I hear it all the time—people want to preserve their own food, but they’ve gotten bad advice from the so-called experts who make the whole process of food preservation seem like some occult ritual that only the select few can be initiated into. Bird feathers and balderdash, all of it. Preserving food isn’t rocket science, and it doesn’t require any extreme preparation. I should know. I’m a Wisconsin Master Food Preserver. Here are five of the myths I hear most often.

1. If you don’t pickle cucumbers the same day you pick them, they won’t turn out right. Give me a break. Pick your cucumbers when they’re the size you like them. If you don’t have enough to do a couple of jars, wash and store them in the refrigerator until the next picking. When it’s time to start the pickling process, let the cukes sit at room temperature for a few hours, and then proceed.
2. You have to add lemon juice or vinegar to your tomatoes. Who told you that? People have been canning tomatoes without lemon juice or vinegar for nearly two-hundred years. While there are always new trends in home-canning, all you really need for tomatoes is a little salt and a covered hot-water bath.
3. Dehydrating food requires a lot of preparation. Not true. In fact, drying is most often the easiest, fastest, and least messy of the processing methods. Corn, onions, celery, apples, and a host of other fruits and vegetables can go from garden to dehydrator with nothing more than a quick rinse and a little chopping.
4. You can’t do anything with zucchini. Sure you can. Grate your giant zucchini and freeze it. Wait until winter and make a chocolate zucchini cake or bread. Nothing brings back summer memories in the dead of winter like a warm slice of zucchini cake.
5. It takes too much time to process my own food. Like anything else you do, you’ll get better the more you do it. You’ll learn how to tweak recipes and add your own flavor to the food you preserve. Practice makes perfect, and with a little practice, you’ll be able to whip out dozens of jars of jam and salsa in no time at all.

Don’t let the experts scare you. Sometime preserving your own food isn’t pretty. Sometimes you’ll mess it up. (Like the time I destroyed a crock pot when I forgot to turn off the apple butter, but didn’t discover my mistake for 2 days.) But after you’ve done it a couple of times, you’ll be your own expert—which is the only expert you should listen to.

One would think, given all the rain we’ve had here in the Northwoods, pulling onions from the ground would be as easy as slicing butter with a hot knife. But in heavy soil like ours, yanking onions, or any other root crop, without breaking the above-ground portion of the plant off, leaving the root securely in the ground, is all but impossible when the soil is wet, and straight-up impossible when the soil is dry.

Before you break out the trusty pitchfork, make sure the onions are ready to harvest. When the tips have started to turn brown, and the long green stalks are heavy and starting to lean, it’s time to get them out of the ground. Using a pitchfork, spade, or shovel, loosen  the soil three-to four-inches from the visible part of the bulb (the part of the onion where the green meets the round part). With the soil loosened, grab the green part where it joins the bulb and give it a firm, sustained yank.

Cut the greens off an inch above the bulb. If you don’t leave an inch or so of green, your onion won’t dry properly for long-term storage. Allow bulbs to sit outside in a dry breeze for a few days, and then store them in a paper bag in a cool dry place. You can also store them in saved produce bags from the grocery store. I like the netted bags that oranges come in.

I save the greens, chopping them and placing them in the dehydrator for 12 hours. The dried onion greens are a great seasoning.

Onions are one of the easiest plants to grow and preserve. Anyone can grow an onion, harvest it, and let it dry. Of course, instead of letting your onions dry for storage, you could slice them for onion rings or French onion soup. Happy yanking.

I thought I’d share a couple of recipes that I found bizarre but delicious. I have to admit, I probably wouldn’t announce the ingredients before serving it to others. Let them taste it and then spring it on them. They’ll be surprised, and you’ll be the talk of the town…until someone else serves up something strange.

Pork and Beans Cake
Ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup oil
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 (16 ounce) can pork and beans, drained
• 1 (8 ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained
• 1 teaspoon apple pie spice

Cream Cheese Frosting:

• 1/4 cup softened oleo or butter
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (16 ounce) box powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup pecans, finely chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, apple pie spice,salt and baking powder. Add eggs and oil. Blend until smooth. Blend pork and beans with mixer until smooth. Add crushed pineapple and pork and beans to batter and blend. Pour into greased Bundt pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes.  Cool and frost with cream cheese frosting.
Frosting: Blend butter, cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth.
Spread on cooled cake and sprinkle with pecans.

Green Tomato Chocolate Cake

2/3 cup unsalted butter
1 3/4 cup sugar
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups sifted unbleached flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 T. instant espresso
1 cup beer
1 cup pureed green tomatoes
1/4- 1/2 cup water (optional)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking pan, or two cake pans, or cupcake tins. (I used two 8-inch square pans and had enough to also make 10 cupcakes.) In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Stir in chocolate, then, one at a time, the eggs. Add vanilla.
In a medium bowl, sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture alternately with beer, tomatoes and instant espresso. If batter appears stiff, add water. Turn batter into the prepared baking pan. Bake for 35 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack. Frost with cream cheese frosting recipe above.