I’ve canned before, but never as seriously as this summer. So far I’ve made apricot, strawberry, and sour cherry jams, tomato and red pepper-apricot chutneys, and blueberry-orange and apricot-orange marmalades. I love having those jars stored up like treasure for winter.

My Ball Blue Book has gone missing so if you pick me for your drawing I promise to put it to good use. Thanks for posting all the links!

I’ve just started learning about preserving and canning this year. So far, I’ve made a couple of jams, pickles and relishes. I thought they came out pretty good! I felt particularly rewarded when my parents came to visit and they couldn’t get enough of them.

Next on my list of things to teach myself is pressure canning and complex preserving.

Pickled beets are a treasure I seek out at every new farmer’s market I visit- I love them!

Home canned grape juice is the best. A neighbor taught me how. Last year we took a bunch of freebie apples from my friend’s grandma’s trees and canned applesauce for the first time. My kids loved it and prefer it to the store bought (even the good, organic stuff)

this is my first summer canning. i’ve only done jams so far but next on the list are some dilly beans from the recipe marisa posted on Food in Jars.

Both my grandmothers canned. I would sit and watch everything they did as a child and then attempt to do it myself in my mom’s kitchen. My mom wasn’t a canner but she allowed me free use as soon as I was old enough to try. Now, I can vegetables, fruit, pie filling, and meat. I have done pressure canning, water bath canning and steam bath canning; Steam bath being my most favorite. The dish that most can’t believe is a canned product...is my deer meat. Just open a jar and serve with homemade noodles and one would think you just fixed an excellent beef roast. I’m delighted to see so many new kids on the block as far as new canners. :)

I myself had never canned until this spring, when I took the Oregon State University extension office’s master food preserver course. Pickling is my favorite (and easiest) way to put up the summer harvest. My mom canned tomatoes and peaches when I was young but stopped in the early 1980s before I was old enough to learn. Check out my recent article on a Willamette Valley woman who is turning wasted fruit into jams and jellies for local food banks.

Hi! I just took a canning class on Monday night, I’m excited to give it a try on my own. I grew up with the cupboards at my grandparent’s house always being full of tomatoes, pickles, relish and more - and the freezer was always full of freshly frozen berries. I don’t have any berry bushes near me, but I hope to replicate their cupboards by starting to do my own canning. And I’m looking forward to keeping my winter eating local by canning too (hope it works!). Thanks.

Last summer when I was in Upstate NY, I bought a jar of spicy pickled carrots from a little store and fell in love with them. Only problem was I couldn’t find them again! So I surfed around the net for recipes until I found a few and experimented. When I discovered how easy and delicious these recipes were, I experimented and found I could also add red onions to make a great versatile topper-use the onions for tacos etc and the carrots on their own or on top of sandwiches.

I’m just at the beginning of experimenting with pickling, canning, and jam making so while I’m sure I’ll keep exploring on my own, the Ball Blue Book would quite a boon to my adventures.

I’m on the verge of being obsessed with canning. I’m in the middle of a 4-class series on canning, offered through the Washington State University extension program. I’m learning so much and can’t wait to put my new skills into practice and share with my friends. Next week is pickling!!

There is no self-respecting gardener who hasn’t canned. None of us, as gardeners have the discipline to grow only what we can eat day to day, and most of us haven’t enough friends, let alone acquaintances to be rid of all our production. Besides, home canned food is more than likely better than commercial stuff - the primary reason being that you start with ripe materials.

You wanted a story: when I was acting at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, we found ourselves in Harry and David country. Although our little farm had very few mature trees on it, we did have access to cherries, peaches, and other fruits just for the picking. We also had a house in which the builder had installed a well insulated room intended to be a walk-in freezer. There was no compressor but there were floor to ceiling shelves set so there was just space enough for quart jars 3 deep. I’ll let you do the calculation: 7’ high, 8’ deep and 6’ wide. Our youthful exuberance and plentiful crops led us to fill every foot of shelves with canned goods. When I left the Festival for NYC, much of what we trucked East was in quart mason jars. I think we finished the last jar of cherries 8 or 9 years later. Probably no nutritional value left but they still tasted like Ashland.

A caution for those new to canning: until you get the hang of it, stick to acid fruits and vegetables. After 40 years I still don’t can meats and generally freeze non-acid vegetables.

And as a last gesture, a recipe that may qualify as canning. Take a sound head of cabbage and shave it into kraut - as thin and uniform as you can. I suggest you refer to a copy of JOY old enough to still have canning instructions in it. In addition to salting the cabbage, to each layer add several bay leaves and two or three crushed garlic cloves. Ferment and can as instructed. However, don’t taste it until after you’ve processed the last jar. To do so cuts down on the amount that makes it to the pantry, it’s that good.

ry

I impatiently wait all year long until July for fresh Colorado peaches. Ohhh how I yearn for them all winter long! To ease my yearning, I’ve canned peaches and preserved peach butter for as long as I have been a mom (my oldest is 30.)

Peaches are the only fruit or vegetable I have been compelled to can except for tomatoes. Since moving to Cheyenne, Wyoming four years ago, my tomato growing habits have changed. The summer is too short and too cool to grow tomatoes so now canned tomatoes are tops on my Christmas request list.

One of the joys of a big vegetable garden is canning my own produce. Every year there are the old standbys- tomato sauce, strawberry jam, bread & butter pickles- and some newbies. This year I’ve tried gooseberry chutney for the first time. So good I’m tempted to eat it straight out of the jar!

My wife made a whole pile of canned tomatoes last summer - whole and crushed - that kept us going all winter!

My stepfather makes jam for all his friends. Many of them donate fruit from their trees and he gives them back several jars of jam. My favorite flavors of his come from when he doesn’t quite have enough fruit for a full batch of a single fruit type so he throws in a little something else. Strawberry peach and blueberry mango are two of my favorites. Recent love - red plum. On my next visit I’m demanding a lesson!

It’s been several years since my grandmother passed away and my aunts and mother and I spent several weekends together cleaning out her home of 50 years. I remember walking into her huge walk-in pantry and asking my elders about the floor-to-ceiling canning jars, full of jams, jellies, chow chow and every other thing a woman living through the great Depression would have. As none of them canned, they asked me to dump - Yes, I said “Dump” all the jars, food and all into the rented dumpster!!
Today, as I purchase another box of jars to can peaches from Sauvie Island, I kick myself for not looking into my crystal ball and seeing myself in a role more like my grandmother’s than my mother’s. I am proud of how I’m learning to can and how much my family loves it. I am especially proud of how much we save on our food budget. I love knowing exactly what and how healthy I am serving my family. But I sure wish I had Grandma here - for her recipes, her laughter and all those jars!!

My husband is the canner in the family. The first year he canned anything it was pickled green beans. They were tasty and really opened my eyes to what a good pickle can be. Then, it was pickled peppers and pickled carrots. Last year it was a tomato sauce. This year he wants to explore canning even more, but I am not sure what his plans are. I can’t wait to find out!

I haven’t canned since I was a child at home -- I have very happy memories of all the blackberry picking we would do and then the hours of cooking and canning to make blackberry jam we would eat for the rest of the year. To this day, it feels odd to eat a buttermilk biscuit and not have homemade blackberry jam on it...

I was ten or eleven, and my family was on a trip to visit family in the Midwest. At the little farmhouse in Kansas where my grandparents still lived, there was a big crab-apple tree. My grandmother spread old sheets on the ground under it and set us to work shaking the apples out of the tree. She, and a couple of neighbor women, and a “hired girl” spent a whole day turning the crab-apples into the most wonderful jelly I have ever had -- sweet, tart, and colored a delicate pink. She sent us back to California with a big case of it and we had that jelly all winter.

My mother used to can apricots, plums, peaches, and occasionally jams or jellies. Just thinking about her canned apricots makes my mouth water.

I live in one of the most fabulous places in the world for access to locally grown fruits and vegetables - Portland OR. What an amazing diversity of things to be had at local farmer’s markets, but there’s never enough time to eat them all when they’re fresh. (and I miss those cherries and blueberries so much when they’re gone!) How I would love to preserve some of this abundance, but I don’t know where to start! I’ve just started to do some research on this (thanks for the great links!) but haven’t gotten to the stage of trying my first canning experiment. I really would love to be able to share things with my family on the east coast, or be able to create great low cost gifts like homemade apple butter (or what about pear hazelnut jelly? Or cherry butter? I’ve certainly got a million ideas for recipes). I of course worry about sending tainted food home to the folks, so I want to make sure I’m doing everything right, though I’m sure it’s not quite as hard as I think. I wish my grandmother was still around to show me how she made and canned those fantastic chutneys of hers...

My five year old loves going to the Farmer’s market to get her favorite jams. We have supported many local jam makers and farmers such as Blue Chair Fruit, Frog Hollow Farms, Happy Girl Farms and Swanson Berry Farms...all who make AMAZING jams! However, this last weekend, when we ran out of her latest selection of jam on Sunday am (we buy organic Greek style yogurt and add the organic jam to it to flavor it) when she wanted “yogurt and crunchies” (Cafe Fanny Granola)....she looked in our frig at all the peaches and the variety of summer berries and said to me, “Mama, cant we make our own jam with this nummy fruit?” As many parents soon find out, their children speak the truth and often send parents into a dizzy wondering why we hadnt thought of that. So I smiled, and said “Yes, my Sweetheart!” “We sure can” and we will!!!

M’Lisa Kelley

My first experience canning was learning how to make my mother-in-law’s Bread and Butter pickles. Hers were the first home-canned pickles I’d ever tasted. Waking up the next morning to find the lids of the cans had popped was almost as exciting as Christmas morning! I’ve yet to try it on my own. I think this could be the year.

My mom canned when I was growing up, jams and lots and lots of applesauce. I made my first attempt last year and made a tiny batch of plum jam, then canned tomatoes. This year I didn’t get it together in time for strawberry jam, but plan to give it a go with peaches.

Without canning the food we grew, we would have been in a big world of hurt! Dad did the garden. It was weed pulling if you had to be disciplined for any reason! So you know we were good during the summer!
We are six kids. There were 4 long rows of green beans. The boys took a grocery bag and had to fill it up then they were done for the day. The three girls got to snap them, and fill the jars. Being oldest I got to do lids and rings. Mom was in charge of the pressure cooker. We probably did 3 of 4 loads a day. She would also put on a huge kettle for dinner. All winter we had two quarts with a dinner. Nothing finer than home canned green beans, a bit of ham, and a chunk of bread.

Last summer was the first time I’d canned since childhood, and the first time my boyfriend had ever been involved in canning. We had a bumper crop of tomatoes and could barely keep up, so I went out and bought the supplies to can them - he wasn’t sure we could do it, but he was game to try. Canning them went really well, and he was more excited than I was to hear all the lids pop (seriously, is there any more satisfying sound?). But the true happiness was pulling out those jars of tomatoes all winter to make chili and pizza sauce. Homegrown still tastes great, even months later :)

I started making jams last summer and this summer I’ve gotten lazy - I no longer do a water bath, but just flip them upside down. If I had a proper canning pot, I’d still do it, but I only have a 7-quart Le Creuset, and it’s a pain to get jars in there. So, hopefully they won’t go moldy. It’s really fun though.

So far this summer...cherry jam, peach jelly and now onto pickles. Will try a grape conserve this summer/fall as well! PICK ME:)

i have been canning jams and jellies for years now with the inversion method. and then last summer i put up some peaches in the more traditional method with the hot water bath and light syrup. they were so good in the middle of a cold winter. yummm. i would like to learn how to can more things and do it more effiently.

I have just moved this year from NYC to a house where, though I am not thrilled with living outside of the city, I am thrilled with my garden and gardening. The pleasure of gathering most of my dinner from the backyard is a real joy. Canning these goodies for gems in the winter is my next endeavor. I recall my grandmother canning jams in the summer, and I can still picture the metal cabinet in her basement where she kept them, and the treat is was to steal away to that spot to pick out the next jar in the dark cold of the winter. I remember that on some jams she covered them with wax. I haven’t read anything about this. Do you know? I hope to be canning both fruits and veggies, but don’t have any supplies other than my grandmother’s jars.

Dilly beans are my favorite thing to can. I remember spending my summers in Vermont when I was little and learning how to make them from one of the farmers and having a hard time not eating all the green beans before they made their way into the jars

My family grew our own food when I was growing up and we canned everything. I don’t do it myself yet but I started this year with strawberry jam and I am hooked.

We have a dwarf Meyer Lemon tree which has given us an abundance of enormous fruits each year, but this past year, the tree was so laden with fruits that we decided to keep count of each lemon we picked from it. We’ve picked OVER 750 fruits so far, most of them larger than large oranges, and I was really concerned about not wasting them. We gave away many, but since my husband is Diabetic, I decided to learn how to make lemon preserves/jams for him. I tried a number of different recipes, some of which did not “take”, but I finally got several dozen jars of delicious, tart preserves that he is still enjoying each morning with his breakfast toast. I’m so happy to finally learn about canning. I’ve also made some pickled vegetables and some strawberry jams and strawberry/lemon preserves. Delicious! Barbara (Gotchagal)

As a child my mom used to make and can plum jam. I’ve recently started vegetable gardening and hope to start canning them as soon as my yields improve.

My grandmother used to be a big canner of all things but especially fruit. As her health failed, she canned less and less. I think she stopped canning in the mid 80-s. Most of her prized jewels were stored in a root cellar on her farm, and as she got older, she stopped going down the steps to retrieve these precious gems. Sadly, when she passed away a few years ago and we were cleaning things out, we found jar after jar of her efforts safe in the cellar (though not safe to eat!) as a monument of sorts to her efforts and self-sustaining approach. I inherited her canning things. While nowhere near her level of proficiency or quantity of product produced, it feels like a bit of a nod to my grandma to make an effort to can and preserve.

As a child, I would provide labor to my mother’s canning efforts. I remember peeling peaches, pitting cherries and pureeing tomatoes. I bought a couple of books and hope to graduate from jam to something more complex this summer.

There’s another reason that home canning for gardeners has become important (not, of course, explaining why fewer people do it now than used to). There are fewer varieties of crops available to us than there used to be. Moreover, more and more of those derive from the commercial, patented, varieties developed for the industrial food industry that want uniformity of size and ripening date.

We try to plant open pollinated varieties that ripen over many weeks rather than patented varieties that ripen, for all practical purposes, all at once.

As an example, we use an ever bearing raspberry that produces two crops a year, each ripening over a period of several weeks. As a result, we have fresh berries during a much longer season (2) and the need for putting up far fewer for off season use.

For those who want to pursue use of tasty, extended season, heritage varieties of fruits and vegetables that would have been familiar to their grandmothers and great grandmothers, contact organizations like Seed Savers, among others.

Throughout my childhood, we were a freezing household. Only as a college student did I have friends who canned. Drawn by the allure of pickled suppers at Christmas, my husband and I have started canning this year, and we hope to serve up pickled selections from most of our garden on a tray this holiday season.

I learned about canning from my grandmother who put up everything from her garden. I wasn’t brave enough to can on my own til I was an adult, but now I love it....and so do my kids!

It is true that sometimes you don’t know how good you had it until it is gone. When I was growing up my Grandma was the full on pioneer woman. Summer would find her hip deep in her vegetable garden, then sweating in her small wood fire heated kitchen preserving many of those vegetables.

Sure, she made the usual suspects: pickles, green beans, tomatoes- but then she also canned things like meat. Meat! Really, amazingly tasty meat.

There was all this bounty and I scoffed at it (much prefering my things from the store) I was brainwashed is the only excuse I can come up with. If I could, I would go back in time and give myself a little shake (and take a can or two of those canned gems.)

So, the most amazing canned meal I have ever had? I think it might have been the stew made with the green beans, tomatoes and canned meat my grandmother would make many times a year.

as someone who is new to eating locally, i am blown away by the variety of foods i find every time i go to the farmers market. it makes me sad to know that at the end of the summer, those foods will all be gone until next summer. unless i can them. which i plan to do in a few weeks, in one all-out, pickle and preserve filled day of canning. this giveaway would make that oh-so-much easier.

Sarah’s comment reminds me of something I had intended to suggest.

Unfortunately, canning is a hot and humid activity, especially when it’s done indoors. If you can, do it outdoors like we do. We have a rudimentary gas camp stove (propane) that has a 30K propane burner on it. That’s more than adequate to keep a 9qt water bath hot (keep it out of direct wind. All that steam and heat is then out of the house. Even if your use a pressure canner, there’s significant heat and steam released from one batch to the next.

While it is efficient to do one batch after another, using water that’s already hot, it’s far easier on body and soul (sole, too) to pick only ripe produce and spread the process out over several days.

If you don’t have a gas bbq, consider picking up a single burner 30K-40K propane burner for use outside. For $40-$50 bucks, you’ll be cooler in the kitchen during the canning season.

ry

The pressure cooker has always intimidated me. However, I recently learned two things. One is that many things can be canned using the boiling method--what’s it called--water bath? And, in talking with my parents about an extra pressure cooker they have to loan me, I realized that maybe if I learn more about how it works, I won’t be so scared of it. I canned watermelon pickles last summer...pretty fun...maybe I’ll try again?

The first time I ate home-canned food? It was in college and a friend gave out canned Marinara Sauce as Christmas gufts. It was so delicious!

The CSA that I belong has been giving us fabulous fruit and veggies and I would love to win the kit so I can try my hand at canning.

For a time in my 20s I lived in Hawaii and had a papaya tree in my yard. I made papaya jam to send home to my family for Christmas gifts, but was unsure of the best way to seal the jars. Remembering something my mom had done, I melted and poured parafin wax to seal the jars. I packaged everything in mailing boxes and set them by my door. Luckily, I didn’t mail them for a few days. When I picked up the boxes, I noticed that something had leaked through the paper - the jam jars had all exploded and the papaya jam was EVERYWHERE. Glad no one got THAT Christmas present!

The only home-canned food I’ve had is plum jam. My grandma bought some super ripe ones from the market and simmered them with some sugar. She didn’t even use pectin. Instead of fancy jars she used an old strawberry jam jar from Trader Joe’s. It wasn’t as thick as the store-bought cans - a bit on the runny side but it was so delicious and fresh on toasted bread.

The random number generator picked “31” -- Jeannine -- as the winner. Jeannine, please send me a note (kim at culinate dot com) ASAP with your last name and address, and I’ll forward it to the Canvolution folks. Congratulations!