Current News |
Fresh Vegetables, by the
Jarful
JUST PEACHY Jars are bathed in boiling
water to create a seal during a
University of Connecticut extension
class in home food preservation.
By JAMES KINDALL
Published: August 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/
EACH weekday morning, Pat Brosnan heads
for work at a Westchester County bond
insurance company, where she gives
financial advice to investment bankers
and other money managers. A mother of
five with a master’s degree in corporate
finance, she tries to present herself to
clients as a knowledgeable businesswoman
moving efficiently through a
professional world. Then they notice her
fingernails.
“Usually, they’re blackish green from
July through August,” she said.
Goth subculture? No, home food canning.
The telltale signs of an evening spent
cooking jams and jellies or sorting
through ripe tomatoes, zucchinis, apples
and pears is not easily eradicated,
although she assures clients, “I do wash
my hands.”
Juice-stained nails may be in vogue
soon.
Driven by increasing food costs,
concerns about food safety, green
sensibilities and a new appreciation of
all things natural, home food
preservation is enjoying a small
renaissance. Numbers are hard to come
by, but Elizabeth L. Andress, project
director of the National Center for Home
Food Preservation in Athens, Ga., has
noticed a definite surge in interest.
She estimated that calls to the center
had risen 25 percent in recent months.
“It’s been a crazy summer,” Ms. Andress
said.
The surge has been noted by canning
veterans like Ms. Brosnan, who in her
spare time teaches home food
preservation at the Hilltop Hanover
Farm, a Westchester County farm and
environmental center in Yorktown
Heights. She was expecting only a
handful of people to appear when the
farm advertised a recent class. Instead,
14 were there.
Three were men. One was a chef.
People come to learn this new-old craft,
she said. And they want to be careful.
“They say things like, ‘I don’t know
anything about it, and I don’t want to
poison my family.’ ”
Instructions on what sorts of things to
preserve and how to preserve them safely
are detailed on a Web site run by the
food preservation center through the
United States Department of Agriculture.
Occasionally, there are reports of
deaths from bacterial spoilage leading
to botulism, but those are rare, Ms.
Andress said. A good rule of thumb cited
by canners is that if the jar seal is
broken or the contents look suspicious,
toss them out.
“It’s really not that hard,” Ms. Brosnan
said.
Mention canning and most people conjure
up images of Granny boiling fruit on the
stove or cutting up vegetables to be put
into glass jars topped with funny ringed
lids. True enough. But, believe it or
not, canning had a dramatic birth.
It started with Napoleon, whose war
campaigns were being thwarted by limited
food supplies (“An army travels on its
stomach,” he famously said). When a
French newspaper offered a 12,000-franc
reward for anyone who could find a way
of preserving food, the confectioner
Nicolas-François Appert came up with the
idea of cooking food, then sealing it in
glass jars. These were later replaced on
the battlefield with sturdier canisters,
called “cans.”
Home canning became a patriotic effort
in the summer of 1917, when President
Woodrow Wilson issued an urgent plea for
women to increase their canning output
to help American troops during World War
I. “Every bushel of potatoes properly
stored, every pound of vegetables
properly put by for future use, every
jar of fruit preserved adds that much to
our insurance of victory,” he said.
Home preservation enthusiasts like Nancy
Mion of Bayport, N.Y., would rather make
jelly, not war. “One year, I made
blueberry jelly, cherry, cinnamon pear,
cranberry-orange, damson plum, ginger
pear, green pepper, red raspberry,
Seckel pears and strawberry jam,” Ms.
Mion said. “I also made Victorian spice
pears and watermelon pickles.”
In all, she cans about 27 varieties of
fruits and vegetables. Most is given
away to friends and relatives. There are
exceptions, including the time she was
given a batch of merlot grapes, which
she made into a jelly. “The first year I
made that,” Ms. Mion said, “I didn’t
give any of it away.”
Some people are born to can. Some have
canning thrust upon them. Uldene
Weidlick’s husband grew up loving his
mother’s canned foods. “He told me,
‘You’ve got to learn how to do this,’ ”
she said.
Her mother-in-law walked her through the
process 30 years ago. Now, Ms. Weidlick,
who lives in Belvidere, N.J., regularly
wins prizes for her chili sauce and raw
tomato relish at the Warren County
Farmers’ Fair.
She has won over her family, too. “My
son’s favorite right now is rhubarb
jam,” she said. “And my son-in law will
no longer eat store-bought applesauce.”
What kind of food can you put in a jar?
Pretty much anything, according to
Cheryl Rautio of Brooklyn, Conn., who
teaches home food preservation classes
through the Expanded Food and Nutrition
Education Program, a cooperative
extension effort of the University of
Connecticut.
“One time a sportsman said to me, ‘I bet
you can’t do venison,’ ” Ms. Rautio
said. “I said, ‘Oh, yes, I can.’ ”
She did, too. A month later, she opened
the jar, combined the contents with
vegetables and tomatoes, and made a
venison stew. In her family, salsa is
her claim to fame, she said. She makes
about 50 jars each summer. By January,
it is gone.
So, can you really save grocery money by
canning?
Maybe. That has to wait until one gets
past the original outlay for equipment
like cookers, jars and lids, the
preservation center’s Ms. Andress said.
Although the cost of the reusable jars
has risen, she said, many preservers
pick them up at garage sales.
But all that is beside the point, said
Ms. Mion. “It’s not the money,” she
said, “it’s the taste.”
Ms. Brosnan believes her canning prowess
has raised the bar among her brood. They
know their preserved food. She said that
when her daughter worked at a drugstore,
she had to explain what kale was to her
boss.
“She’s been eating it since she was 1
½,” Ms. Brosnan said, “and could explain
all about it.”
There is another reason she likes the
process of growing and canning her own
food.
“It’s a good release,” Ms. Brosnan said.
“And vegetables don’t talk back to you.”
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