Joy of the Kitchen: Canning

Welcome back!

Photo via Wikipedia

My favorite childhood memories are those of canning, baking and cooking in the kitchen with my mother. We lived in a cozy house that was always filled with the aromas of the kitchen. It’s no wonder where my love of the kitchen came from! This nostalgic tour is all about canning.

Canning

I love homemade jams and jellies, pickles and fruit. I remember my mother canning and preserving the days away as a child. Lucky us, we got to eat the fruits of her labor.

My hometown was oppressively hot in the late summer, so my mother would do her canning late into the night (almost early morning) when the temperatures would drop. She’s told me stories of pooling together a group of women to buy a van full of pears and peaches. I remember flats and flats of fruit fresh from the orchards covering our kitchen like fresh fallen snow. Pears were, and still are, my favorite canned fruit. Something about the aroma of a perfectly ripened pear sends me into a heavenly food daydream. *sigh*

I also remember jars and jars of spaghetti sauce, pickles, ketchup, peaches, pears, jam and preserves. There was a medium sized industrial-type shelf in our home that was always packed with preserved food, which we consumed throughout the year. Knowing all the work my mother put into those jars was a comforting and warm feeling. (Not to mention yummy!)

Reviving a lost art.

These days, canning isn’t terribly popular. It’s not that it’s complicated, and once you make your own preserves you’ll be hard pressed to find a store bought variety that measures up! I’ve made small batch canning a part of my life, and it’s something I look forward to every year. I make 3-5 batches of fresh, local fruit jam every year and whatever else I feel like (last year it was peaches, this year dill pickles). I even put in a small strawberry patch in my backyard which (for the first time this year) gave me enough fruit for a small batch of jam. You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten a fresh picked strawberry! My rule is to get the fruit in the jar within hours of picking, and believe me it makes all the difference!

The basics.

Are you interested in canning? You’d be surprised at how easy it is with a few tools. What you’ll need to start canning (water bath style). Sometimes you can find a kit with most of these things sold together:

A “canner”: This is just a large black pot with a basket to hold the jars for a water bath.
Jar lifter: This is a pair of thongs used to retrieve the jars from the hot water bath, so you don’t burn you little fingers!
Funnel: You’ll need this so your liquids don’t make a mess of the lip of the jars.
Jars & lids: To put those pretty preserves, fruit or pickles in (follow your recipes, they will tell you what size you should use).
Ladel: To move hot liquids from the pot to the jars.
Labels: So you remember what you put where, and so your family will know what they are getting too.