Canning Queen

It's the end of summer and I know because the house is filled with steam, fruit flies abound and produce is coming out my ears.  I can't find all the lids to my canning jars and if I don't see another apple for the rest of my life, I wouldn't mind.  That is until winter hits and my body craves fruit.  Or veggies.  Or anything green.  When the winter wind howls and chills my body to the core, I want to hibernate after a big bowl of stew or some warm apple crisp.  I want a steaming bowl of oatmeal with warm peaches and a bloody mary with pickled spicy dilly beans like the ones they make at Brennan's in NOLA.  Fortunately for Duane and me, we can make this happen since none of these meals depends on fresh produce and the items we've canned, frozen or dried lend themselves well to these kinds of dishes.

We began canning after I took a canning class a little over a year ago and once I realized how simple it was I all but refused to buy anything from a store.  It might sound cuckoo to someone who doesn't know me, but if I am able, I do.  Since we made the decision to move away from chain grocery stores and began seeking out local produce options, canning made sense.  We started eating seasonally and this is after all, what folks did when they lived off the land.  They put up the harvest by canning, drying, pickling, and curing.  I know it would be easy to just go to the store and buy a can of corn, but since we started all this mess, neither of us wants to go back.  Sure we spend a lot of time for about six weeks at the end of summer preserving the bounty, but we spend the rest of the year enjoying it.  And I can tell you, very few things in life (outside of the joy my family gives me) have given me the kind of satisfaction I have gotten from planting a seed, watching it grow, harvesting it, eating it in season and finally preserving it to last through the winter.

Researching heirloom seeds and watching them grow, lamenting when a crop dies from something unexpected, tasting the summer sunshine bottled up in a perfect peach, being able to taste the grass in the milk of a cow that grazes a few miles away--all of it gives a deeper meaning and appreciation to eating, which is something most take for granted because they do it multiple times per day.  Not us.  Sure I can go to the store and buy a bottle of barbecue sauce and put it on a chicken.  But how was that chicken treated during its life?  What kind of preservatives are in that sauce?  How much sugar is in it?  Are the chickens pumped with hormones, vaccines and antibiotics and if so, how will that affect my tiny little toddler as she grows?  How will it affect me as I begin my 14th round of fertility treatments?  I don't know.  But I do know that I don't have to find answers when I just make things myself.  It makes us eat seasonally as well and the food tastes so much better.  No more January strawberries that are tart and white.  No more mealy tomatoes and peaches.  No more cardboard corn on the cob.

Yes, it's a lot of work.  No, it doesn't really save us money in the long run.  Yes, we would do it again and again because we know where our food comes from, we support local farmers, and we reject the food policies in this country.  But honestly, we do it because it just tastes good, it makes us happy and it's something we can do as a family that gives us purpose and keeps us from taking for granted just how hard it is to get that food on our dinner plate.  It makes us realize three times per day just how blessed we are to have this incredible food to nourish not only our bodies, but our soul.

So far this year, we've done quite a bit to put up the harvest.  Most of it we get from a local farm since we just bought this farm in June.  But we hope to be fully self sufficient within a few years or at least have enough to feed our family and sell or barter the rest.  For example, we don't eat applesauce, but I usually substitute half the oil in a baking recipe with applesauce.  I shred the zucchini and yellow squash and freeze it in four cup portions and make a double batch of mini muffins using the squash mixture and applesauce and freeze them in a gallon freezer bag for breakfast on the go.  We also save all the peels and vegetable scraps in a gallon freezer bag until it's full and we add bones to it as we get them from roasts.  When we have enough we make a big pot of stock and reduce it and pressure can it.

We've canned:
Peach butter
Applesauce (low sugar)
Salsa
Tomatoes
Drunken Peaches
Carrot Cake Jam
Raspberry Jam
Blueberry Jam
Apple Pie Filling
Peach Barbecue Sauce
Corn
Meat stock
Chow Chow
Pickles from yellow squash and cucumbers
Pickles peppers
Dilly beans
Salsa Verde
Apple butter
Nectarine sour cherry chutney
Sauerkraut
Peach pie filling
Plum barbecue sauce
Blackberry jam

To be canned this summer:
Asian plum sauce
Spiced plum jam
more tomatoes
Green beans
Ketchup
Barbecue sauce
Apple cider vinegar

Frozen:
peaches
blueberries
basil pesto
sugar snap peas
Hatch green chile
zucchini and yellow squash shredded
corn
green beans
roasted sweet peppers
shelling peas
cherries




Dried:
apricots
tomatoes (these are awesome to reconstitute and put on pizza)
hot peppers (these are good for crockpot chile)
pears
apples
herbs like dill
We also plan on making some fruit leathers
beans

We also made apple cider vinegar from apple peeling and raspberry vinegar from the rest of the raspberries.