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canning

I love

canning.  I love following oh so closely the directions and the rules.  Just love it.  I'd forgotten how much i love it.  It's been a while.

 

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There is a mess.  As i type this,  i have heard that totally satisfying sound of   ……..   Tink…….the jars have sealed.  

OK.  5 sealed pint jars.  a 6th,  not quite enough…so it will go into the refrigerator  till tomorrow.  So much attention to detail.  So much timing.  5 pints.  The box i brought home actually would have been 15 pints at least but i waited too long and some started to "go".  Tonight i had to quit on the first go round because i didn't have enough ice to Blanch.  I love the blanching.  The heating and then

Plunging

into cold water.

Tap water this time of year is not so much cold,  not cold enough for a Plunge.  In order to keep it cold enough for just this much,  i put a container of frozen macaroni and cheese under the pot and then a frozen half chicken and what's left of a container of ice cream from the kids around the pot.  All the ice cubes.  Tomorrow…we'll see.  If i repeat the canning,  i'll get a bag of ice.   if i decide not to,  to just cook up a Vat of generic tomatoe sauce and FREEZE it….

but whatever way it goes.  it's Satisfying.  and gives me a good sense of what it might be like to harvest from the Garden all that would be needed for a whole year ahead.  I have the sense of that.  If i had no freezer.  If i had no store nearby.  To rely on this.  To NEED this.  

I like it, very much.

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15 responses to “canning”

  1. margaret johnson Avatar
    margaret johnson

    Beautiful Grace, I love preserving too, a good feeling hey. I made lots of pasta sauce this year and included zuccinni, silverbeet, carrots and herbs from the garden. Nice n chunky! This year I have been learning fermenting, fun!!
    Enjoy your beautiful tomatoes Grace, Marg ox

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  2. Niina Avatar
    Niina

    It looks beautiful, Grace! I have not canned in awhile, but now that I am retired I think that a return to tomato canning needs to happen!

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  3. Mo Crow Avatar
    Mo Crow

    you look after your pots so well… I would be embarrassed to show you the state mine are in… reknowned for burning pots I put things on the stove then go out into the garden where I soon forget there is something on the stove… eventually I remember to come back inside to more often than not a very burnt mess!

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  4. grace Avatar
    grace

    these are the stainless steel pots i got when i was making
    the Goat cheese…you need to be scrupulously meticulously
    OCD CLEAN and spotless in cheese making. I don’t use them
    for anything else really, even now, except for something
    like this.

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  5. grace Avatar
    grace

    OH, Hey!, HI Niiiiina! But you are making all your oh so so
    BEAUTY FULL
    ~cheese~
    but there’s just that thing about canning tomatoes that’s so
    satisfying…
    I wish i could make sauces more like margaret does above…
    talk about satisfying….
    Thank You! for coming by and leaving word…..

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  6. grace Avatar
    grace

    ahhhhhh, your sauce…..maybe that’ll be next. as in
    next year. i wish i could walk through your Garden
    with you!

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  7. jude Avatar
    jude

    I’m embarrassed to sy I never do this. Not sure why.

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  8. handstories Avatar
    handstories

    Love that thunky-pop when they seal. Canning always feels like an Accomplishment.

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  9. grace Avatar
    grace

    embarrassed…silly…you probably freeze things. It’s so much
    easier and i understand freezing to hold much more nutrients
    than canning.
    i got back to the canning when i was into Sharon Astyk, that
    was right before i got lost in Spirit Cloth. The depletion and
    abundance self sustaining thing, the how would i work it if
    i had basically N O T H I N G M U C H to work with just
    the most bare essentials
    but really, unless you do all the heating OutSide, there is
    still the propane for the stove….all that heating of water
    for sterilizing and then processing. Canning with a Rocket Stove.
    So it’s more of What If there was no store to go to? and now
    i think too about the no GMO, one step more than organic.
    and i’m guessing a a good “why” would be that it all comes
    on like an avalanche in
    AUGUST
    of all months, when for you it is already oppressively HOT and H U M I D
    the weather broke here and it’s been just great Fan weather…
    high 80’s and last night it was 59 degrees, so COOL morning
    i don’t know…maybe it’s just some ancient urge to Stock Up
    and Put By that makes me so happy with doing it….the satisfaction at now and then glancing at those jars…knowing
    i Can do it, that i know how. I like knowing how.
    and another why for you might be how you eat, what you eat..??
    I think you eat light and raw a lot…your vegetarian thing,
    so less an urge for sauces? I think that might play into it?
    I have no urge to make jams and jellys…am not much of one for
    sweet stuff…although i just am finishing a jar of the most
    INCREDIBLE
    choke cherry syrup that Lynda Merry sent me maybe 3 years ago?

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  10. grace Avatar
    grace

    the POP yes… >TINK<….yes! when you hear that you
    know that you probably won’t kill anyone with what’s in
    the jar….
    it feels like an accomplishment because it IS an Accomplishmet…
    all the mess is still sitting there from last night and i
    need to wash it all and
    begin again

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  11. Deb G Avatar
    Deb G

    Oh yes! I loaded the top shelf of my cupboard with everything I’ve canned this summer. It brings me so much joy to look at…abundance. I think I probably started canning a lot of different things about the time I was following Sharon’s blog/challenge too. I’ve continued because it is important to me to eat local as much as I can and the canning/freezing/drying is the best way to make it through a few of those months. Today I’m loading the dehydrator with tomatoes, corn, peppers, and plums. Hmmmm…maybe I should make corn relish instead. As for the heat…my mom and grandmother once canned jam on a camping stove on the deck of the boat. It was the first summer after we moved from Alaska and hadn’t found a house yet.

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  12. grace Avatar
    grace

    you come from good women.
    dehydrator…
    i actually can use the dashboard of the truck as a dehydrator…
    need to do that. There is a pear tree down the way at an
    empty house.

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  13. yvette Avatar
    yvette

    never done it for myself but after years and years assiting my grandmother it was enough
    she got a freezer e voila…
    those were the times

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  14. Wendy @ the Late Start Studio Avatar
    Wendy @ the Late Start Studio

    I get so much satisfaction from seeing a line of jars or containers readyy for the freezer especially if the produce is home-grown or gathered free somewhere . . . not that I do as much as I used to.
    And down here we call it bottling . . . and if something (or someone) is ‘a little bottler’ it means it’s really good.

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  15. dee Avatar
    dee

    never canned, but it’s funny how many people keep giving me their supplies because they think that i must can. no vegetable garden here in the shade for one thing. another thing – how hard details are for this brain. a reason I don’t do much dyeing either.
    but I’ll tell you what caught my eye (again) – that marvelous collage behind the stove!

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