Storing Vegetables

FOR ROOT CROPS such as carrots, parsnips, and potatoes, or for winter squashes, garlic, onions, and leeks, consider storage in a root cellar. Being so inexpensive all winter long, these foods might not be worth your time to can, unless you use them in a special recipe or a labor of love.

If you have an overabundance of beets, make homemade borscht, the classic beet soup, and freeze. To grate the beets more easily, cook them first. A little vinegar intensifies the color.

For variety, dry tomatoes and/or marinate them in oil; or can them as salsa, ketchup, or juice.

Baby lima beans (not the big, starchy ones) freeze nicely and are much tastier than commercial brands. Rhubarb, petite peas, sweet corn, and diagonally sliced or French-cut green beans are easy to blanch and freeze -- and still taste great when thawed.

Tomatoes, rhubarb, cucumbers, beets, cranberries, and virtually all fruits (especially peaches) are well-suited to canning, and their subsequent taste tends to be worth the added trouble. As folksinger Greg Brown put it, "Taste a little of the summer, . . . Grandma's put it all in jars."