My best friend from grammar school, Cae, has agreed to let me watch, maybe even participate, as she cans tomatoes. I’m so excited to see the process from start to finish. I was not blessed with any relatives who lived near me who enjoyed domestic kitchen arts, hence, no elder from whom to learn them. Luckily Cae is as fearless in the kitchen as she is with her knitting. I’ll be back later with pictures–I plan to document the process so I may more easily replicate it on my own.
What’s your kitchen art status? Do you can? Freeze? Preserve? Tell me how you learned it. Or blog your story and link to it in the comments. I’m ever so curious about how we learn such things.
Great topic! I can make pickles – dilly beans, pickled jalapenos, cucumbers – the traditional way with briney hot vinegar, spices, and a boiling water bath. I learned from my brother, who probably learned from one of our grandmothers (I didn’t know either, but they were both serious kitchen goddesses). We also roast our garden tomatoes and freeze them, as well as making pesto from our garden basil and freezing that in ice cube containers, then putting the frozen cubes in ziplocs until needed. Nothing too exciting, but satisfying even so.
I can, and I learned from the internet! It’s super easy 🙂
my Nonni & PopPop canned for years, and taught my mother to do the same. When the Mister & i got married, we wanted to can tomatoes to use for making home made tomato sauce as favors. his dad grew us all of the tomatoes, and my mom, dad, the Mister and i canned them. in the end we all got a little greedy, and decided that guests would like monogrammed m&ms and a heart shaped coffee scoop. i’ll post pics to the blog tonight, as well as a little sage advice from an old italian grandmother on what not to do the night before canning…
Hee. I grew up with parents who grew vegetables with the intent of canning each year. They also both worked full-time, so the pressure to can when the veggies were at their peak was stressful. In other words, canning in August represents sheer hell to me–stressed out parents, either arguing or not speaking, lots of anger and tension. Oddly, I’ve never taken it up. 🙂
I often make pickles, do loads of pesto and put up jars of the peppers, onion and carrot relish served at Mexican resurants. Our new favorite is 30 minute cheese. Our first kit came from here: http://www.cheesemaking.com My 17 year old son has been turning out so much cheese, we are all gaining weight at a rapid pace.