Canning and preserving...
For some people,
canning conjures up images of Great Aunt Matilda,
in a calico dress and apron,
sweating like a June bride
over a steaming pot of canning jars,
mountains of tomatoes
heaped impatiently on the sticky kitchen counter...
"Canned veggies are cheap at the SafeWay," some may say...
And I agree 99.9 percent of the time...
But sometimes, the thought of preserving fruits and vegetables
speaks of farmers markets, fresh goodness
and a little Laura Ingalls Wilder,
rolled up into one...
Did you read her books?
Remember how descriptively she wrote
how Ma cooked and put up all the foodstuffs
to load the cellar and pantry for the winter?
It fascinated me as a child...
I think I read the whole series about five times...
Kate and I are beginning the read the Laura series
at bedtime and I can't tell if
she gives a rat's butt yet about them or not...
Anyway, my next door neighbor,
best friend since 4th grade
and all around amazing wonderful person,
Chris, was jonesing to make strawberry jam...
She has a foodie sister and I think years ago
they made a whole slew of the jam
that was awesome...
For the past couple of years or so,
Chris will mention a "Jam a Thon"
around strawberry season...
We are enthusiastic
and then baseball practices
and camps get in the way...
So, we forget about making the jam
until the next spring...
This year, Chris was more persistent...
"C'mon, Benson, let's make jam this year!"
Any time I spend with Chris is a good time,
so we finally nailed down a date
to get to jammin'...
With such a short window of kid-less time,
we did not pick the berries at a farm...
Costco was our source...
Don't judge...
There are limits to our sustainable foraging...
Speaking of sustainable foraging,
Chris texted me the other day
to tell me she found morel mushrooms
for sale at the local farmers market...
I got excited until she said
they were one dollar APIECE!
Jeez...you need about 40
to make a decent appetizer at the very least...
Oh well....
Anyway, we "sourced" the berries, bought loads of sugar,
pectin and lemons, mason jars, canning tongs
and we assembled the equipment...
Making strawberry jam is very easy...
You just have to possess the right equipment
and must devote an entire day make it worth your while...
Together, we bought the canning jars...
I bought a canning funnel and canning tongs....
Without those two key utensils,
filling the jars and extracting them from the boiling water
would have been difficult...
We used the Pioneer Woman's recipe,
which you can find here and here...
As I mentioned, it took all day to make forty or so jars
of the most delicious jam
you have ever licked off your fingers...
Each batch takes about seven cups of sugar,
so how can it taste bad, right?
The best part of the endeavor
was the uninterrupted hours we had to chat,
laugh and to solve the world's problems...
It was a humdinger of a week...
The kind where rotten things kept happening
and the domino effect was getting me down...
To be honest,
I didn't really feel like making jam at all...
But friend therapy is the best kind sometimes
and by the end of the afternoon,
I felt a whole lot better...
Maybe it was the feeling of accomplishment,
having finally made that strawberry jam...
Or maybe it was hanging with my sister,
mashing berries, filling jars and talking it all out...
No comments:
Post a Comment