Inventory Storage Options

Another week of CSA, the Saturday Oak Park Farmer's Market. We are loading the Bungalow with food. We make full use of the Bungalow and its fixtures to deal with this food. We have our basement "canning room", a room far from the furnace and close to the outside. Up until about September, this is the coolest spot in the house, so all onions, squash and potatoes went there. Generally, it is un-wise to store potatoes and onions together, something about competing gases (maybe). Also, potatoes need more cold. With the turn to colder around here, we go to our attic. This is the coolest part of the house. Today, I moved the potatoes in the basement up to there. The onions we bought today (and we bought a lot), went to the basement. We had already placed our apples in the attic, and the 1/2 bushel I bought today, that went there as well. Finally, we have an extra fridge. That is used for the least giving products. For one thing, it has more summery things not yet eaten or still arriving, like some eggplants and some collard greens. For another thing, it has product that will last but really needs more cold: pears, grapes, cabbage, roots. When it gets even colder, I can trust some roots to the attic, but right now we have not stocked up much in roots anyway.

The newest inventory is below, updated from here--note from there may be some discrepancies in the lists due to my imperfect re-call.

Raspberries - 2 quarts

Apples - Our weekly CSA includes about 6 apples, those get eaten during the week. In storage we have 1/2 bushel of mutsu, a 1/2 bushel of mixed including northern spy, akane, winesap, courtland, granny smith and a few other varieties. In addition to these, we have quart bags of raritan and empire.

Pears - Last year, the Chicago area had a very limited pear crop. We are making up for that this year. Well, it is not so much that it's a bumper crop; it's that we are making a big effort to have pears so that our winter fruit is not so apple-y. We have about 20 lbs right now of various pears, including Asian style pears (papples) in our two fridges. Besides school lunches and other out-of-hand eating, pears make for a good salad course too.

Grapes - A big handbasket is mostly full of grapes in our downstairs fridge, the latest CSA came with 2 quarts, but then one daughter who refuses to fess up, dropped it all over the basement floor.

Watermelon - There is some watermelon left, but after serving my kidz melon in their lunches for days, I let them have a melon-atorium. Now, I wonder if it's not spoiled. Nonetheless, it counts in the inventory for now.

Tomatoes - Still finding tomatoes to buy, so we got a few pints of cherry tomatoes and another seven heirloom tomatoes. The 20 keeper tomatoes have been wrapped in newspaper and set aside in the attic.

Red bell peppers - About 8

6 Green bell peppers - 7 a few tiny speciality peppers (e.g., chocolate) that taste like green peppers

Jalepeno peppers - About 8

Serrano peppers - 4 or so

Cayenne peppers - 1 pint, but letting them dry

Beets - Maybe 24 smaller and 16 larger

Cabbage - 1 larger green; 1/2 of a red; 1 whole red

Garlic scapes - forgotten but amazingly holding up, will make a strange taste of Spring in Fall

Turnips - 2 large white, 3 red "salad" turnips plus a dozen or so sitting around since last spring

Turnip greens - The greens attached to the 2 white turnips

Bekana - One of Farmer Vicki's Asian greens, looks a bit like a long head of romaine; we have two heads

Radish - 1 beauty heart; 1 bunch of French breakfast radishes

Collard greens - 6 bunches

Celery root - 1 large

Cauliflower - 1/2

Eggplants - 2 large

Tomatillos - 12

Lettuce - 1/4th of a bag + 1/2 head of romaine

Carrots - lots

Garlic - Some

Green beans - About 1/2 a Sunday newspaper bag's worth

Dry beans including yellow-eye, Great Northern and red kidney - A good amount

Dry onions - Six or so smaller red; two quarts red torpedo, about five Tropea, several pounds of cippolini; 22 lbs of yellow

Sweet potatoes - 11 (lost one to spoilage)

Potatoes - 25 or so smaller + 1/2 bag of Yukon gold; when I did the move from basement to attic, I found more potatoes than I thought we had. Cool!

Kohlrabi - 2 large; 2 medium

Fennel - 3 stalks

Winter squash - 1 large-ish spaghetti; 6 delicata; 2 acorn

Herbs - rosemary, parsley, thyme, mint, oregano, marjoram

Parsley root - 2

Grains - Michigan grown and ground pastry flour; Illinois grown and ground corn meal; Illinois grown and milled all purpose flour