Join the Canvolution!
Our photo of the week is from another new contributor, peacefulbean. From her image, she shares the recipe she used to make it from the blog, Prospect: The Pantry. It’s a novel and creative recipe!
Thanks for sharing your pictures and for directing us to the recipe, peacefulbean!
If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos.
This week’s photo of the week is a treat — Monkey Butter by Brook Hurst Stephens. Brook shares her recipe for Monkey Butter (Banana Jam) on her blog, Learn to Preserve. What a great resource!
Thank you for contributing and sharing your knowledge with us!
If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos.
Jarden Home Brands, makers of iconic Ball® brand home canning products, has teamed up with Canning Across America to create the first annual National Can-It-Forward Day. Gather your family and friends to celebrate the bounty of summer through home canning. Learn the ease of preserving fresh food through a day of home canning parties, online instructional canning videos and cooking demos, local events at Seattle’s Pike Place Market and more.
Visit FreshPreserving.com to learn more.
In honor of our dear departed friend and CAA founding member, Kim Ricketts, we would like to re-post an essay she wrote for this site last year. It reflects her her verve for life, as well as her sense of humor and fun. We miss her desperately and are so glad to have her spirit remain as part of the site.
Photo by grrlscout224/Flickr
Yet once I started thinking about it, I seemed to see full, colorful glowing jars everywhere: in the windows of cafes, on bakery shelves, in the pantries of friends, and decided it was time to learn. After a few group classes and demos I felt ready, and with 30 lbs of strawberries staring at me, I dove in! A few weeks ago, I spent both days making jam: one with pectin and one without, one batch with balsamic vinegar and black pepper, one with lemon zest only. Then I moved on to making strawberry vinegar and finally pickled strawberries. The jars piled up and the obsession was planted–the next weekend I tackled raspberry jam, raspberry syrup and raspberry-chipotle barbecue sauce. The pantry had to be rearranged to accommodate and anyone who visits my house is not allowed to leave without a jar in hand; but yet I keep plotting my next canning session.
This weekend: blueberry picking and all the deep blue jars I can fill. Then apricots before my canning world expands into pickles and relishes and then on to tomatoes and sauces.
If at times my kitchen resembles what my eye-rolling daughter calls “the Grey Gardens of Canning” well, so be it: the ritual of putting seasonal food by is one that comforts me and will feed my family and friends all year.
Raspberry Chipotle Barbecue Sauce, from The Berry Bible
This week, we have a photo from a new contributor, wabisabi2015, of apple pie filling. Those spiced apples look delicious — and reminded me to raid my pantry to enjoy what I put up last Fall!
Thank you for contributing to our community!
If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos.
Our featured photo for this week is by Melissa-Ann of her batch of strawberry, balsamic vinegar, and black pepper jam. Does that sound like an amazing idea for the strawberries appearing in the markets? If you’d like to follow her recipe, she blogs about it here.
Thank you for sharing and inspiring, Melissa!
If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos!
photo by Kimberly McKittrick
On a beautifully sunny afternoon last July, a group of us put up a bounty of cherries and apricots provided by the Washington State Fruit Commission, and Kim insisted that we put up a cherry chipotle barbecue sauce. It was a long day of cherry pitting, pot stirring, jar sterilizing and waiting for the sound of those lids to “ping,” the ultimate sign that our work had been done. We all went home with the fruits of our labor, but best of all, we preserved a moment in time at the stove, making delicious conversation and homespun food. Here’s to preserving the memories of a remarkable woman who’s left an imprint on our hearts, minds and canning jars.
