About two years ago, I felt like the Lord told me I needed to learn to can. We have a friend (actually, the mother of the family with whom Don lived when single and who helped us tremendously through our courtship) who is an expert canner and I felt like I should call her and ask if she would teach me. I never did it.
When the economy turned south and the government began to deal with bail-out propositions, I realized that I should have done what the Holy Spirit prompted me to do. If I had, I'd be sitting pretty now with jars of canned goods on the shelf.
"It's not too late," I reminded myself. Good thing God gives us second chances. So I called Vicki and put in my request.
"I'd love to teach you," she said. "But you mostly can during the spring and summer months, when produce is plentiful."
In the meanwhile, I haven't sat idly by for the last two years. I HAVE learned to dry foods and have done a good bit of freezing. Actually, it was the freezing that led me into drying. Freezing berries and fresh tomatoes are wonderful ways to use up the plenty God provides, but the finished goods take up a lot of space in the freezer.
I've tried my hand at drying just about everything. I've made jerky, croutons, and sun-dried tomatoes, which I've mentioned before. But I've also tried my hand at drying berries (blackberries and strawberries do the best), pineapple, peaches, apples, oranges, peas, potatoes, carrots, green beans, celery, squash . . . just about any fresh produce can also be dried. I like the carrots. They dry real sweet. And the dried pineapple makes a wonderful snack. The dried oranges are really good, too - very tart and flavorful. My favorite part about drying is that the nicest flavors in the vegetables or fruit become much more intense.
So, I'm scheduled to begin learning to can sometime this summer. In the meantime, my mother was defrosting her freezer and pulled out bags and bags of frozen blueberries. My father showed up at my back door with them.
"Mama was going to throw these out. Would you like them?" he asked. I wasn't sure what I'd do with them but, like my father, I just couldn't bear the thought of them being thrown away.
I refrigerated them for several days. Then I poured off all the juice and made two batches of syrup - one for us with a little lemon juice for tartness, and a low-sugar syrup for my parents.
But what to do with the huge pile of remaining berries? I decided to make jam. Unfortunately, I haven't made jam since I was a young girl living in Belgium and I didn't remember the basics.
Several months ago, I had seen some boxes of Certo marked down on Clearance at Wal-Mart. I bought them, anticipating canning over the summer. Now seemed like the time to open them. I did, and found a long insert full of directions for jam and jelly-making.
Over the years, my Aunt Faye, who is a Master Canner, has sent home with me from visits to Canada tons of jars of jam and jelly from all the Northern berries. I've noticed that she uses just plain jars, not canning jars. Obviously, this can be done, but I had no idea how. I poured over my cookbooks, which gave detailed instructions on canning, but only with using canning jars. That was right about the time my Aunt Faye arrived for the wedding. I told her that I wanted to make jam and asked her if she could help me one evening. She was in the middle of making Hot Cross Buns for Easter but said she'd try and come back over later and help. I went ahead and got started.
As I was cooking down the berries and squeezing out the juice, Calvin walked through the kitchen and asked what I was doing. I explained that his mother always used plain jars and I wanted to learn to do that, too.
"It's real easy," he said. "The key is that your liquid has to be very hot and your jars have to be real hot. Then, as the liquid cools, it creates a vacuum and seals your jars. Would you like some help?"
I was ecstatic. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. I scooted over at the stove and he worked with the jars, showing me how to pop them in boiling water for a few minutes, then turning them upside down on a drying rack to drain. We made 3 jars of blueberry jam - a small one for my parents and two larger ones for us. One of the two for us didn't seal.
"No problem," Calvin said. "That just means that you refrigerate that jar and eat it first."
The next day, I was telling Auntie about it. She explained that if she has jars that don't seal, sometimes she'll reheat the liquid from just that jar and attempt to re-seal it. Usually it works the second time around.
"I had forgotten Calvin knew how to can," she told me. "You know, now that I think about it, Calvin is a much better canner than me. He used to can chicken. He'd buy them by the cases and can them. They're the most difficult of anything to can, because it's so easy to mess them up and poison yourself."
I had gotten help from the expert after all.
Shortly after they left, I tried strawberry jelly. I was wanting to try my hand at not being quite so careful to follow a recipe, so I put way more strawberries in the kettle than I should have. Every jar sealed nicely, but they didn't gel - not enough Certo for the amount of strawberries I had.
I left them out on the counter. They were safe, just not very good. This morning, I uncapped my jars, dumped the ungelled strawberry jam into a large saucepan, and started the process all over again. I have five jars sitting on the cooling rack and I can't wait to see if they seal and gel. I can take up to 24 hours to know for sure.
It's exciting to see the work of your hands in jars in front of you and know that you're providing for your family for the future. I have a feeling my children are going to get very spoiled with fresh jams and jellies and not want store-bought ones anymore. We haven't even cracked open a jar from the store in weeks. The children request my blueberry jam when they need something sweet for their toast.
I feel like I'm beginning to get the hang of this. I'm certain there's much more I can learn from Vicki, but I also put up stewed squash this morning and both jars of it sealed nicely.
So much produce, so little time. And so few empty jars on hand!
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