Holy smokes! Literally!! Where I live it’s been over 100 degrees F for the past WEEK! Of COURSE some of the cukes had to decide this was the perfect time to ripen. Sigh. So Monday, in 102-104* I was canning bread & butter pickles. Only got 13 pints (did I mention it’s a small garden?), but that’s 13 more than I had before! I did it in stages and early in the morning so I didn’t overtax the one and only window ac unit we have for the entire house. Poor thing has been running pretty much nonstop. I think last night was the first night in a while it was actually turned off. Also the first night in 3 that we were able to sleep in our own bed instead of on an air mattress on the floor in the living room in front of ye olde ac unit. But I digress.
This was my second time of canning pickles, and it turned out just as good as the first time a couple of years ago. But since we were on our last jars, I had to plant more to can for the next year or so. The cukes are ripening in intervals, thank goodness, because if I’d’ve had to can them all on Monday, I’d’ve died from heat exhaustion. I think the ac unit would have as well.
All this canning and the talk of canning takes me back a few years. Wish it took my memory of canning back as well! I’ve been wanting to can tomatoes, but I just cannot recall how to do it. I remember Grandma put up the best tomato juice for years, until she started adding celery salt & seed to it. Then she’d get mad when I refused to drink it. “I don’t understand. Tomato juice is your favorite! You’ve always drank it. Now drink it!” But I’d complain that it tasted funny, and I didn’t like it. To this day I hate celery salt, and I don’t care WHAT you use it in! I can see no good reason for it to be used on food, or even for its very existence.
I remember going out to the tomato patch with Grandpa to check the ripeness. When we made these little trips, Grandpa always had a salt shaker in his back pocket. We’d walk through the patch, picking a tomato here and there and “testing the taste”. I don’t know how there was ever enough tomatoes to can, whatwith all the testing trips we made!
Then came the picking. Grandpa showed me how to start at the far end of the patch first to make fewer and shorter trips as the picking progressed. We had bushel basket after bushel basket of tomatoes! I was in heaven! Then came the canning.
Right about here is where I, the perfect tomboy, usually found something ELSE to do besides work in an extremely hot kitchen in the middle of an Ohio summer! I didn’t mind the work of picking the fruit; I carried a salt shaker in my OWN back pocket to enjoy the benefits. But canning? I couldn’t clear out of the farmhouse fast enough! Mom and Grandma sweated (none of that “glowing” for working farmwives!) in the canning steambath for a couple of days until all the tomatoes were processed. They made a game for us kids of listening for the top to pop and counting them to make sure all the jars had sealed.
Once popped and cooled, the jars were carried down to the dugout basement and set on deep shelves carved into the cool darkness of the ground, where they could stay for years…or until we came to visit and I drank them! Man! There is absolutely nothing on this earth better than home canned tomato juice straight from the cool cellar! And the canned tomatoes? Spectacular to bite into and to use in stews and such!
But now that I’m an adult? I wish I’d stayed in the kitchen. I wish I’d learned these things. But since I can’t go back, I must go forward. I’ve read up on canning tomatoes. I’ve even purchased the Ball Blue Book for home canning. Clear photos and illustrations of such quality that even I should be able to do it. Do I risk it, or plunk down $20 for a canning class with the college extension? I’ve been unemployed since April of 2008, so I really have to watch my pennies. Since I have this canning book, and I’ve been in on various stages of the canning (when I COULDN’T escape *lol*), I’m hoping some of the process has sunk in. That, and the fact that I asked my neighbor to let me help when SHE does her tomato canning (she also uses celery salt *ick!*) this year, will be exactly what I need, and I can save my money for more important things….like jars!
Good for you -- "putting up" the fruits of your garden! (That's what my folks in Nebraska call it.) I froze some corn earlier this summer, but it didn't come from my garden. Only tomatoes and basil in my garden right now, and it's difficult to get at the good stuff for all the weeds. My yard is definitely out of control!
ReplyDeleteI remember my grandparents growing and canning all sorts of things that we would enjoy throughout the year, but I never learned the skill either. My sister does it though. I have a case of jellies pickles and tomatoes that she canned last year and sent home with us in May.
i love canning tomatoes! i can salsa & the juice from it
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