Preserving the Harvest

I’ve been canning for quite a long while now. As many of you know from past emails, I was a city girl who took up canning for all the wrong reasons. I was a slightly jealous newlywed wife who was trying to prove to be as competent and able as my mother-in-law (who had taken the contents of a dead chest-type deep freezer and canned everything but a tier off my sister-in-law’s wedding cake). My husband’s lavish praise for his mother after that incident set off those standard competition hormones that women and men have equally.

These days it makes for lively talk at the Thanksgiving table, and my mother-in-law laughs as heartily as I do when recounting this story. I love her dearly, and feel very blessed to have her in my life.

However, at the time, I hadn’t come to know this remarkable woman all that well. I was stubborn to the point of stupidity. Here I was, trying to learn how to can to equally impress my husband, and I wouldn’t take advantage of the wealth of knowledge that lay before me… namely, all the experience and wisdom that my mother-in-law had.

No, I insisted on forging ahead on my own…without help from anyone! (Now if that doesn’t sound like stubborn stupidity, I don’t know what does!) Remember, this was back before Google, before Al Gore invented the Internet, and personal computers were just beginning to make their way into the market. Living in a small town, our library wasn’t exactly replete with books on canning or preserving the harvest, especially since these were skills not really “in style” at the time. In fact, if you did any of that you were pretty much labeled “weird” and “backwards.” After all, this was the modern era, and the grocery stores were full of whatever you needed to feed your family.

However, because it was a small community, and quite country at that, there were pockets of people who still canned foods, or froze their garden produce, and even still made pickles and other items by soaking the vegetables in lime to give the finished product that crispness everyone loved. Giving up on my independent “I can do it myself” stance, I set out to question everyone I could find on how to can foods … except my mother-in-law.

I won’t lie… I got a lot of conflicting advice. Some told me I could can green beans in a water bath canner by adding a little vinegar to the jars (no, you can’t…); some told me that it was too dangerous to try to can meat at all (no, it’s not…); many said just use saved jars from grocery store items to pressure can food (no, you don’t want to do that…); and others told me that pressure cookers exploded ALL the time, so I’d better have a gas burner outside to can stuff (no, they don’t…). Many people said everything had to be blanched in boiling water before being put into jars, and that those jars had to be sterilized no matter if you used a water bath canner or a pressure canner.

And because I’m big on the “why” of things, I asked plenty of “why?” questions… much to the frustration of my friends and acquaintances. Why a pressure canner? Why couldn’t I can meat? Did everything really have to be boiled before it went into a jar if it was brought to boiling by the process? How did I know the food I put up was safe for my family to eat? Why do the jars practically empty of liquid when I tried to can stuff? If I mix vegetables, how do I know how long to pressure can the jars? I was met with a lot of answers that boiled down to “Just because…” or “Don’t worry about it.”

In the end, I had to suck up my pride and my stubbornness and go to my mother-in-law for advice. And I’m really glad I did. A practical woman, she likes knowing the “why” of things too, and as a result, could give me answers that were rooted in sound principle and not conjecture. Her answers never once said, “Because that’s the way it’s always been done.” Not only did this incident give me additional insight into this woman who would become a second mother to me, it helped me learn that everyone has an opinion, but only those opinions rooted in fact should be carefully considered. Anything else just puts my family’s health at risk when it comes to preserving food.

That’s one reason I chose to include Carol Costenbader’s book, The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest in my off-grid paper library. This book is like having a “preserving your food” library, from A to Z, all in one place. From choosing ingredients, to canning, drying, and freezing basics, to recipes and an introduction to root cellaring, this book has it all.

For instance:

• How much of each vegetable does it take to make one quart of food? (Page 10 tells you!)
• Can you use artificial sweeteners or honey when canning? (Find out on page 15)
• What kind of canner adjustments do you have to make for higher altitudes? (Page 40)
• How long do you have to blanch different vegetables before freezing? (Page 121)
• What vegetables and fruits do well in a root cellar? (Page 303)

The answers to these questions and so much more are all contained in The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest.In addition, there are tons of recipes for your home-grown produce.

• Recipes you can make ahead and freeze
• Recipes for pickles, jams, jellies
• Recipes for vegetables
• Recipes for flavored or seasoned vinegars
• And lots of ideas for gifts!

This book is like having my mother-in-law sitting in my house whenever I need to ask her a question about canning. Also, I think it’s important to have a paper copy of any reference material in case we do face a world without the electrical grid for any length of time. I have made The Big Book of Preserving the Harvest a part of my library. Click here to make it a part of yours as well.