My canning season has finally come to an end. The weekends we spent slaving in the kitchen over a hot stovetop in the ninety degree heat are over. My mother canned vegetables and fruits of all kinds when I was younger. Everyone in the family was required to help. We washed vegetables, cranked the handle on the food mill, pitted cherries, and ran bowls of peels and food waste out to the back ditch. I hated canning season. I never thought about how fresh and wonderful home canned foods were, because I very rarely ate a commercially canned vegetable growing up. When we wanted beans or corn or applesauce with dinner, one simply went downstairs to the pantry. I had my first taste of store-bought applesauce as an adult, and I couldn't believe how terrible it was. My family was lucky to be able to grow a large garden every year, and my mother bought bushels of apples from a local orchard for the applesauce.
Last year my mother-in-law passed her canning supplies on to me. I received two large water bath
canners that are decades old and some mason jars. I pulled out my copy of the
Ball Blue Book of Preserving that my parents gave each of us for Christmas one year. Chad and I made several varieties of pickles and canned tomatoes that we received from his uncle's garden. It was hard work, but the end result was worth it. Chad said they were the best pickles he has ever had, and the tomatoes were used in pastas and sauces. I gave away many jars of pickles as gifts.
Because my mother will not be doing a garden after this year, she gave me her pressure canner (Maitre's) and several dozen mason jars. Chad's uncle's garden did better than expected, and we received several trunk loads of zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and red noodle and green beans. I estimate that we had about forty pounds of zucchini alone. There was only so much two of us could consume fresh. Because we have very limited freezer space, canning made the most sense. The end result was about 125 pints of wonderful goodness. Some zucchini became bread and butter pickles, and some was grated and pressure cooked, to be used in baked goods later. Cucumbers became kosher dill and bread and butter pickles. The large tomatoes were canned in their own juices, and the cherry tomatoes in hot water. I pressure cooked the green beans and red noodle beans.
Chad eats the pickles on sandwiches and as snacks. We have heated up jars of beans to serve with mashed potatoes and chicken breasts (or in my case,
chik'n cutlets). The tomatoes are seasoned and cooked down into delicious pasta and pizza sauces. And the zucchini makes great
muffins and my new favorite, zucchini
fritters. Everything we have canned has amazing flavor. It is so much better than the store bought jars. The only things I had to purchase were some canning spices and lids, and a few bags of onions for the pickles. An unused bookshelf makes the perfect pantry. I'm looking forward to doing this for many summers to come.
