canning

We had our pickle party on Sunday, and it was a huge success! There were 7 or 8 different people making pickles and sauerkraut, I had the smoker and grill running all day, and another friend made a huge scoff of Sausages and Sauerkraut that was eagerly gobbled up as well. In this picture you can see a bucket of cabbage that has "the pickle up" as my wife's grandfather taught me - after a good deal of stomping, the cabbage juice comes out. You have to stop until you have enough juice to cover the cabbage.

We started off in the side yard sitting around a makeshift table, cutting our cabbage and cleaning our cucumbers. Some people chose to chop their cabbage coursely and quickly, while others chose to do their fine and with a great amount of detail and attention. We started out the evening using a big (full) juice can as a stomper, but I quickly realised that this was far from ideal, so I grabbed the chainsaw and a piece of applewood that I'd had set aside for making a stomper, and cut away until I had something workable, with a built-in handle. In the end, everyone was able to use this to stomp-up enough of a pickle to submerge their kraut.

I spent yesterday processing and canning 40lbs of roma tomatoes, and decided to make a video while I was at it. The tomatoes cost me $30, and I got 31 x 500ml jars.

Here is a two-part video I did on rendering fat. Fat gets a bad rep, but the fact is that our bodies need a certain amount of it because some nutrients are fat-soluble and not water soluble. And animal fat is not necessarily unhealthy if used in moderation, and if you are getting lots of exercise like I do.

In this video I render fat from pork chops with fat from my home made bacon, so as to give the fat a bacon flavour. This fat can be canned in mason jars for long term storage, and has all sorts of uses in applications where you want to add a bacon flavour to something. And who doesn't want everything to taste like bacon?

My wife and I were just discussing our plans for this year, so here they are so far. Of course we've done a number of things so far, but the cheap stuff is just about to start now at the market, so we have to set our priorities to get things kicked into high gear! If you are doing this yourself, don't forget the golden rule : only can what you will eat!

This year promises to be our biggest year yet, probably by a longshot. And the number one thing on our list is of course tomatoes - both just canned up on their own, and also done up into both pasta/pizza sauce, and salsa. We still have not gone back to review our notes from last year to estimate how much we'll need, but I'm sure it is going to be 7 or 8 bushels at least.

OK, we've set the date. Stay tuned to this article for updates. For anyone in Ottawa interested, on the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend we'll be hosting a party where we show you how to make fermented ("kosher") dill pickles, and sauerkraut, probably starting at 14:00

Right now is the first weekend at the Parkdale Market where they have the pickling cukes. You are best off to order yours ahead of time and if possible pick them up first thing on the Saturday morning and store them in your fridge til Sunday, or a cooler with a bag of ice, since very few of the market vendors get deliveries on Sunday. You need to order #1 (number 1) Cukes. Call these guys to order : Claude Roy & Denis Roy : 613-323-4538. 1/2 bushel is about 30 lbs, and makes about 20 litres of dills. This amount takes 2 people about 90 minutes to prepare.

Cabbage is not such a big deal - can just pick it up on the Sunday at the market. It is currently $1.50 per head with the people I usually get it from. Per huge cabbage you get about 5 litres of kraut, and need 1/4 cup salt.

Last year I wrote about root cellaring carrots. Now here is a video on both dehydrating and canning them. Both are really easy to do. These particular carrots took me longer than normal to process because they are young, sweet carrots, which are pretty small. But I enjoy it, so no big deal.

My dehydrator is the Nesco unit that I bought from the Costco website. It has temperature control, which is really important in a dehydrator. I'm very happy with it so far.

We got our first CSA basket this week, and as always early in the season it was a fairly small one.

• 398g beet greens
• 456g garlic scapes
• 400g bok choy
• 202g radish

So I figured I'd try an experiment with the garlic scapes, and can them up! Last year what I did with them was puree them in a food processor with a fair bit of oil, and then store the moosh in a jar in the fridge to use sort of as a flavoured oil for frying in a fry pan, or in place of garlic or onions in just about any recipes. This year I decided to can it up so that it would last longer on the shelf, and take up less room in the fridge.

During the Great Depression it was common for people to get together to can up large amounts of food - many hands make light work. While the driving factor was simply a matter of survival, it had a really great side-effect of bringing communities together and forming bonds that would far outlive the economic troubles.

Today we find ourselves once again in the midst of economic troubles, and it may or may not be a coincidence that canning is becoming more-and-more popular. Just last week the New York Times newspaper did a feature article on this new trend - which is not really so new for many of us - that seems to be getting a lot of coverage in the alternative blogosphere. I think it would be a stretch to suggest that it is a matter of survival for most folks this time around, but I do think that people in general are becoming more concerned with their food chain, and are wanting to become more directly connected with it.

This is a good thing.

A lot of us go to places like Costco and buy the huge containers of various food items because it saves us money - and it is usually an awful lot cheaper per ml to do this, no doubt about it! But the downside is of course that once you open the container, it takes up an incredible amount of room in your fridge, and you have to eat it quickly before it goes off. So you may end up overeating to get through it all, or losing some of your great savings to spoiled food.

Home canning to the rescue!

By now, everyone has heard about the 100 mile diet, which took North America by storm a few years ago when Alisa Smith and J. B. MacKinnon decided they were going to live a whole year eating only food grown within 100 miles of their home. Many of us even before this ambitious project recognized the ecological importance of eating food grown locally, but as Smith and MacKinnon found out, it isn't necessarily easy to do.

This is intended a guide for the rest of us, who would like to get more local food in our diets, but are not just sure how to go about it. The first thing to mention is that going cold-turkey from one day to the next is just insane. Even Smith and MacKinnon agree it was extremely difficult to do, and that it is not for everyone. I believe that cold-turkey is the surest route to failure for most people, which is why I am writing this.