A while back I made a discovery that will probably not be useful to the vast majority of you. But it was interesting to me. 🙂
My husband works in the resturant business, though they are so efficient about managing food waste that there’s rarely anything left over, so it’s not as though he comes home loaded down with leftovers every day. If he does bring something home, it’s because they have no way to make money selling it. One day, he brought home the bottom part of the cauliflower that was being cut off and would have been thrown away, the base of the it along with the green leaves attached to it. He didn’t know anything about it but thought it looked like it should be edible.
Honestly, it didn’t look appetizing to me, but we boiled it and suprise – it was really, really tasty! We all liked it better than the part of the cauliflower we usually eat. When his co-worker from Columbia saw him taking the stems today (they went through 7 cases of cauliflower today – they periodically prepare a large amount of pickled cauliflower at a time), he told him, “Yes, that’s the best part, it’s delicious!” So it’s not much of a secret in other countries, it seems.
Stems from seven cases of cauliflower – isn’t that a lot, you wonder? Yes, it was – about fifty pounds worth. But what can you do with so much of a perishable vegetable that needs refrigeration? I definitely don’t have that kind of space in my fridge! I cooked up a bunch of it in my two largest pots, then cut it into smaller pieces – and canned it. I still feel amazed at how compact things become when cooked. Twenty pounds made four gallons, cooked . My seven year old daughter enjoyed filling the jars with me after dinner – she especially enjoys using the magnetic wand to fish the lids out of boiling water, and then putting them on the jar. But she did most of the other parts, too – filling them (all I did was pack it down) with the vegetables, then putting the spices in, and adding the boiling liquid before closing it up.
It’s still processing in the pressure canner as I write, and I have two large pots full waiting to be cooked, and one cooked pot full – and we enjoyed a large amount of it with dinner as a side dish. It’s good that it’s so yummy, because it’s worth the work. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll can what is left tomorrow, if my day isn’t too hectic (though Fridays usually aren’t the best time for this kind of activity :)).
Avivah
