canning and preserving

Canning Memories Giveaway

During our last giveaway, many of you shared memories of canning with grandparents and how that experience motivates you to pass on the joy of preservation to your families. In honor of those experiences we have hand-selected great products that will help make your next canning adventure one that the whole family can enjoy.

One winner will receive an assortment of products to share with guests at your next canning party including: three Ball Blue Book® Guide to Preserving valued at $5.99; three Ball® RealFruit™ Classic Flex Batch Pectin valued at $4.99; and six “Save $5.00 On One Package, Any Size or Style of Kerr® or Ball® Jars with Lids and Bands for Preserving” coupons.

VISIT OUR GIVEAWAY PAGE TO ENTER

Deadline is today, July 31, 2011 at 11:59 pm PDT.

This giveaway is made possible by the generosity of Jarden Home Brands, makers of Ball ® Branded Fresh Preserving Products.

Can-It-Forward Day Demo Schedule

Jul 29th, 2011

by Shannon.

4 comments

In our third season of spreading the love for “putting up” food, Canning Across America is cooking up its most exciting endeavor to date. Mark your calendars for the weekend of August 13-14, when Canning Across America will be preserving up a storm at Seattle’s Pike Place Market.

As part of the first-ever National Can-It-Forward Day, Canning Across America members will teach the basics of water bath canning and some of the most popular summer canning recipes. The day-long event is free and open to the public and will include several how-to canning demos that will be streaming live on FreshPreserving.com 8:00 AM – 4:00 PM PST. Viewers will be able to ask questions and post comments in real time.

SATURDAY, AUGUST 13, 2011 SCHEDULE

8:00 a.m.

Mixed Berry Jam Canning Demonstration featuring Ball^® RealFruit™ Classic Pectin by Jeanne Sauvage, Canning Across America, Gluten-free baker & author

9:00 a.m.

Cooking Demonstration by Kelsey Angell of The Pink Door Restaurant featuring Mixed Berry Jam

10:00 a.m.

Canning Demonstration of Kosher Pickles featuring Dill Sandwich Slices recipe from Fresh Preserving.com made by Judith Dern, Allrecipes.com and cookbook author

11:00 a.m.

Cooking Demonstration by Diane LaVonne of Diane’s Market Kitchen featuring Dill Sandwich Slices

Noon

Canned Tomatoes Packed in Own Juice Demonstration featuring the Ball^® Salt for Pickling and Preserving by Brook Hurst Stephens, Blogger, Learntopreserve.com

1:00 p.m.

Cooking Demonstration by Philippe Thomelin of Olivar Restaurant featuring Canned Tomatoes Packed in Own Juice

2:00 p.m.

Mixed Berry Jam Canning Demonstration featuring Ball^® RealFruit™ Classic Pectin by Jeanne Sauvage, Canning Across America, Gluten-free baker & author

3:00 p.m.

Pepper Jelly Canning Demonstration featuring Ball^® RealFruit™ Low or No-Sugar Pectin by Shannon and Jason Jason Mullett-Bowlsby, Urban gardeners, canners, DIY masters & authors

SUNDAY, AUGUST 14, 2011 SCHEDULE

The preserving celebration continues Sunday, August 14, with more free and open-to-the-public demos from Seattle’s most seasoned canners. It also marks the kick-off to Canning Across America’s third Can-a-Rama, a week of home canning parties and seasonal preserving nationwide.

Noon

Apricot-Raspberry Jam Demonstration by Rebecca Staffel, of Deluxe Foods, a Seattle artisanal preserves company

2:00 p.m.

Pickle Jalapeno Chile Peppers by renowned pickle expert Lucy Norris

If you do not live in Seattle area, we encourage you to host a party in your in your neighborhood and watch Can-It-Forward Day Web TV on August 13th! Sign up for Can-It-Forward Day here.

Plums

Jul 27th, 2011

by Jeanne.

1 comment

: Photo by basecadet from the CAA Flickr pool

Hello Canvolutionaries and Food Eaters! I love plums. And since it’s summer, and you’re likely human, chances are that you really, really like plums, too.

A few years ago a friend invited me over to his house to help myself to his abundant plum crop. Not only did we fill our baskets (and our stomachs, and the bottoms of our shoes) with as many plums as we could hold, but I had the awesome challenge to get creative with what to do with all of the fruit. Some plums went into smoothies, and some became jam. Some got bottled in a complete nest of sugar, pushed to the back of the pantry, and intentionally forgotten about–eventually, I am hoping this will turn into plum brandy of some kind. Last Christmas, some of this extremely macerated fruit found its way into fruitcake along with some equally-macerated kumquats.

But, my most favorite thing to happen to the majority of Tom’s plums was this plum catsup. I like it so much I included the recipe in my new book, Can It, Bottle It Smoke It. This is always in our fridge–seriously–because my entire family really digs it, particularly on baked French fries, a roasted pork loin, or even as a stir fry sauce for vegetables and tofu mixed with a little Chinese cooking wine and white pepper. This can be hot water bath canned, but if you have the fridge space it will live in there for ages very happily. Eat this warm or cold or anywhere in-between.

I like my catsup more tangy than sweet, but if your plums are kinda tart, or if you’re craving it as sweet as the bottled tomato stuff, by all means up the sugar to your liking. Now is the time to crank out a serious batch of this stuff–you may find that it disappears quickly. Oh, and while it’s not by any means necessary, you get bonus extra cool points for including your own homemade marmalade.

PLUM CATSUP

CAA Contributor Karen Solomon is the author of Can It, Bottle It, Smoke It and Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It (Ten Speed Press), and the host of the Jam It Salon at 18 Reasons. She has been a well-published food writer for over a decade. Her edible musings on the restaurant scene, sustainable food programs, culinary trends, food history, and recipe development have appeared in Fine Cooking, Prevention, Yoga Journal, Organic Style, the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Zagat Survey: San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants, and elsewhere, all of which showcase the diversity of her word-wrangling plate.

CAA Photo of the Week: Homegrown Dilly Beans by The Boastful Baker

Jul 21st, 2011

by Rachel.

No comments yet

This week’s featured photo of the week is another by one of our top contributors, Melissa — known on Flickr as The Boastful Baker. Would you like to learn about the recipe for these dilly beans and hear more of her thoughts on canning? We recommend you check out her blog post titled Intro to Canning for more.

Thank you again for contributing, Melissa!

If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos.

Raspberry Jam from England to Texas

Jul 19th, 2011

by Jeanne.

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I visited the UK for the third time when I was fourteen (and actually old enough to remember) and fell in love with nearly everything. We went to Stonehenge and Windsor Castle and Buckhingham Palace. We saw a bunch of rubbly castles in Scotland. I saw fantastic museums and gorgeous landscapes, but one of the most special things for me was having a real afternoon tea at the National Gallery. Feeling very British, we ate clotted cream on scones with proper English tea. It was there that I discovered the best thing about a real afternoon tea: the perfect raspberry jam that sat before me, chilled slightly, with a tiny spoon to spread it on my scone. It tasted exactly like ripe raspberries in the middle of summer–sweet with barely a hint of tartness. The ingredients list showed equal parts raspberries and sugar, a far cry from any jam I’d had before in Texas, laden with preservatives and sweeteners. Enchanted, I bought a jar and it was empty before we reached home.

Now, two years later, I was flipping through our ancient copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (for reasons now forgotten) and among instructions on how to prepare a thirteen course meal with no servants and how to cook various dishes I had no intention of eating, I found a recipe for raspberry jam. It looked simple enough, and had the golden 50:50 ratio of raspberries and sugar that the original jam did. I had experience canning from summers spent at my grandmother’s house making preserves and butters with the fruit from the trees in her backyard. When she called and asked if I wanted to help her make strawberry jam one weekend, I told her all about the raspberry jam recipe and we decided to make both.

To make a long story short, the strawberry jam I helped with was not the culinary masterpiece we hoped for. It also had blueberries, raspberries and some chopped apples but it didn’t cook quite right, and halfway through it bubbled over and all over the stove. The next day while I slept in, my grandmother made it correctly, and it is delicious. But the raspberry jam is heaven. It tastes exactly like the jam I had at tea in the National Gallery in London, and more, because I know I made it all by myself. The recipe originally called for ¼ pint currant juice for flavor, and we bought some black cherry juice concentrate but I decided not to use it, to preserve the pure raspberry flavor. It also gave measurements in weight, e.g., one pound of raspberries to one pound of sugar, but we used volume and it tastes lovely.

This jam is wonderful warm over ice cream, on toast, or on scones eaten with afternoon tea.

RASPBERRY JAM from Mrs. Beeton

CAA Contributor Elizabeth Bowie is 16 years old and a rising junior at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy of Austin, where she is a staff writer for The Liberator, national award-winning high school newspaper. She is a HUGE Harry Potter fan, and lover of all things literary, glittery and artsy. She blogs at Cupcake Snob.

CAA Photo of the Week: Strawberry Sauce by homesprout

Jul 14th, 2011

by Rachel.

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This week’s featured photo is Strawberry Sauce by homesprout. We love these jewel tones!

Thank you for sharing your images with us, homesprout.

If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos.

CAA Photo of the Week: All Jarred Up by Gypsy Forest

Jul 7th, 2011

by Rachel.

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Our photo of the week from the Flickr Pool is All Jarred Up by Gypsy Forest. You can read more about her tomato prepping process here.

Thank you, Gypsy Forest, for sharing your stories and pictures with us.

If you’d like to participate, please join our community’s Flickr pool and submit your photos.

Jim Jam

Jul 5th, 2011

by Jeanne.

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Learning the preserving process can come from anywhere. In my case my sensei came in the form of my friend’s husband.

I met Jim and Laura in California in the 1990s. They had sons the same ages as ours at the same school. As luck would have it, we all relocated to the Seattle area at the same time.

That relocation gave Jim and Laura the opportunity to build a house on a plot with growing room. They planted fruit trees, installed a terraced vegetable garden, and added rows of raspberries.

All this planning and propagating fascinated me. And it spurred me to try to find out how Jim gained his knowledge. It was then that he shared a little back story about himself–how he embraced the back-to-the-land movement in the 1960s, lived on a self sustaining farm in Idaho, and ended up working at National Geographic magazine.

Jim brought out his saved copies of the magazine along with a worn ledger book. Looking at the photos of my friend on the pages of the magazine was an amazing experience–I especially loved the photo of him with a collarbone-length beard holding a lamb. But the ledger book proved to be a richer compendium. Within those ledger pages was an accounting of every jar of jam, beans, and creamed corn Jim had ever processed down to the date, batch and recipe.

He invited me to become part of his ledger.

So, that year we picked Jim’s raspberries along with the ever-present blackberries on an unused corner of his property. We washed, mixed, cooked, sterilized and finally filled the jars. Jim talked me through the process, a hands-on lesson on jam making. Along with that came encouragement to follow the process, for safety’s sake, but take chances with creativity. Thus the ledger, use it to track what you have done and what the results were. Reduce the sugar [a bit], add ginger to apricots, include brandy preserving are creative ways to craft your special one-of-a-kind originals.

I took home half our output. As birthdays and Christmas rolled around I gave jars away. The only indication of contents was a dot sticker with the date and batch number–which correlated to Jim’s ledger. When asked what it was, I honestly could not remember if my gift was raspberry or raspberry/blackberry, so all I could say was “Jim Jam.”

CAA Contributor Mina Williams has written and edited articles for food and fashion trade magazines for twenty years. With her industry insider perspective, she brings a new insight to culinary topics and gives food enthusiasts a peek into the inner workings of restaurants and food retailers. A native of Shoreline, Williams has worked for publications based in New York, San Francisco and Chicago reporting on restaurants and retailers. Returning home to the Northwest she now freelances, based in Shoreline. Her passion is rooted in the farm to table movement, practicing her own skills in her home garden. The Slow Food movement has changed her outlook on food and food policy, as have her frequent exchanges with growers and producers in the
United States and Italy. She is a journalism graduate of the University of Washington.

Strawberry Jam in Juneuary

Jul 5th, 2011

by Jeanne.

5 comments

photo by Mr. Erickson from the CAA Flickr pool

“Want to can something before I leave on vacation?” Kim asked.

“Sure, what’s available for canning? Anything?” I replied.

This was in the first couple of weeks of June and it was still cold and and rainy here in Seattle. The past few years, June in Seattle had been so cold that folks had taken to calling it “Juneuary.” This year, folks were calling it “Junetober.” Our group usually likes to can things that we get from a farmer’s market but early in June, the pickings were slim.

“Asparagus?” I asked. I had not pickled asparagus and was intersted in trying it.

“No, I’m kind of hankering to do a jam,” Kim replied.

We chatted for awhile about where we could find good, fairly local, maybe organic strawberries. My neighborhood farmer’s market was the next day and there were rumors that strawberries would finally make an appearance. We agreed to chat the next day after I checked for strawberries. As it turned out, strawberries were there! In fact, many booths had strawberries, but they were all somewhat unripe-looking. I decided to go ahead and get some. I decided to try berries from a new-to-me farm, Hayton Farms from Mt. Vernon. They are an organic berry farm and had just started growing ‘transitional to organic” strawberries.

The variety of strawberry offered by Hayton Farms is the Albion strawberry. Here in Seattle, we have many strawberry connoisseurs. I have observed many heated conversations between strawberry lovers who insist that X or Y variety is The Best. Personally, I just like strawberries that are nicely sweet and juicy. Many varieties can be said to have those two characteristics when ripe, so I’m usually happy with what I get. That said, the Albion has a great reputation and, as it turns out, it does not disappoint. I brought the strawberries home and tasted a few. The were tasty but extremely tart. Not quite ripe. This meant that they would have much more pectin than fully ripe strawberries (underripe fruit has the most pectin), which would make them gel faster but, they would require more sugar to taste appropriately sweet for jam. The farmer’s market was on a Wednesday. I put the berries on my kitchen counter, hoping they would ripen some more before canning day. Luckily for us by Friday the berries had ripened to perfect-for-jam sweetness.

We met at Kim’s house on the beach (really, what is better than canning at a beach house?). We have canned together so many times that we comfortable with each other and there is a nice rhythm to our canning time. We chose a new-to-us recipe from the Goddess of Bakedom, Sarabeth Levine–the owner of Sarabeth’s Kitchen in New York City and the author of Sarabeth’s Bakery. Sarabeth is not only a baker, she is a canner and makes and sells jams at her restaurant.

Since we only had a few pints of strawberries, we decided to halve the recipe. But, we kept the same amount of lemon juice called for in the original recipe. As it turned out, this made a dynamite jam! Sweet enough, but not too sweet, with a lovely tartness that adds brightness to the flavor. We were able to get 5 half pints out of our half flat of strawberries.

Kim left on vacation soon after we made our jam, so I’m guessing she hasn’t opened her jars yet. I haven’t either, but I am dying to. Somehow, it feels like I should wait a few months at least, until strawberries are out of season, don’t you think? What? No? Hm. Maybe we will have strawberry jam on our toast tomorrow morning…

CAA Founding Member Jeanne Sauvage has been canning for twenty years, even though she can’t believe she is of an age to be able to say things like that. She blogs at Art of Gluten-Free Baking and her first book, Gluten-Free Holiday Baking, is due out from Chronicle Books in Fall 2012.

canning and preserving

Canning Memories Giveaway

Can-It-Forward Day Demo Schedule

Plums

CAA Photo of the Week: Homegrown Dilly Beans by The Boastful Baker

Raspberry Jam from England to Texas

CAA Photo of the Week: Strawberry Sauce by homesprout

CAA Photo of the Week: All Jarred Up by Gypsy Forest

Jim Jam

Strawberry Jam in Juneuary

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