Just Can It!

This Sponsored Content is brought to you by our partners at Bartlett Regional Hospital.

Sarah Lewis stands in her skookum Juneau kitchen between a vegetable-strewn butcher block counter and a gas stove brewing veggie stock. She moves fast between the counter and stove, peeling, dicing, slicing, stirring, roasting, bagging, canning, pickling, and freezing carrots, kale, leeks, potatoes, peas, squash, beets, zucchini, and all manner of beans.

A laptop squints at her from the counter, too, providing her audience a peek. Lewis holds up an artichoke for Zoom participants from all over Alaska. “I typically don’t do any of the fussy things like clipping off all of the pokey bits because I figure if my kids and family can’t handle those pokey bits, then they’re gonna have a hard time in life.”

Along with humor, she exudes honesty and charm throughout her commentary and advice on putting up enough summer produce in one hour for a week’s worth of meals.

Classes like this Veggie Slam are her favorite, using ingredients in season, on sale, or from your garden. “I’m a working mom working from my own kitchen right now. And I don’t like to cook dinner,” asserts Juneau’s Family and Community Development Agent for UAF’s Cooperative Extension and batch cooking advocate.

“I’m not a single meal person,” she says with a smile. “I love to spend an entire weekend on seven or eight recipes, putting them on the shelf, from which you can make a couple meals each week, from a jar.”

Just reheat.

Sarah’s food safety and preservation journey began in 2007 when she became a founding member of Juneau’s Sustainability Commission and part of the annual local harvest festival committee. At the time, she was an architect project manager for the City and Borough of Juneau. “I started looking at local food resources and how people thrive in their environment.”

She started with “gateway drugs,” fermenting cabbage for sauerkraut, making jams and jellies and then moving on to pickles. She “got brave” next, canning fish after studying how to in Cooperative Extension publications.

Lewis eventually cooked up a career change and became an extension agent herself. After studying for several years with fellow agent Roxie Rodgers Dinstel in Fairbanks, she branched out to canning entire meals.

Lewis is also big on letting people know about delicious ways to reduce food waste.

“Celery leaves are especially good for making easy homemade celery salt,” she says over the sound of the knife mincing celery. “Throw them in the dehydrator, crumble it up, add salt.”

In addition to offering advice and information on local food resources and preservation, Lewis offers expertise on home design, home energy, emergency preparedness, and nutrition. The latter led her to the popular Health Matters program offered by Bartlett Regional Hospital. Lewis instructs the yearlong diet and weight loss course aimed at people diagnosed with pre-diabetes.

If you have dietary restrictions or health issues, homemade is healthier, she tells her students. “You have total control when you are canning your own food. You can make super healthy, quick meals for yourself.” Give it a try with Sarah Lewis’ vegetable soup recipe.