The stars talked about their preparations for the fall – exclusive

– I became interested in cooking at school. And I have been doing home preservation for thirty years. Basically, my wife Irina and I make preparations from vegetables, berries and fruits from our dacha. And wild strawberries were picked this summer in two neighboring overgrown areas. By itself, it is not very sweet, but delicious in the jam. We begin to close banks in May. We make rhubarb jam first. For me, this is the taste of childhood. And at the beginning of July I was preparing Ivan tea. Collected it at the edge of the forest near the site. Drying tea is not easy. Remove the leaves from the upper third of the stem, put it in a three-liter jar and put it in the sun for a day. The tea is steamed. Then you need to take 20-30 leaves and roll sausages out of them. Then you need to put them in a bowl, put a plate on top, leave it under oppression for a day or two, like cabbage with sourdough. Then it remains to dry the leaves in the oven or in the sun. When we drove to the Krasnodar Territory on vacation, they picked up wild apricots there and also let them make jam. Soon the raspberries will go, and we will collect them. Cucumbers on the site began to bear fruit. We put them in old thin barrels, we have three of them. You fill the barrel with grass, sprinkle it with earth on top. The grass rots, generates heat, and this is an alternative to a greenhouse. Now the whole barrel is overgrown with cucumbers. For the winter, we will marinate half of them, salt half. And be sure to prepare a salad of vegetables. We have a base near the dacha where they sell peppers, zucchini, eggplants. If you twist all this with tomato paste and vinegar, it will turn out very tasty.

– This season, unfortunately, the Moscow region cannot boast of high yields due to the weather. I planted potatoes, beets, carrots, dill, parsley, cilantro, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, bell peppers, eggplants, pumpkin. All this in addition to apples, pears, plums, raspberries, strawberries, which have been growing in the garden for many years. And because of the rains and the long cold, only cabbage, greens, cucumbers and tomatoes, bell peppers and some eggplants were born – and that was because they were in greenhouses. Now, it would seem, the weather is more or less good, but nothing grows, not even mushrooms. When the harvest is good, I pack the berries and freeze them in the freezer. In winter, we cook compote from them. I store winter apples in a cold place (up to +5 degrees) and shift them with sawdust. From the blanks, my favorite is cucumbers. I freeze them too. I do this: I cut cucumbers into slices, put them in a vacuum bag and remove air from it. It is very convenient to defrost these cucumbers before the arrival of guests, and they are already ready for salad. Also, in vacuum bags, I freeze all the greens: dill, parsley, cilantro, celery. It can also be sliced. I learned to roll non-salted cucumbers. They are dietary – for those who want to lose weight and should not consume salt. The recipe is the same as for pickling, but I do not put salt, jars of cucumbers are already great, but I add various herbs, horseradish root, laurel, currant, cherry leaves to add flavor.

– I am not the best agronomist, but I grow everything that I can on my own on my site in the suburbs. There is nothing to boast about this season: the year was not very fruitful. But we have a lot of greens, I love it, especially mint, I brew it fresh in tea, dry it. Our mint has a special flavor, store-bought more watery. And I am also a real dumpling maniac: every year I spin cans on an industrial scale, send them to all my relatives and friends. I can give a jar to fans. I especially love strawberry jam. It also grows with me, but not enough, I have to buy it. And this is the main item of summer spending. I stock up on the farm, which is not far from us, in the suburbs. Strawberries are quite expensive berries, it is cheaper to buy them in buckets, which is what I do. In addition to strawberries, I roll cherries, raspberries, apricots. It is important to rinse the berry very well. In my jam, you will never come across a twig, a stick, or a leaf. For a couple of years now, my friends and I have been exchanging homemade products. Now it is valued much higher than groceries from the store. So, my friend Lena Perminova (model, wife of entrepreneur Alexander Lebedev. – Approx. “Antenna”) bakes bread and sends it to me. It is gluten free and very healthy. My daughter is allergic to gluten, lactose, so we are selective about food. Helen was awarded the title “Our Fairy of Baking”. We also give her as much as we can – jam, fish, which we salt ourselves.

– We also had a plot in the village, solid clay. Nothing would grow there, but our mother Svetlana said: “Nothing, we will take this plot and make a garden out of it”. In the spring, in the rains, we dug holes there a meter by meter deep in order to plant a bush or a tree, ash and grass were poured around the roots so that everything would melt and get black soil. So they planted a huge garden. Now apricots, apples, plums, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, pears, cherries, sweet cherries and potatoes grow there. Our dad Vladimir goes there every week to mow. All children and adults can enter this garden, which does not have a gate. We put beautiful benches for them to sit and rest. Such a park for local residents. There are only 20 houses in the village of Rygino. This is one of the oldest villages in the area, everyone knows each other. And recently a notification came that the village would be demolished, a route would be laid along it. The news horrified all residents. How much labor has been put into this land. And the garden will also be demolished along with the dacha. Mom cried, dad wilted, they know every pebble there, the site is already 30 years old.

– I love to cook. I keep interesting recipes in a special notebook – not in the form of clippings from magazines, but in the form of notes. Since I spent all my childhood with my grandmother in the village of Rublevo, I saw how she makes pickles. And helped her. I do not have a summer cottage or cellar, so I don’t harvest vegetables and fruits for the winter globally. But I’m doing something. For example, crispy cucumbers. The main thing here is to buy small and sweet ones, be sure to try them so as not to run into bitter ones. A couple of cans will easily fit in the refrigerator and wait until winter. If you want pickles right now, there are express recipes for this case. I cook, for example, instant salted tomatoes. You need a kilogram of small tomatoes, basil, dill, garlic. Cut vegetables into halves, add garlic, chopped herbs, a tablespoon of salt, sugar, mix and put in a bag. We put it in the refrigerator overnight. And the next day, if guests come for lunch, you can treat them to signature tomatoes.