Canning

Yesterday I canned five jars of pickled beets. This delights me to no end, that I "put up" some fresh food. I gave one jar to my brother and opened a second one because I just wanted to taste them, had to taste them. But I still have three perfect ruby jars of canned beets sitting on the kitchen table for me to admire.

I have always wanted to learn how to can food, but the rules and warnings regarding safe canning methods intimidated me. Boiling and sterilizing and sealing and boiling again - it can all sound very risky when you realize an error could create an odorless and tasteless bacteria that is extremely deadly when ingested.

Rachel, a new, delightful, and once misjudged friend, arranged a day for her mother to walk me through each step involved in canning. We arrived at her mother's house around 10:30 am, and we didn't leave until 4 in the afternoon. Ella was well-behaved and respectful of the new and tempting things to open and touch and bang on. While the morning was spent in the kitchen canning beets, the afternoon was filled with splashing around an enormous jacuzzi tub full of bubbles and seashells. Ella was beside herself with the wonder of it all, and Rachel and I talked the whole time. Satisfying, meaty conversation. We had such a great day.

So yes, canning. I am no longer intimidated by canning, and learned that it's simply a matter of keeping things clean and ensuring a solid seal on the lid to prevent bacterial growth. It is a long, labor intensive process that requires much patience, but not as scary as I once thought.

My passion for canning, just now realized in this first tiny batch of pickled beets, is as much a matter of taking up my place in a long line of women through history, as much as it is a matter of feeding my family food that I canned myself, as an active participant in our food chain and local food economy. Canning methods are like oral histories, passed down from generation to generation, caretaker to caretaker, tweaked each round. As nostalgic as it may sound, now I have my place in this history, and in time will develop my own methods and tweaks before passing my secrets on to someone else. And how satisfying to eat food that is free of chemicals and high fructose corn syrup, that didn't travel a thousand miles in a truck to get to our table, that wasn't purchased at some ridiculously marked up price in some organic foods section of the market!

(And also, how ironic that I should leran canning from the mother of a girl I so completely misjudged.)

Now, to plan a garden that I will actually plant next year.