Canning

Being that it's the middle of February in Winnipeg, it's not exactly ideal canning season. Canning, preserving, and fermenting foods has fascinated me for a while now. For the last couple of years I've thought that I would like to try my hand at canning and jamming but once again, since I was living at home I never took it anywhere.

Home canned foods will forever and always remind me of my grandma. When I was growing up my grandma lived close by in a cute little bungalow (with carpet in the kitchen and bathroom...ew) with a giant backyard. Like a typical Ukrainian-Canadian woman who grew up on a farm, my grandma always maintained a giant garden which she paid me and my older brother to help her keep it going. I don't remember where she kept her glass jars full of carefully canned food, but I always remember there being cans of different sorts of foods sitting around. I can even remember the writing on the labels. I think she would write the name and date on a small piece of paper and then put multiple layers of tape over top.

My dad and grandma...must be early-mid 60's.

Unfortunately my grandma moved out of her house over 10 years ago now, when I was barely a teenager. Back then I wasn't too concerned with asking her about her amazing cooking, and her huge garden, and all the skills she grew up learning. On August 1st, 2006 my grandma passed away and I always wish I could have shared some of that with her.

I would be lying if I said my interest in canning, jamming, and preserving wasn't partly a tribute to my wonderful grandma but it also seems like a natural progression in my ever-growing whole food, sustainable living life. My parents have some experience with canning but either than dill and mustard pickles, no one I know does it on an ongoing basis with different veggies, fruits, and jams.

One of the downsides to being so young when my grandma moved out of her house is that I was never able to go through all the neat things she had stored away in her house. Her basement was full of bowling trophies (one of which sits in our living room now), paintings and pictures from many years past, and a lot of nooks and crannies where interesting little treasures were stored - like a giant popsicle stick house. The picture above was actually taken in the same basement. She had a "laundry chute" (a hole with a door in her bedroom closet) and I remembering lying down on the floor with my head through the whole and I found a bunch of my grandpa's old tools hidden on top of a vent.

But I digress. The point is, I don't have any canning equipment. I don't even have a pot big enough right now. I don't have a candy thermometer, I don't have a jar rack, I've got nothing. But I do have a library card! Since it isn't ideal canning season anyway, I'm taking this opportunity to bone up on anything canning related so that when I begin, hopefully this summer, I'll have a vague idea of what I'm doing.

In the meantime, if you have any websites, info, or tips to share please do so in the comments! So far I've been religiously following Tigress in a Jam, Tigress in a Pickle, and Canning Across America.