Party Like It’s 1939

The Great Canning Project of 2010 has concluded. 200 pounds of organic produce, 200 jars, 12 recipes, 2 exuberant women, and approximately four square feet of counter space...whew. I am exhausted. In case you’re wondering where I’ve been, the answer is a simple one…I’ve been at home, trying to extend and hold on to summer as long as humanly possible. The mornings here in Colorado are now nearly always freezing, though our project began when they were merely crisp. I had anticipated blogging as we went, but alas, I seem to have gotten lost amid the dozens upon dozens of jars, lids, and pounds of produce.

While I love the onset of fall, I find I’ve never quite ready to say good-bye to peaches, tomatoes, and all of the other lovely summer nibbles. It seems that the farmer’s markets had just gotten interesting and abundant when summer came to a close.

The GCP started, like so many things do, with a Facebook post. I believe it went like this: Me: So I want to order 200 pounds of produce to can, and there’s only one person I can think of who would possibly be interested in doing this with me…
Friend: Yes! Just let me know the details. Let’s chat more.
What followed were a series of preparation events: ordering the 200-pound “single” canning share from Grant Farms, a CSA that also offers canning shares, an afternoon planning (overambitiously) which recipes we would use, purchase of necessary equipment from the hardware store in the neighborhood (where I haggled with coupons vs. sale items and buying more jars than I’d ever purchased at once), and a practice run in which I canned a dozen jars of blueberry jam solo.

Whew. Even the preparation bit sounds tiring, looking back.

When I say that we planned overambitiously, I don’t mean I would do it differently. We selected 4-6 recipes per type of produce. We ordered (to be delivered in a TBA format) 20 pounds of peaches, 40 pounds of pears, 40 pounds of apples, and 100 pounds of tomatoes. We really, really like tomatoes.

For the planned recipes, I’ll give an example—from the 20 pounds of peaches we intended to make Peach Melba jam, peach salsa, peach BBQ sauce, and peach jam. Did I mention that my stove is one of those that would be best described as “dated” on those house-hunting shows? Two small burners and two big ones? Did I mention that every time I watch a house-hunting show, I am typically in awe of the kitchens and their mad canning capacities? An island, what I wouldn’t give for an island…but I digress. We must can in the kitchens we have, not the kitchens we wish we had.

The peaches arrived first, which was lovely. As I said, there were a mere 20 pounds of peaches to contend with. However, it took nearly an entire day (8:30 a.m. until about 4:00 p.m.) to work through them, and we only got to three of the recipes. There were a couple of bruised ones, and I’m not sure what happened to the rest, with our careful calculations we had done. We somehow came up about four pounds short. The pits? It remains a mystery. But the Peach Melba jam (a mixture of peaches and raspberries, inspired by the dessert), peach salsa, and peach BBQ sauce are all fantastic! In anticipation of the day, I had purchased a slab of pork ribs to barbecue. I put them on the grill with a rub of cumin, coriander, smoked paprika, salt and pepper, and put the peach BBQ sauce on at the very end. Perfection. Truly the epitome of summer.

I had scarcely licked the last of the BBQ sauce off my fingertips when the next Grant Farms e-mail arrived…pear delivery, three days away! Luckily, pears store a little better, so we gave ourselves a week off. And proceeded to split the pear canning process into two weekends. Peeling pears takes a long time. With the peaches, we had blanched them briefly and were able to peel them pretty quickly. Another side note about the peaches--we peeled them over a bowl, and then placed the peaches into another bowl. Left behind in the two bowls was a good amount of peach juice. I simmered some of it later on with a bit of cornstarch for thickening and just a hint of sugar and lemon juice, and it made a fabulous syrup to put over vanilla ice cream. I’m currently watching a snowstorm beginning to build, and the memory of that peach syrup makes me feel warm inside.

But I digress. With the pears, we wound up making pear-orange butter, autumn cranberry pear jam, and pear-port-thyme conserve. The last recipe is from the fantastic book Well- Preserved by Eugenia Bone; the rest of the recipes were from Ball’s canning book.

I found it interesting that Ball does not actually manufacture jars anymore. They stopped in 1996. Most of my canning jars still carry the Ball logo, but apparently Ball specializes in metal containers and aerospace technologies.

Where were we? Three weekends of canning down, three to go. The tomatoes came in two deliveries. We canned crushed tomatoes and Italian herbed tomatoes. My husband began saying that our kitchen looked like a war zone, and I suppose it did with tomato splatters all over the place. We needed a break (not my husband and I, but my friend and I—from the canning. I feel the need to clarify that). We decided to freeze the tomatoes. And then the apples sat in the fridge for a few weeks.

But now we are done. This weekend we finished off the apples by making and canning applesauce (apple butter and more applesauce was a few weeks ago). The remaining tomatoes were made into salsa and tomato butter (http://www.foodinjars.com/2010/08/august-can-jam-tomato-butter/) which I can’t wait to try on a pizza, with caramelized onions and goat cheese, as suggested. The tomato texture changed a little by freezing, but since they got pureed for the tomato butter and thickened in the salsa, texture wasn’t a big deal. Oh, and the final tomato-and-applesauce canning session took only four hours!

I managed to fit all the jars onto one shelf of my rather deep pantry. I have roughly 100 jars of differing sizes. I’m looking forward to spending winter weekend mornings eating pancakes and biscuits with all of my preserved summer toppings!

There is one sad note about the GCP, though. I gave my dad a jar of blueberry jam and a jar of the peach BBQ sauce for his birthday. Unfortunately, these were confiscated by the TSA, although they were clearly not liquids. I hope that the TSA agent in Albuquerque enjoyed my canned goods. Next time, I will just mail the gifts.