This slideshow generated with Smilebox CAA Contributor Shannon Kelly is a trend illustrator, cultural anthropologist, brand strategist, gastronomic devotee and social media enthusiast. She founded In Your Head consultancy to transform her knowledge of marketing, innovation and merchandising into strategies for retail, food & lifestyle industries. Shannon blogs about the intersection of food and fashion [...]
Posts under ‘Guest Essay’
My Small Batch Life
I’m just back from a week’s vacation. I have a nearly completed book weighing heavily on the brain, freelance deadlines loom, and what do I do? Buy more summer fruit, of course. (The verdict is still out on whether this is a form of masochism or sideways stress relief.) I began canning last year around [...]
Riding the Preservation Train
I arrived on the food preservation reservation on a very slow train and my first stop was strawberry jam sealed with paraffin wax. There’s an irrepressible memory of my 2-year-old daughter feasting on berries she picked by herself, entirely covered in red juice, and then the next morning, seeing my first jars of homemade jam [...]
The Evolution of My Canvolution
I have not begun canning yet this year–it feels early yet to me. In my experience, you typically purchase a bushel of tomatoes on the second hottest day of the year and then can them up on the hottest day of the year. The same goes for peaches–anything that needs a really long time processing [...]
Serious Pie Restaurant Joins the Canvolution
A year ago Tony Catini, sous chef at Serious Pie, had such a bounty of gorgeous fresh produce from the Prosser farm of restaurateur and chef Tom Douglas and his wife, Jackie that he couldn’t possibly use all of it! Since waste is not an option in our kitchens, Tony had the fabulous brainstorm of preserving [...]
What Should I Make With Cherries or Apricots?
My fellow canners, I recently came into a bounty of several pounds of cherries and apricots. For one of my first ideas, I’m hoping to try my hand at homemade maraschino cherries. I’m also tempted by the Apricot Red Current Jam in my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Even then, I’ll have several pounds [...]
Each One Teach One
I’ve been canning a little while now, perhaps you have too. Over the past few years, putting up food has made its way into the fabric of my life and my year. There’s citrus in the winter, strawberries in June, leading to a wealth of summer fruit ripe for the picking and preserving. Perhaps you [...]
Grey Gardens of Canning: Or, How I Covered My House With Canned Items
I came to canning late in life, spurred on by friends who seemed to be making pickles, jams and other yummy things every time I stopped into their kitchens. With my vegetable garden and a summer hobby of berry picking each weekend, I certainly had plenty of beautiful things to can. But, like most people, [...]
Savoring Summer With Strawberries
A fresh strawberry is one of life’s great delights. Icons of summer, these luscious red jewels of nature inspire our senses with their perfumed and sweet flavor. Canning lets us capture the bounty of this delicate and perishable fruit so we can enjoy it all year long. Strawberry jam, for example, is a staple of [...]
Canning Across America: A Stellar Approach to Putting Up Food
When many people think of astrology, they associate it with the daily snippets they read in the newspaper or the monthly horoscopes to be found in the back pages of fashion magazines, Yet, in addition to personalized insights, astrology can offer ways to frame what is happening on a cultural and collective basis. For instance, [...]
