I wanted more than butter on my toast this morning, and
asked little Miss Mental Inventory of Everything if we still had that jar of
jelly. Yes, we had it, but it might be too old, as she opened the refrigerator
door and extracted the jar of jam.
“Stop! Don’t do that! Give it to me! Sugar is a
preservative! It’s probably good forever!” I said, straight down my sixty extra
years’ experience. Some day one of her three page trig or chemistry equations will
make that crystal clear to her, I’m sure. In the meantime…
Mom “indulged” herself with white sugar. She may not have
known her forebears preserved in honey. Then there was salt. Nothing in our
house was preserved in salt, except sauerkraut, but salt was the preservative
that carried the population east to west.
Preserving the summer’s bounty was the fall objective of my
family. My dad’s homily that we had to decipher was, “We eat what we can and
what we can’t, we can.” Commas are
important, and before we knew of the comma in that statement, we were stumped
little folks.
Did you have Depression Era parents, who had the fall
routine of food preservation? Although we did almost no food preservation at
the old house, mom had hundreds of quart Mason jars stored on shelves under the
back deck. An auctioneer sold them all when we moved. Apparently the art
endures.
My M-I-L canned... cherries, tomato/chili etc.Lots and lots of jams sealed with wax. My Mother... not so much. Se was not brought up in that way of life. But she did make grape jam. Later on ..when she was in her 50's she started freezing her garden extras. By fall both freezers were full both with veggies and with meat.
ReplyDeleteWhen she and my step-father moved to Nova Scotia, Canada she added wine making to her repertoire! I remember gallon jugs of all sorts of liquids topped with balloons lined up on the back porch!
canning is so ambitious, and the threat of botulism beans seems enticing...sometimes. I love hearing the lids ping when they have sealed. but, you are right about sugar, I only can fruit now, but really , so easily bought at the corner market, local organic jam, No point in getting out all of the gear for DIY!
ReplyDeleteYes, I had Depression Era parents and yes, my Mom used to do canning in the fall. She made a lot of crabapple jelly as well, and pickles. My gawd, what a lot of work it was.
ReplyDeleteI remember my Mom and Gran slaving over a hot wood stove on a hot day to preserve fruits and makes jams and jellies and pickles....the treasure trove of filled jars in the cellar....those were the days.
ReplyDeleteJust finished four batches of pickles. Mom taught me well!
ReplyDeleteI try to can strawberry jam, peaches, and tomatoes every year. It helps to have a canning friend and make it a marathon day. This year, my friend and I didn’t do our normal big batches because we had health issues. There’s always next year! I also do small batch jellies, much more amenable for a household of two.
ReplyDeleteMy mum used to make a lot of jam as we had blackcurrants and red currants in our garden. But Jenny and I have never made jam, we're lazy gits who get our jam from the supermarket.
ReplyDeleteI ate enormous quantities of sugar as a child, and it did me no harm at all. I only had my first filling in my late teens.
In answer to the question, yes. My sister Cora made the best strawberry freezer jam in the world, and no, that's not canning. My mother's sole interest in canning was that there was something to open with a can opener for whatever 'dinner' she'd plan.
ReplyDeleteCary and I ventured in canning in maybe 73 or so, when I'd caught a large salmon, maybe 50 pounds, that was just off 'prime', when the skin was silver bright. This fish had been the river longer, and the silver was turning a darker shade. Fish would sill have suited most restaurant's chefs, but we lived on the Rogue River, and knew our fish. Anyway, it was horrible. Cary kept two cats at the time, who both turned their noses from it.
I now am occasionally pickling stuff, different vegs. Not serious about it, it all tends to taste the same.
Hope you're well.
Mike
Home-made jam is just so much nicer than even the best shop bought ones but the main reason for making your own has to be how good it makes the house smell.
ReplyDeleteI canned garden produce forever and even still canned pickles and peppers from my raised beds this summer. I have hundreds of jars and canners at the farm still though I am done with large scale stuff. The grandmothers and greats on my husband's side still canned until they left. It is hard work, but anyone can do it. Good thing I don't have cherry and apple trees.
ReplyDeleteMy Oklahoma grandmother canned everything, I've canned dill pickle and made jam--but stopping, too much work. My husband would scrape the grey stuff off and eat. Not me I have a fussy tummy and I err on the side of caution.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember ever canning growing up. There was no garden and only what was needed came home from the grocery store. later as a young adult I remember canning or preparing for freezing peaches maybe and tomatoes with my mother and sister. that lasted as a group activity maybe one or two years. I don't can now, only freeze. canning, imo, cooks the food too long and destroys too many of it's nutrients. I tried dehydrating but found it unsatisfying.
ReplyDeletemy grandmother made pickles every year. I might try that and canning okra if I ever get any planted again.
DeleteMy mother did some preserves, jam, jelly and pickles, but I'm not sure where she learned, as her mother was not around most of her life. My father also made jelly. Now we don't eat enough of the stuff to make it worthwhile; besides, canning in the heat? My idea of He**, I'm afraid. I admire those who do it, and I buy from those who do and whose work I trust :D
ReplyDeleteWe grew up with preserved fruits. And jams. And chutney. And eating what was in season.
ReplyDeleteI have slipped. I make chutneys, but don't preserve fruits or make jams. I try and eat what is in season though.
We canned in the summer, made preserves in summer and fall, and ate the entire winter. Good memories, except for canning tomatoes. That was grueling. Peaches made me itch for days afterward.
ReplyDeletehari om
ReplyDeletejam still made by my family - brother realy good at it... now. news is i broke my left wrist tonight and typing one handed not my thing, so commewnts will be curtailed, you know that is! YAM xx
Oh no, Yam. No more, please. Nobody, ever. The end.
DeleteOh Yam - so sorry to hear that. Take care of yourself!
DeleteOuch. I'm thankful I only get aches, I've never broken a single bone.
DeleteMy mother was a baby during the Depression era but she was a farmer's daughter. We always had a garden. We didn't always have fruit trees but we bought bushels of fruit. Canning and making jelly and pickles was a tradition. Mom made the best fruit butters you ever had.
ReplyDeleteMemories of jars of home made jam, marmalade, and pickled onions, the house would smell fruity and sweet or so astringent that it completely cleared your tubes out. I dabble, but my daughter loves to make pickles and jam, I like to think that is a little of her Grandma coming out in her.
ReplyDeleteYes - my parents scraped the mould from the tops of old jam, and I would too if a jar lasted long enough to moulder with me in charge of it. My parents suffered war time frugality and to waste good food was a very dire sin. There was still rationing when I was a young child, and although I wasn't aware of it, the notion of waste still shames me. I hate throwing out food.
ReplyDeleteMy parents were the same way about "spoiled" food. I think my body produced so many antibodies to food bacteria that I don't even catch a common cold any more.
DeleteWe scraped mold off anything. Pickles grew mold, and we didn't think a thing about eating them.
DeleteMrs Beaton has a section on how to clean a mouldy goose. She called it 'taint'. I have actually used the technique one Christmas day, when it was too late to get another goose.
DeleteAFAIK most expiration dates can be taken with a grain of salt ... or sugar, even. 😀
ReplyDeleteI remember my mum making dozens of jars of apricot jam, with the glass marbles bouncing around in the pot as the fruit cooked, they kept the jam from sticking, and then into the jars, into the boiler and finally cooling on the table, rows and rows of golden orange jam. Then it was the tomatoes, red ones were made into sauce, green ones were made into pickles. There were other things too, but those are the ones I remember most. I remember too, washing all those glass marbles, then boiling them and packing them away for the next year's crop.
ReplyDeleteI did can my summer tomatoes for years but always had quite a few jars left when it was time to can again. Now I just give away any excess veggies I have.
ReplyDeleteThe only canning I've done is pickles, but I've dabbled in drying fruits, veggies, and meat as well as sauerkraut making.
ReplyDeleteI didn't can that guy.
ReplyDeleteYes, mother had a giant pressure cooker, and she preserved the fruits of the back 40, as she called them. We had five acres, and she planted one of everything. The grapes and peaches did well, nothing else liked the adobe. We had grape jam, grape jelly, and preserved spiced peaches. Roses too. I drove by the house a couple of years ago, and mother's rose garden was still there but much smaller.
I had Depression-era grandparents. The concept of not wasting food was passed down to my parents and, in turn, to me. Left-overs were always to be eaten the next night, and the next...
ReplyDeleteThe dreaded phrase "Make Do and Mend"...leaves you yearning for new things...
ReplyDeleteI've been brought up(mainly by grandmother) to pickle,preserve,dry and now I've added freeze...but I prefer something that sits there not using power!
Make it do, use it up, wear it out. Been my life, too. Never married a rich man. :-)
DeleteJams and pickles were my mother's side of the family. Hams and bacon my father's. I do both - even with unfamiliar tropical fruits - and I add cured fish to the mix.
ReplyDeleteIf there is a glut, if it is being sold for next to nothing, it will be preserved.
We can't eat the half of it but friends can use it.
Dear Joanne, I have two good woman friends who have huge gardens - with a lot of fruits in them. Both, the one in Berlin, and the one in Hildesheim, are cooking in August/September huge masses of everything. I love that, but wonder, what they do with it - both are living on their own.
ReplyDeleteI did it in the time our son was small (but my garden had not so many fruits) - so that he could see where jam and marmalade originally come from - and because I liked the smell.
My mother used to bake all of our bread, but I don't remember her ever canning. She was a child of the Depression and I guess it must have been handed down through the genes, because I can everything. Not only will I scrape off the grey fuzz, but I feel that mold makes cheese expensive, so how bad can it be?
ReplyDeleteMy daughter told me off for feeding two-year-old Marmite to her daughter But I am of the opinion that marmite is indestructible. And the grey mould on jam just provides an extra layer of insulation for the rest.
ReplyDeleteMy mother had a storage room in the basement packed with jars and jars of various types of food.
ReplyDeleteYes, I cold pack can tomatoes in the Hungarian way, even though it's no longer recommended...My grandmother preserved a lot but not my Mom.
ReplyDeleteDear Joanne, I do remember canning. We had a small kitchen and no running water. All water had to be pumped from the well about a 100 feet from the back door. Then, of course, came the prepping of all the vegetables Mom canned and the fruit.
ReplyDeleteWe had an apple orchard, pear orchard, and cherry orchard along with a large blackberry patch. And Mom's garden was immense. We had an outhouse, but when my granddad built the house,he left a room for a bathroom when city water would be available. (That happened when I was in the convent some twenty years later. So Mom stored all the canned veggies and fruits in that room on shelves that went from floor to ceiling. She got us through the winter --the months when Dad wasn't working construction and so there was little money available to spend at a grocery store.
Thanks for bringing back these memories. I can still see the perspiration on Mom's forehead as she did all this. Peace.
I was brought up on a dreadful diet that eventually saw me admitted to hospital in an almost starved state. I vividly remember my mother being given lessons on nutrition by a nurse. It didn't make much difference. If it hadn't been for school dinners, I don't know what would have happened.
ReplyDeleteMy mom did such little canning that I just never really got the love for it! But, yes, jelly never does anything but crystallize when it is too old.
ReplyDelete