Confessions Of A Foodie — Canning for dummies
By Tami A. Hart
Saturday, October 31, 2009 9:02 PM PDT
Every year, I swear I’m going to learn how to play golf but I never do. Every year, around the end of the summer, I also swear I’m going to learn how to do home canning but I never do — until this year.
This was the summer I joined the ranks of those home canners who can look with satisfaction and smugness at their pantry shelves stocked with jars filled with the summer’s freshest fruits and vegetables. I know that come January, when we’re in the middle of winter, I can pop open a jar of marinara sauce and taste once again the tomatoes from the garden. Actually, the tomatoes that I used for my sauce came from my friend and co-worker Barbara Johnson, who bestowed upon me a big plastic tub of red beauties, and it’s her I really have to thank for my foray into the world of canning.
I don’t know what it is about canning that’s always scared me so much in the past. Perhaps it’s the combination of boiling hot water and slippery glass jars and my inherent clumsiness that convinced me canning was probably not the best hobby for me. Or maybe it was the thought of food poisoning from improperly sealed jars that scared me away.
I never had a canning role model as a child, for my mother avoided canning like the plague. Given her bad luck with pressure cookers and the Sunday afternoon pot roast that ended up on the kitchen ceiling more than once, it was probably a wise decision.
Of course, everyone I know who does canning assured me it was really very simple, and, if they could do it, I could do it. Even the nice cashier at Kinney and Keele where I went to buy my canning jars said I’d be surprised at how easy it was.
I was surprised all right — surprised at how canning is definitely not a one-woman job. A little help would have been nice when it came time to peel and seed what seemed like 10 pounds of tomatoes and then chop mounds of onions, peppers and garlic. And a little reassurance would have been nice as I stood there intently watching my filled jars process in the water bath, convinced they were going to explode and end up all over my kitchen (much like my mother’s pot roast).
And I would have really liked to have someone there to tell me what a great job I did as I stood there and stared at four quarts of marinara sauce — my meager result from my exhausting afternoon.
Will I do some canning again next summer? I don’t know.
Maybe I’ll be too busy learning how to play golf.
When she’s not writing about food and wine or experimenting in the kitchen, Tami Hart is the catering and events sales manager for the Holiday Inn Ontario. She can be reached at tahart@cableone.net or in care of the Argus Observer, 1160 S.W. Fourth St., Ontario, OR 97914. The views and opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Argus Observer.
