Delicious Treats from a Jar

Organic preserves from my fridge

Do you like pickled and preserved food? I do. In my house we eat it all the time, especially during winter months. We eat it for breakfast, as a snack, we use it as a spread on our crapes. Hence, we use it A LOT.
So, this story begins with me walking down the street from my nail salon and seeing a health food store. Of course, I had to check it out. I ended up buying substance called agar-agar, after having an interesting and eye-opening conversation about pickling and preserving, with the owner of the store. She gave me a few practical tips for preparing natural, healthy, homemade preserves. 

We all usually buy industrially-made products. But they often contain refined sugar as well as artificial preservatives, additives and other ingredients that contribute to longer preservation period of selected foods. So, the first step in preparing healthy homemade preserves is choosing organically-grown foods and produce.



This is how agar-agar looks like

Along with organic fruits and vegetables we can use organic apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and cereal malts instead of refined sugar. Instead of gelatin, we can use flakes of agar-agar algae (that I bought), which thicken the stewed fruits for our jellies. In preparation of pickled food we can use umeboshi plums or fermented Japanese apricots as preservative and to prevent fermentation of the vegetables in a pickled jar. 

And here’s an extra tip from my mom’s kitchen - for a special touch use your favorite spices and add them to your preserves. For example, my mom likes to use cinnamon or vanilla. But you can mix up your signature aroma and add it to your preserves. 

Take advantage of a wealth of autumn markets (although it’s almost winter but we can pretend it's not and buy some stuff at the grocery stores, at least :)) and prepare natural organic and delicious preserves without sugar, preservatives or harmful additives.