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Yes, You Can Can!

In a way, canning is an art and like most art, it requires timing...

You 'll be sterilizing, cleaning and cooking in the kitchen all at the same time, but the careful completion of each stage in the right order and in a timely manner is important to the safety and taste of the result.

If you're new to the very idea of canning, the safety issue is all-important. Botulism is very easy to grow in improperly preserved food, and it is deadly. Even if you catch a case of botulism early and treat it with an antitoxin, you're still looking at a hospital stay of several weeks to recover, so it's important to follow the sterilizing procedures very carefully. Here, at a mile up, we have processing issues since water boils at lower temperatures with an increase in altitude. Lower temperatures are less effective for killing potentially harmful bugs like botulism, so you must increase the processing time or canning method (like pressure canning rather than a water bath method or longer processing in the water bath) to compensate for lower boiling temperatures.

If, like me, you have memories of your grandmother or mother "putting up food" then you remember the heat, the steam, the sweat, the wonderful and pungent smells, the occasional burned finger, and the big sigh as you gazed upon a line of jewel-toned jars. We called it "putting food up" or "putting up food". It's also referred to as "putting food away". There are other terms as well, all rich in prepositions.

In rural Maine where I hail from, everybody had a garden and everybody's produce was a kind of currency. It was a complicated system of barter and it was all a function of a gracious society. If your neighbor's strawberries failed this year, it would be rude to bring over a basket of yours, even couched in the perennial excuse of "We can't eat 'em all". That would be rubbing her nose in her own barren strawberry patch. A Christmas morning delivery of your strawberry preserves was an entirely different matter. In this way, "putting up food" was an investment in future bartering material as well as a practical way to get through the long, snowy winters in the tastiest way possible.

Canning isn't pricey. You can grab the water bath kettle, the jars and the accessories at a big discount store for around 50 bucks, and then you've got your kit to use whenever you need it. Your investment in a pressure cooker for canning lower-acid foods will pay off, especially living at elevation as we do. Canning isn't just for heirloom tomatoes from your own backyard, either. You don't need a backyard. A sale on green beans or raspberries at the grocery store takes on new meaning when you visualize that "great deal" becoming shelves full of really cheap and welcome Christmas gifts or just a little extra feeling of security and achievement. You'll have something to show for an afternoon of canning and something to taste, to revel in, to share with loved ones. It's a cozy feeling to master an old survival skill that's so elemental and practical as well.

Canning is being revitalized as new canners learn the important techniques from the masters and use those techniques, along with fresh recipes, to create vast arrays of delicacies in jars. Below I've stacked a starter set of links to help you get your canning "Jones" on. Once you start browsing the recipes and reading through the procedures, you'll have an idea of what would work in your kitchen and with your money and time budgets.

The USDA has a comprehensive and accessible site: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html

Here is the Ball (jar brand) site (headquartered in Colorado), which has lots of information on canning: http://www.freshpreserving.com/

There are plenty of great canning blogs to browse. One of my favorites is Food In Jars: http://www.foodinjars.com/2010/07/canning-101-label-your-jars-promptly/

Another great canning blog is Tigress In A Jar, which is unpretentious and even humorous at times with lots of delicious pictures of the completed recipes, and those recipes are easy to follow: http://tigressinajam.blogspot.com/

If you're up for a trip to the library or a splurge at the bookstore, Ashley English wrote a canning manual that's beautiful enough to double as a coffee table book: http://www.amazon.com/Homemade-Living-Canning-Preserving-Chutneys/dp/1600594913/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282754142&sr=1-1

If you're hoping to find some lower sugar and salt canning recipes as well as one of the great manuals of the art of canning, check out the Ball Blue Book Guide To Preserving, which I grabbed at a big discount store for around ten bucks (it was right next to the half-quart jars).

This month's Hobby farm magazine features a nice canning article, with some killer recipes: http://www.hobbyfarms.com/hobby-farm-home-table-contents/hobby-farm-home-september-october-2010.aspx

Some people are expressing concern over the BPA content of conventional canning jar lids, although it's not a large amount present in the material. If you'd feel better about glass lids and you can afford the investment, or if you're looking for some very sexy jars, take a look at these: http://www.weckcanning.com/index.htm

For more information about almost everything, you can contact the CSU Extension and talk to master gardeners, canners and other experts for FREE: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/index.html