When the folks at Canning Across America said they wanted to feature the Can Jam on their site, of course I jumped on it. We are of the same ilk, my fellow preservationists and I, both on a crusade to bring back the art of the can. And we are not alone. It has been [...]
Posts under ‘Guest Essay’
Keeping Up the Family Traditions
My 80 year old grandmother, who was born and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, has been “putting-up” for as long as I can remember. I don’t ever recall a single summer where she wasn’t freezing green beans and bell peppers, canning tomatoes, or making jar after jar of strawberry jam. The summer I turned 13 [...]
Dispatch from Dallas: A Can-A-Rama Event
A group of twelve convened Saturday afternoon, August 29th, to undertake an ambitious canning adventure. The group was comprised mostly of Slow Food Dallas members–some had home canning experience, others none. All shared a love of good food. Three recipes had been chosen based on the recommendations of the group. We would make Peaches in Brandy, Watermelon Rind Pickles, [...]
Jammin’ With Kathy Casey
There is no better way in my mind to preserve the abundance of summer than by making homemade jams and preserves. It has always been the perfect way to make the summer fruits bring us joy all year long — whether on warm homemade bread smeared alongside crunchy peanut butter for a gooey PB+J sandwich, [...]
Canning Fall
The summer that I first discovered home preserving, no produce was safe. There was something so gratifying about containing brightly colored fruits and vegetables in clear glass jars that I wanted to preserve everything in sight. Apples from neglected trees all over the neighborhood were captured in jars of sauce. I didn’t wait for tomatoes [...]
Aunt Dana’s Austrian Apricot Jam
Come summer in the Wachau Valley, Austria’s Napa, the apricot trees are so draped with fruit that growers have to prop up their tree limbs with wooden crutches. Orchard after orchard in this eighteen-mile stretch of land along the Danube drips with clusters of apricots—making kitchens all around the region the headquarters for edible delights [...]
Yes, We Can, Freeze, Dry, Pickle, Salt. . .
Until fairly recently (certainly within the past couple of generations) families harvested crops in the fall and stored enough food to get them through until the next harvest. Today preserving is enjoying renewed popularity and extending the harvest is HIP! “Canvolution” has quickly entered the digital lexicon. For our grandparents and great-grandparents, a routine part [...]
Granddaddy and the Fig
“Where I grew up, grown men did not eat grilled figs with baby greens and artisanal goats’ milk cheese.” My maternal grandparents, Grace and Mitchell Walters, came from warm, happy-go-lucky Irish stock, and their house in Mississippi became my place of refuge, where I was treated to much love and affection, not to mention the [...]
Canning with Youth in Upstate New York
Editor’s note: A version of this post has also appeared on Noah Sheetz’s blog. “Everyone should know that these vegetables were Schenectady grown.” Schenectady Mayor Brian Stratton seemed more like a visiting foreign dignitary in his silk tie and linen dress pants than our mayor as he walked around the Roots and Wisdom garden with [...]
Plums From Heaven
We are looking up into the trees, from whence cometh our ripe plums, and our necks are aching. This is the day of our gleaning, and we are learning that picking free fruit has its rewards, both lascivious and beneficent, and its pains in the neck. The pains come first. We are a group of [...]
