Just before it’s up to temperature, I fill the jars one by one from the kettle, then top them off with a teaspoon of canning salt and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice, then add the seals and rings, and pop them back into the canner rack.
After 45 minutes in the boiling water bath out come the lovely jars of seasoned tomatoes that, over the winter, will be turned into spaghetti sauce that will bring back the flavor of summer.
Canning, for me, began as a healing practice. My parents divorced when I was eight years old, and my mother, sister and Imoved away from the farm where I'd lived as a small child.
Daddy remarried and I began
spending most of my summers on
the farm with him and my stepmother.
My stepmother did everything from
scratch - cooking, baking, clothes-
making. They had a huge garden every
summer and grew everything
imaginable. Canning began
in earnest in July. There
were sterilized jars
everywhere, and
something was
always in the
water-bath or
the pressure
canner.
I helped
chop and
dice and
slice in
the
farmhouse
kitchen,
while the
summer
breeze blew
in through
the porch
windows and
country music
played on the
kitchen radio. I
proudly carried the
cooled, sealed jars
upstairs to store in the
cupboards Daddy built
under the eaves.
In the winter, when I'd spend
the weekend, my stepmom would send me upstairs to bring jars of goodies down to add to our Sunday dinner, bringing a bit of summer pleasure back. We'd sit down after church to a farmhouse-style gourmet meal while the wood stove burned merrily, and when the meal was done, Daddy would light his ever-present pipe and sit quietly listening to us chatter while we did dishes.
Canning, for me, brings with it nostalgia for those much simpler days. And it brings with it the feeling of warmth and safety - both the lazy summer kitchen days and the lazier winter weekend days.
And when I look at the jars lined up on my kitchen counter, and stacked up in the pantry, I feel the safety and security that nostalgia
invokes. It's a little
piece of the past I
can recreate every
time I gather a
harvest from the
garden.
44 | ElementsForAHealthierLife.com | September 2016