Harvest!

My harvest season has begun! I'm trying to get as much done as possible before I leave for vacation next week...

This weekend, I canned about seven pints of corn relish (on the left in the picture below) and about 19 half-pints of tomatillo salsa (on the right). For some reason, my tomatillo salsa is more brown than green this year. I wonder if it's because I used purple onions? These recipes are from the PDF SALSA RECIPES FOR CANNING by Val Hillers and Richard Dougherty. I used all locally grown produce that I got at our farmer's markets. The tomatillos came from my own garden...

I bought a meal kit from a farmer's market vendor that included the following purple heirloom tomatoes (sorry, I cannot remember the entire name), swiss chard (left), and several types of summer squash (not pictured). I sauteed these vegetables into a delicious sauce that we put on a pizza crust with other pizza fixings and then put it on the grill. It was delicious.

In the background you can see tomatoes, which came from my garden. I'm gearing up this week to can a tomato-peach relish. This tomato-peach relish is from the Preserving Peaches document located at the Clemson University Home & Garden Information Center.

Before the season is done, I hope to can more salsa (tomatillo and regular tomato), plus some seasoned tomato sauce.

We have had an extremely humid and wet summer...and I'm looking forward to fall...wearing sweatshirts and jeans, watching football, making delicious soups from my frozen/canned tomatoes, and enjoying my jellies and salsas.

Canning Continued

My canning curiosity began with the Better Homes and Gardens Home Canning Cook Book. My sister got it for me at a thrift sale or a library book sale--I can't remember which--cast out among all the ancient, abandoned books that nobody wants anymore. Although I fancied it a treasure, I didn't look at it for years. But I kept it anyway. Sometimes you're given all the tools you need for something, before you even know you need them.

Yes, the sticker on the cover says $2.49! Copyright 1973. I envision this book being used by a quiet, passive, perfectionist, born-to-please housewive like Betty Draper from the early seasons of MadMen. But who cares if the book is older than I am?! After all, how much could have changed about canning in the last 36 years or so? In this age of quick, fast, and easy, I don't really see canning as an evolving discipline or a fashionable, high-in-demand hobby.

Or is it more popular than I thought? It sure does fit with our current interest in sustainability. BHG gave me some basic recipes and enough information to start (I began with the spaghetti sauce I pictured in a previous post), like acidity levels of foods, when to use a hot water bath versus a pressure cooker, how to sterilize jars, etc. Then I decided to try salsa. A quick Google search for "salsa canning recipes" returned numerous resources on canning, among them this guide to preserving various salsas.

But it was Barbara Kingsolver who especially inspired me. Ever since I read Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I wanted to do the three sauces in one canning project:relish, sauce, and chutney, all in one day, by adding a series of different ingredients into a stock pot and canning and three different points in the process. (All the AVM recipes are online at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/ )

Then I noticed that Kingsolver credited Janet Chadwick for the recipe, from Chadwick's book The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food. So I ordered Chadwick's book too! Chadwick's book includes recipes, tips, and how-to's, for various types of food preservation (not just canning). In addition, she provides detailed information about different kinds of kitchen gadgets that may be helpful in your food preservation adventures.

So for the last few days I have been planning for the three-in-one canning project. And trying to carve nonexistent time out of my day to do it. Yesterday I bought 30+ pounds of tomatoes from a local farm. I researched where I can buy fresh peaches (straight from Michigan, it turns out), and will purchase them tomorrow...even though I will have to sneak away from work to do it.

I've practiced blanching peaches and tomatoes, and removing their skins. Last night I prepped the fresh peaches I already had, purchased from a Sunday afternoon farmer's market in Central Wisconsin. Tonight I will make at least four quarts of tomato puree. Then I will be almost completely prepped to attack my canning project tomorrow night after work.

It has been a long time since I've been excited enough to plan how much I could get done after work. For the longest time, I got through the day by counting how many hours until I could go home and sleep on the couch (especially in Winter). I have found something that energizes me, excites me. Sort of like blogging. Every day I try to learn something new about blogging. For example, how to include pictures of book covers in this blog post (without having to physically locate the image on the web, save it and upload it to your blog). On that note, which book cover image format do you like better--the plain image or the image that includes the purchase info from Amazon? Obviously I'm not trying to sell anything, but I like to share where I found things.
I don't know if finding things I like to do has re-energized me, or if I was getting re-energized enough on my own to be open to finding these things, or maybe a combination of both, but I have found tremendous peace and healing in such simple things as canning foods.