Writer to Food Lovers: 'Put 'em up!'

It's only May, but Sherri Brooks Vinton is already stocking her basement with homemade rhubarb jam and pickled asparagus, delectables she's "put up" from produce freshly picked from local farms.

As farmer's markets open – Westport's begins its second season on Imperial Avenue tomorrow – Vinton will feed her passion for serving her family of four succulent homecooked meals from food picked that day or home-preserved at its flavorsome peak.

Last summer, Vinton directed the Westport Farmer's Market, which gave her a chance to perfect the techniques she has carried with her since childhood to can, freeze and preserve garden-fresh produce.

This summer, having turned the Westport Farmer's Market torch over to fellow Eastoner Lori Cochran, she's going on tour from coast to coast to promote her new book, Put 'em up!, to be published next month by Storey Publishing. The subtitle is "A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook from Drying and Freezing to Canning and Pickling."

The book is a paean to the joys and pleasures of capturing peak flavors of luscious berries and bright-colored veggies for enjoyment long after the vines have withered and the fields are covered in frost.

The book evolved from Vinton's interest in healthy, locally produced, sustainable agriculture and follows the 2005 publication of The Real Food Revival, which she calls a practical guide to how to find sustainable food and why you should.

She's made food the center of her life since a cross-country trip in 2000 on the back seat of her husband's Honda Goldwing motorcycle - a last romantic fling before settling down to have children. They took scenic routes into the innards of America's heartlands.

She likes to call it her "a-ha! moment," the rude awakening for an adventurer and food lover who expected to eat well in the nation's food basket only to find miles and miles of fields planted in corn and soybeans, destined for food processing plants, but no food to eat.

"It was all fast-food outlets and no farmers' markets," she says with chagrin.

An unexpected glimpse at a stockyards was a heartbreaker and being crop-dusted by a low-flying plane was another downer.

And so she became an energetic proponent of the sustainable food revolution, a radio and TV personality, a lecturer on diverse topics related to food and an author-contributor to food publications.

"I want to get people back in their kitchens, rattling those pots and pans," she says with a smile.

Fearing the tradition of home preserving has skipped a generation, Vinton writes in her introduction:

"This stuff is just too tasty and the tradition too rich to let it go. So that's why on earth I do it."

Besides, she writes, there are five really good reasons to keep the tradition alive: home-preserved foods are tasty, of high quality (you are the quality control monitor), economical (think bulk purchase of a bushel of beets), green (reduces food transportation) and traditional (preserving cultural and social traditions as well as food).

Put 'em up! is all about showing how food preservation is easy and fun, economical, a great activity for kids (Vinton's are Ava, 8, and Thayer, 5) and a surprisingly simple way to create beautiful and tasty gifts.

The primary ingredient, of course, is fresh-picked produce from a local farm.

"Is this food alive?" Vinton will ask, knowing it is when a farmer cuts leaves of curly kale for her on the spot at one of the farms she frequents in Easton.

"It has a lot of life in it," she says. "It's not shot with an inert gas to retain the color. And think of what's not in it - no preservatives or artificial colors."

     Of all the dozens of concoctions she fixes, a personal favorite of Vinton is pickled watermelon rind.

She calls it "the ultimate in home economics," a recipe that "turns trash (watermelon rinds you would usually throw away) into treasure, a beautiful translucent treat."

The simple recipe calls for watermelon rind, sugar, cider vinegar, cinnamon sticks, cloves and lemon zest. By cold-water method, the treat lasts 3 weeks in the refrigerator; by boiling-water method, it's good for a year.

Pickled Spicy Carrots, another favorite, calls for fresh carrots, white vinegar, jalapeno peppers, garlic cloves, red pepper flakes, sugar and salt, Packed upright in a jar, they can be used as a felicitous accompaniment to grilled cheese sandwiches and other luncheon fare for up to a year.

Vinton says worries about botulism and food poisoning are exaggerated and that following her tried-and-true recipes faithfully will destroy harmful spores and bacteria.

Putting up fresh produce comes as second nature to Vinton because her grandparents and a green-thumbed babysitter practiced the techniques without a second thought as she was growing up.

"Granny's homemade biscuits, baked in a wood stove, and strawberries were the bee's knees for me," she says, referring to her South Carolina forbears who she says were both farmers and moonshine runners.

Yet Vinton still thrills to creating beautiful gifts and concocting robustly flavored condiments that bring her winter stews to life.

"Cherry wine in a crock - made with cherries, sugar and wine - is the best experiment I'd ever seen and tasted," she recalls.

The night before a recent interview, Vinton filled 16 ½ pint jars with rhubarb jam - a feat that took an hour and a half and will enliven many a meal to come.

Soon to follow: fresh raspberry preserves, individually frozen strawberries, spicy peach salsa, mushroom confit, plum chutney, curried cauliflower, heirloom tomato salsa, oven-dried tomatoes, spiced pear vodka and spiced apple chutney, and many, many more palate-pleasing delights. Put 'em up! has a recipe for each.

Vinton will make an appearance at the Westport Farmer's Market on June 24 and on July 10 will celebrate a formal launch of her new book at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture at Pocantino Hills, New York.