"Please wash accurately before use"
...or, "How I Spent My Summer Vacation"
Between leaving my job on September 1, and starting classes today, I had three rather nice weeks to review for my diagnostic exams (over now, thank the gods), finish up a little contract work, and most importantly can things.
I have noticed that many women around my age have taken on one token hobby which was probably considered a routine job by one of their forebears. Lemming knits, my friend Kimmarie sews and crochets, I can. Not a whole basement of food, survivalist-style, but a fair bit, nonetheless.
This year we put up 5 quarts of tomatos, 3 quarts of Italian tomato sauce, 2 quarts of Greek tomato sauce, a quart of pickled watermelon rind, and a quart of salsa (half with garlic, half without). We also made a few quarts of okra pickles (in the fridge rather than actually canned), and are still finishing off the bread-and-butter cucumber pickles from the summer. We're planning on making some more salsa (a slightly different recipe) for fridge storage over the next few days, and later this fall I'm going to try applesauce for the first time.
I don't know why canning is such a big thing for me - maybe it's because it feels a little like cheating fate. You pretty much cannot get good fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter, but by canning them, I get the next best thing. Sort of like making chicken stock out of all the bits and pieces of the bird that you don't generally eat. It's like magic - you thought the chicken was gone, but presto - there's still more food there!
Anyhow, adding to the fun this year was the purchase of a food mill - pretty much essential to making tomato sauce. I went to Smith Hardware (best hardware store in Mount Vernon) to pick up jars and rings, and saw them on the shelf, beckoning to me. There were three, in different sizes. The one I chose was middle-sized, not much more expensive than the cheap one (although clearly studier) and had the added bonus of being labelled entirely in Italian. The only exception was a little cardboard disk in the bottom of the mill, on top of the milling disks. There were about a dozen languages on it, but the English translation was
"Please wash accurately before use."
I had visions of scrubbing it and measuring the sizes of the holes with a caliper or something. I can only assume the other translations were equally strange.
And here we all thought it was just the translations from Asian languages that got butchered.
garden progress: temporarily called on account of poison ivy
house progress: replaced the bed frame in the guest room, getting ready for "mom-cleaning"
what's for dinner? leftover shepherd's pie, and either purple beans or a salad
posted by Alison @ 1:51 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
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At 4:33 PM,
Hugh held forth...
- I know, I know, I shouldn't have, but the first time reading through, I saw "I can" and said, "I can do what?"
Good luck with school, and don't let the Dahlhaus get you down. -
At 11:51 AM,
tommyspoon held forth...
- Feel free to pass along any canning tips & tricks. Sweetie really wants me to get into that...
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At 11:27 AM,
Alison held forth...
- Hugh - Dahlhaus actually came up in class yesterday. This is the "What is musicology" class, and I suspect it is going to make my head hurt a lot.
Tommyspoon: The USDA Canning Guide is your friend. Know it, love it. You don't need to use their recipes, particularly, but it's invaluable for determining things like "do I need to add acid to this to be able to can it in boiling water?" I only do boiling-water canning, having not shelled out for a pressure canner, and not knowing the exact PSI on our pressure cooker (this is Very Important™). The downside to this is that I cannot can low-acid things like pesto, but there's still a lot that works.