State of the Cellar

It's so nice to see Spring moving in, even with its starts and stops. It means fresh change for our seasonal eating choices.

The cellar has served us well through the winter, but most of those shelves are now bare. The last few carrots have been brought up to the refrigerator vegetable crisper, as have the last couple heads of cabbage. The kraut crock is down to its last inch, and as the weather continues to warm up, will be repacked into a smaller container and also brought up to the refrigerator.

The onions are gone - I ended up buying a small bag a week ago. I was very disappointed with the keeping ability of last summer's Big Daddy onions. They had grown into beautiful onions by Fall - nice size, small necks, brown skins, and then well-cured. Or so I thought. Many of them were used in the fall's salsas and tomato sauce canning batches. But as I went to use them through the winter, about half had to be tossed and others, even those that looked perfect on the shelf, were rotting from the inside out. I've ordered Copra plants for this year, and am starting seeds of Utah Sweet Spanish for an open-pollinated trial variety.

The only things left in the cellar (besides beer, hard cider, and two potted fig trees) are apples and potatoes. Both Russet and Yukon Gold potatoes have held well for me again. I have plenty left for this year's seed potatoes, and will be getting those up and going soon. The apples have softened and sweetened a bit, but there are still plenty of them in good condition too. So many, in fact, that as the cellar warms, I may be canning a batch of applesauce from some of them, and pressing out another gallon of juice to ferment into hard cider to refill my vinegar jar. Plus, enough to bring up a weekly basketful for snacking and my breakfast oatmeal until probably June. And then, of course, to make Aries' his traditional birthday apple pie earlier this week, too.