting ready for your beet pickle, and it's in a couple of my books.

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You'll find different variations on, a beet pickle, where you basically can boil or pressure cook those beets.

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The skins'll slide right off.

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You know, you cut them into sticks and stick it in a jar with vinegar, water, and potentially some herbs, a little salt.

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Super easy.

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And that will keep your beets nice for a really long time.

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And the other reason that I do that a lot is because beets are so sloppy.

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Sometimes I don't wanna have pink hands, so I'll, I'll find that I don't eat the beets enough.

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So I end up getting the haul, you know, bring home a bunch of beets, and I'll just do a beet pickle, and I'll do that, like, every other week, and they will certainly last for two weeks unless somebody eats them, which I get that feedback a lot, that people's families just down those, uh, beet pickles, right? But pickling is a fantastic way to, uh, keep food through the winter, you know, like dilly beans where you put the dill and the green beans and pickle that.

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Um, baby carrots pickled.

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I mean, there's, you know The, the world of pickling is amazing.

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Yes, it's acidic, you know, the vinegar, but that's what will warm the body and sort of increase the digestive fire in the cold weather.

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So I, I shy away from pickles a bit when it's hot out, but it's very intelligent that that's something that we'll do in the fall, and then eat pickles through the winter.

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So that is a fantastic way to, you know, put up your, your cucumbers and your carrots and your beets and your beans and there's so many things that you can pickle.

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And just be careful you don't overdo, you know, eating the pickled items, um, when the time comes, right And the cooler the weather is, the more that pickle will kind of be appropriate, you know, for, for the warming effect that it'll have on your body.

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Then we've got the fruits, right? And it's a sad state of affairs where, for me, we move into fall, and I'm like, all I'm gonna eat is apples and pears, like, feels like for the rest of my life, right? So you know, those of you who live in New England, you know we've been freezing those berries, right? It's a really short season.

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They come on hot and heavy.

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You got raspberries, and then you got blackberries, and then you got blueberries, and then it's over, right? So that is one thing that I do freeze.

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I also do compotes with fruits, with seasonal fruits.

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Yeah, like the stone fruits.

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Uh, I'll slice it up and cook it down, a little bit of cinnamon.

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sometimes I'll put a little bit of ghee in there.

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Doesn't really need any sweetener.

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I mean, it's already so sweet.

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Sometimes I will add, like, some cranberries, something like that.

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I do crisps a lot, you know, so I'm making tons of crisps.

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And, I mean, while that's something you could freeze, I feel like then we are starting to get into, like, eating a lot of, like, pre-prepared frozen foods.

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Better to, like, make crisps like a crazy person, you know, when the fruits are around.

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And then when you freeze the fruits, then you can pull those out for pies and crisps and that sort of thing, which are just so easy to make.

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You know, you just put some oats and some ghee and some salt and some, some kind of sweetener together and put it on top of a pile of fruit and bake it.

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I mean, it doesn't really get much easier than that.

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'Cause it's all been cooked, baked together, you will find most likely that the fruits, although they're mixed with other foods, are gonna digest pretty easily because everything got cooked, cooked together.

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So I do freeze fruits.

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I chop them up and freeze them in order to then pull them out and use them in, in crisps.

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I'm not a pie person, but if you are, that's another great way to use them.

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And it's easy, you know? It's just an easy thing to do.

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And then I also do compote, and that's where you end up kind of doing potentially some freezing, where you're cooking fruits down into, like, a, um...

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I call it a compote 'cause it's not actually a jam or a jelly where you add a bunch of sweetener.

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It's really just the fruit.

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And I eat fruit compote, um, kind of on its own, uh, often, but it can be a topping on things, you know, if if you digest the fruit well mixed with other things.

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I don't really, so I'm not, like, putting it in my oatmeal very often.

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Just because for me, if I mix fruit with foods, I often feel gassy, you know? So, but if it's working for you, if it's not bothering you, then that's a great way to use those, those compotes, you know? Um, but it's basically like jelly, jam without the sweetener.

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And I'll do that with the apples when they start coming around, but the great thing about the winter squashes and the apples is that they keep, you know, for a really long time.

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Our house was built in 1920.

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It actually has a root cellar.

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So we can actually put, uh, apples and winter squashes and things down there.

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Um, and they will keep forever.

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So I'm a huge fan of winter squash.

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Stay tuned here to the Everyday Ayurveda podcast with Kate, where Kate goes crazy with squash recipes in the coming months, right? Because I, I love it sweet, I love it savory, right? And so when the farmer's market's having the squashes, which usually is all the way into October, potentially end of October.

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So there's several months there where the squashes are available.

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As it starts to slow down, I buy more.

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I buy lots of squash, right? And they will keep for, you know, weeks and weeks.

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So I will have a...

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I have this big, beautiful ceramic decorative bowl that I, um, fill with winter squashes towards the end of October, and just slowly kind of work my way through that pyramid, right? So I do...

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That is one of my farmer's market haul ideas, is decorative, uh, big decorative bowls and vases and things.

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So you're, you- if you have bunches of fruits and bunches of vegetables, they're actually in these nice-looking vessels sort of around your kitchen that will remind you to use them, right? And to, to make sure that they're getting eaten, they're getting worked into things So I'm coming home, you know, with a couple tomatoes, potentially a haul of cherry tomatoes that I'm gonna roast.

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I'm coming home with definitely fresh herbs, and I'm chopping those.

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I'm putting them on everything.

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I'm sprinkling them on the sourdough toast with the hummus.

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You know, I did a baked tofu today, uh, that I sprinkled fresh herbs over it when I was eating it.

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I sprinkle it over my grains, over my kitchari, all the things.

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I always have the hearty greens around because they last so long when you put them in a jar like that.

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So you'll be having hearty greens and herbs for, you know, long time here, months to come.

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And absolutely pickle things, especially those roots, right? And as the season slows down, you're buying those root vegetables.

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They will, they will keep in your fridge.

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I'll usually put them in a muslin bag, um, that This is something that, yeah, somebody bought me.

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I think they're from, like, the, you know, the co-op.

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but I like to have a few of those reusable bags, so things aren't sitting in plastic for, uh, weeks on end, you know, your, root vegetables.

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But I'll buy pounds of carrots, pounds of beets.

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You know, I tend to pickle the beets, and then I chop the carrots and use them in, in my dahls and my kitcharis and things.

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Um, but those are gonna just stay, right? You're gonna have those, and then of course you can pickle some things and have pickles ready to go.

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So there's no reason not to have produce, right? And as we move through the wheel of the year, yes, there will be m- less fresh produce, and it's okay.

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You know, one of the things that Ayurveda texts are very clear on across the board f- as far as nutrition goes, is that the food that is grown, um, the closest to where you live is going to be the most nutritious food for your body.

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So the further it travels and the more foreign it is to what your body's used to, the, the less prana your, your body will be able to get from that food, right? So local food's the way to go.

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Find out what's around.

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You know, that's where the farmer's market's great, and so you're just getting, you know, what's, what's available.

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And you come home and you do all these fun things to prepare it, to store it, and you've got fresh local food happening.

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It's on the menu.

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So thanks a lot for this great question.

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I think it's a s- a super helpful thing to be talking about this time of year.

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Always love hearing from you what kind of things are working for you.

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I know some of you have tricks that I didn't mention here, so share those if you would like.

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And stay tuned for more f- more talk, uh, about squash, as I said, and also about soil health, which is something I've been looking into more and finding to be really important.

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So thanks for being here today talking about nutrition and farmer's market food hauls, and I will see you next time on Everyday Ayurveda with Kate.

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One more thing before you go.

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If you've ever dreamed of studying Ayurveda at the source, join me in India next February for a 10-day culinary and nutrition immersion 2027.

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We'll cook, we'll study, and we'll explore Mysore together, and you'll come home with the confidence to make food medicine.

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Learn more and enroll at ayurvedicliving.institute.

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I would love to have you with us.