Editor’s Note: Good Morning! Thinking local grains today? Check out the Brambles Demo with True Grains Bakery at 11 a.m.
But, really, the big event of the week is tomorrow when Royston’s ASH Berry Farm hosts the final Farm Event of the 30-Day Challenge. It’s going to be hot. So, what better way to cool down that letting the kids run through the strawberry fields while the farm sprinklers are spraying. Meanwhile, adults can chat up Don and Louisa McClellan about their adventure in berry farming, do some exploring of their own and more.
Also, families are invited to bring their vegetable scraps (stuff you would compost, no meat) and feed the crew of pigs out there.
It all happens from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 3210 Royston Road. Prepare for mud, smiles and a seriously great time.
Today, Bevin takes us on a wild ride through her first time tackling canning.
The results, well, read on:
Canning is one method of preserving food that makes use of the bounty of a summer harvest. It is also environmentally sound. How much greener and local can you get than preserving food from your very own yard or community? Plus, the jars are reusable (minus the sealing lids).
People can for a variety of reasons – political, economical or simply the joy of flavour missing from mass-produced food.
I was simply curious.
From a distance canning appeared wholesome, educational and environmentally friendly.
Growing and then preserving fruits and veggies from my very own yard would be ridiculously local. Wow. The possibility of tasty, nutritious food from my garden all year long got me a little excited.
But what the heck did I know about canning?
Zip.
Zero.
Absolutely nothing.
Where does a girl turn? Usually it’s Google, but lucky for me I have some pretty knowledgeable friends.
My dear friend, M, has a Concord grape vine in her yard. This thing is fertile, yielding over 60lbs of grapes.
I *heart* grape jelly.
I really, really love it.
It’s the only toast topping for this girl. So, when I was asked to partake in a little grape jelly adventure I did not hesitate to holler an enthusiastic “yes”.
I was in.
This would surely take care of my canning curiosity, as well as my watering mouth.
Overall, this jelly making sounded fairly simple to me. I was fully aware that jam making, preserving, canning and the sort are hard work. But I had heard rumours from veteran canners that it was worth the work and often fun. And really, I was mostly showing up to fill some jars and enjoy a little grape Sangria while conversing with girlfriends!
I also wanted the skinny on canning. So, this totally naïve jelly maker didn’t think much of it. The call came, I hopped in the VW and was off to spend a rockin’ Saturday night making some jelly.
M wasn’t up for a high-sugar jelly, so after some research she came across an awesome Canadian product. Pomona’s Universal Pectin is a citrus-based pectin that uses calcium as an activator instead of sugar. Jams and jellies can be made with less, little or no sugar. Alternative sweeteners are honey, stevia, maple syrup and agave.
Thinking local (as she does), M grabbed a few jars of Big D’s Bees Honey from the Comox Valley Farmer’s Market. Yum.
There was an enormous amount of grapes, so it evolved into a test/experiment between jelly made from Certo Pectin pulled from the back of the cupboard and jelly made from the Pomona’s Pectin we picked-up at Thrifty’s.
I was already cheering for Pomona’s. Its batch called for one cup of honey versus the seven (yes, 7) cups of sugar the Certo batch wanted. I do not need that much sugar to sweeten myself up!
The grapes were retrieved from M’s neighbour’s freezer and processed.
Jars and instruments were sanitized.
Instructions were pulled out.
The neighbour was recruited.
Tasks were handed out.
Many questions were asked (by me).
Sangria was poured for two.
Things progressed smoothly. Our first batch of Pomona’s made it safely into jars, boiling water (minus one jar that lost its bottom as it entered water), and the cooling zone.
I rejoiced at the simplicity of the process and poured myself another Sangria. Cheers!
The Certo batch made its way to the stove. It was stirred and watched with great intent (by the non-drinker). Conversation was happening.
Then there were flames!
Yes, I said flames.
Flames erupted from nowhere in seconds flat. Jelly was boiling itself over the edges of the pot, down the lovely flat burner stove, into the oven door, onto the hardwood floor and onto the neighbour’s toes.
M grabbed a box of baking soda faster than Wonder Woman. I was busy lurching towards my camera to capture the moment. Not entirely helpful, I must admit, especially since M was too fast and I missed the shot!
The flames were doused. The pot of boiling jelly made it to the sink. The toes were not burnt. Phew.
The smoke was thick. The fire alarm yelled. The kiddos did not wake while two of us made great efforts to fan the alarm while grabbing our sides that cramped from laughter.
The stove was a mess. The floor was sticky with jelly juice. We got busy cleaning between all the laughter. Oh the laughter. It still lingers as I write this.
In the end, 1.5 hours after the flames, we finished the Certo batch and ended up with a decent haul of both types of local grape jelly.
Okay, so it was less than simple.
It was a whole bunch of work and there was a fire.
But we were a trio of novice canners doing our best and most certainly having fun. Plus, not a soul was hurt in the process.
I will definitely revisit the world of homemade jams and jellies. I just need to muster up some courage and pick my raspberries faster than the wee lad. Perhaps I will give the pressure canning method a go once I get the boiling water bath method down to a science.
There’s definitely more preserving of local goodness in my future.
In the meantime, we are shamelessly polishing off the two jars of Pomona’s jelly that I brought home. No other grape jelly will do.
Hmmmm, that definitely is what I would expect from canning in my kitchen. I constantly lament not paying attention to my mother. Apparently, she had some skillz:)
Anyway, I’d love to hear about some of the funny kitchen mishaps in your lives.
One random commenter gets some gorgeous soap, a hand-printed tea towel and some fun recipe cards.
Wendy Schebel won the most recent giveaway.
© B. Clempson.
Photos © M. Perkins & B. Clempson
Oh my goodness Bevin, hilarious! I wish I was a fly on the wall! I usually stick to raw freezer jam…..I think I’m missing out!
I remember my first foray into canning. I decided to try antipasto.. no fire in the kitchen though. I asked my mom for help (not quite sure why though, lets just say she’s no Martha Stewart!) I told her we had to boil the jars to preserve them with a tight seal and she said that was the old fashioned way and just boiling the sealing lids would suffice. Mothers always right… right??
Well lets just say that out of the 120 jars I made (Yes my eyes were bigger than my skill set!) The only stuff that got eaten was the last ladle full that was too small to can.
After the first call from the family saying that my gift of antipasto tasted funny I quickly opened a jar to taste. Well, I didn’t even need to taste, the smell alone was enough! I then had to furiously, and sheepishly I might add, call all of the people I had gifted to and warn them that I really did like them but don’t eat it!!
I have yet to muster up the courage to try again!
That is hilarious!! I have a mental block against canning. I have all of the pieces here to accomplish it, but I’m afraid of doing it wrong. I have 29 tomato plants though this year, so I guess that I’d better start learning! Great story!
Oh, my Grandmother would kill me for repeating this story….My Grandma is the BEST baker/cook/canner that ever lived. My family and I loved her strawberry jam, it was heavenly. One summer her and my Grandpa were visiting us and she brought a case of her strawberry jam. She used to seal it with parafin wax, the old fashioned way. We were tingling as she brought out a jar of jam onto the sunny deck for our breakfast of waffles. My dad removed the wax seal and underneath it was BLACK with dead sugar ants. Grandma was horrified and tried to take the jam away to throw it out. We just scraped off the ants and ate it anyway, no sense wasting the stuff. It was the best tasting strawberry jam we had ever had, the ants were onto something. From then on, “Grandma’s Ant Jam” was the holy grail of jams…and Grandma cringed every time we called it that.
My kitchen mishap is not related to canning – but it does deal with heat and pressure.
We lived overseas when I was a teenager, and we were very fortunate to have a cook who resided with us. Needless to say, I didn’t have much opportuntity to learn the fine art of cooking up to that point. I was lucky if I could boil water by the time I was first married. It was the first family Thanksgiving with in-laws included, and I had everything down pat with the bird and the veggies, etc. I decided that it would be great to have turkey gravy.Flour and turkey drippings right? Now how do I mix them (no blender at the time)? I got it…I have a plastic shaker…that will work. Guess I missed the day in Physics class where they explained heat and pressure and containment. Closed the container, and with my greatest shake shake shake movement – well you can guess the result. The family had a great dinner, sans gravy. I spent most of that day cleaning a very sticky gooey mess off cupboards, ceilings, floors and me. You can only begin to imagine the shrieks of laughter at the dinner table that night. From then on, I let my mother-in-law make the gravy.
I just started canning myself so your adventures in to the unknown canning world give me hope that I can keep at least some of my summer garden treasures into the winter. At least I know I’m not the only canning virgin out there. Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much for sharing your adventures…. I too am planning a neighbourhood canning event, this is inspiring me to just go for it…. I usually do, here’s one of my cooking adventure to proove it….
The first time I cooked a Turkey, it was for 33 people. My Mom always put the turkey in the oven & then we left the house & picked up a few groceries needed for the rest of the meal, so that’s what I did.
I was gone two hours, (with a turkey that big, it wasn’t going to be done quickly!) I had a friend come over to teach me how to stuff the bird & help me lift it into the oven. we put the 30 pounder on the lowest rack, covered it in tin foil & away we went…. not noticing that the foil ripped open in the back when it went in!
The fat dripped into the bottom of the stove, when I opened the oven door to check on the bird ~ much to my surprise ~ three foot flames shot out!
I quickly threw some baking soda on the flames & put the turkey into a wider cooking pan…. crying with laughter, the turkey was fine, the oven was a disaster, & when I called my friend, he said do you need to call the fire station? Which of course just brought on more waves of laughter.
The dinner was great, we had just enough, but it sure opened my eyes to how lucky we were that we came home.
Hats off to all the successful canners out there, we (hopefully) are about to join the club.
I have a couple of friends that love to tease me about how I caught the stove on fire boiling water once!
It wasn’t my fault, really! The husband had spilled some oil on the stove, and some of it had gotten down under the burner and he missed it when he was cleaning up the spill. My water boiled over into the burner tray which caused the heated oil to spatter up onto the burner and voila! flames all around my pot of boiling water.
Unfortunately, we had a houseful of friends over for turkey dinner and a whole slew of them witnessed it.
I believe I may have mentioned that the kitchen and I are not friends although I really do try, unfortunately it seem that we are destined to not get along. I have undercooked and/or overcooked just about everything under the sun. My kids will never forget the day that I proudly put the bowl of broccoli fresh from our garden on the table only to discover, several bites in, that it was full of little green worms – ugh!
For years, I was legendary for not being able to cook a bird – turkey, chicken, any feathered friend could not be cooked properly if I was in charge of the kitchen for that meal.
It was American Thanksgiving, I was newly pregnant with Mhari (and terrified of anything undercooked) and were helping a friend in San Francisco hold a big dinner party with all of our Canadian friends.
Steve had gotten a free turkey from Lucas Film and forgot to take it out of the freezer until the night before, and then only left it in the frige. So, when Ken and I got there at Noon, it was pretty frozen (and 25 pounds). We put it in the oven ASAP and figured that 6 hours would be enough to cook.
At 10 p.m. we were still hacking into the turkey to find in bloody and raw.
A friend had brought an awesome soft cheese plate, which saved the meal for everyone else. But, I was so terrified of eating soft cheese and raw turkey that I never ate anything.
It was hilarious.
Hmmm…. can’t recall any major mishaps in my kitchen (at least not anything as major as a fire!) But there has been the odd time my husband has come home to find me standing there with flour smears ALL OVER. Like, there were smears on my cheeks, flour handprints on my butt, the whole shebang. Note to self- always start the stand mixer on the lowest possible speed!
Scared for life by my mother’s adventures in Pressure Cooking. She never did master it.
My mum was a pretty basic cook.
My dad and uncle, who lived with us for a while, were both Cordon Bleu trained chefs, even though they didn’t work that directly with food. But old prejudices die hard and neither of them would make tea, let alone cook!
Cue just after my 8th birthday and mum needs to go into hospital for some fairly major surgery (I didn’t realise this at the time). First night without mum, Dad says “where’s dinner?”. Like I knew. I’d never even made a bed let alone been allowed to open the fridge door.
So – having seen my mother do one thing and one thing only – I threw chops and veg into an electric fry pan. Terrified. Chops were underdone. Veg were just strange.
And then there was the pumpkin. Not soft squash-type things, but a Queensland Blue. This pumpkin is hard as a rock – couldn’t possibly carve it. We normally roast it or boil it. For a fair while. I didn’t know that.
I didn’t have to cook for the next two weeks. My dad and uncle didn’t either – they got a housekeeper in. B&*%#y men!!!!
I feel I’ve come a long way in my reclamation of the kitchen as foreign territory but canning still scares the daylights out of me but I’m going to the lesson/session and I’m giving it a go. Listen for loud bangs and screams.
Thanks for sharing all these hilarious kitchen stories! I’ve had many kitchen mishaps myself in my trial and error process of becoming half descent in the kitchen… I too started out barely being able to boil water. My mom practically received daily calls for the first few years I lived on my own to find out “how” to make such and such…
I think one of my funniest moments was the first time I decided to make a very, very basic chocolate cake recipe called “Wacky Cake”. I had made it many times with my mom as a child. In fact, it was the recipe I had mastered on my own for my Baker’s badge in Brownies.
So when I called my mom for the Wacky Cake recipe, I was most concerned about jotting down the ingredients and baking temperature… as I remembered it, the rest was a BREEZE!
You see, the Wacky Cake’s “wackiness” was that it was made in the very baking dish you baked it in… (so no dishes!!) and according to my memory, all you needed to do was mix the dry ingredients (cocoa, sugar, flour) together in the bottom of the pan. Then you dig three wells in the dry ingredients and in each hole you put one of the 3 wet ingredients vinegar, vanilla, and oil. Then you pour a cup of lukewarm water over the whole thing. And if my memory served me correctly, that was it! We-e-lllll, not exactly!! Apparently, you need to MIX it!!!!
Anyhow, my Wacky Cake was a big lumpy uneven, unmixed, and untasty mess!!! Needless to say, my mom got a HELP call when that Wacky Cake came out of the oven!
I won’t share any kitchen mishaps (I’m sure there are enough to write a book, though) but just wanted to thank you for the head’s up on Pomona’s. I have two boys with Type 1 Diabetes and sugary jams and jellies are way too hard on their blood sugar to make it onto their toast more than once in a while. Being able to cut back that much means more yummy blackberry jelly for them and nothing could make me happier. Thanks!