I am not descended from a people who traditionally ate rice. As an American European descent (hodgepodge of East and West), with probably a touch of Native American, my family has traditionally ate wheat and barley. Good grains to be sure, but when it comes to the importance to the human race, these staples have nothing on rice.

Rice has always been the traditional cereal grain of Asia, being first cultivated by the Chinese around 11,500 BCE. It’s position as the core staple in Asia basically means that it’s the core food for something like 1/3 of the global population. Beyond that it’s used heavily in Middle Eastern and African cuisine, and has taken on increasing importance globally both as populations mingle, and the nutritional values are acknowledged.

Rice has over 7 grams of protein, and over 1 gram of dietary fiber. To be fair, this is significantly lower than barley, but Rice is easy to grow and doesn’t deplete soil the way that barley will. It’s a highly sustainable crop, which a large part of what makes it such an excellent staple crop globally.

Of all the cereal grains, I believe rice to be one of the most filling. All the cereal grains work well for making us ‘feel’ full, helping us be more comfortable with less food. Rice does an excellent job with this, and given that Japanese cooking in general has traditionally been filled with nutrient rich seafood, the relatively nutrient poor nature of rice has been less important.

So, given the important of rice, how does one prepare it? Most American’s probably just do what I do. Water, butter and the rice in a pan, brought to a boil than left to simmer until the rice is done. This works alright for me, though some care is required, as nothing is quite as bad as rice burnt to the bottom of a pan.

For those people who really eat a lot of rice, it may be worth investing in a rice cooker. A rice cooker is a small dedicated appliance that is able to sort of ‘track’ the temperature and humidity in the pot, helping ensure the rice is always properly done and not burnt. Some models can double as a steamer as well. Even if you’re not willing or able to buy a dedicated appliance for this, learning to cook rice effectively will always pay off culinarily in the long run. Rice is a good expensive staple, which can be dressed up easily however you’d like it.

Dairy in America is in a really strange state. For the generation of my parents (people who around 50), their entire childhood Dairy meant cow’s milk. That was the only option. Things have changed a bit, in that these days we can more easily get dairy derived from goats, or even fake dairy derived from soy. In more recent years, people have once again began acknowledging that milk can (and should) be a part of a healthy diet.

According to some studies, however, Lactose intolerance is an incredibly common problem, particularly among older people. However, I think that this has more to do with the way in which we consume milk, than anything innate in Milk. And I’m pretty sure I’m not just blowing smoke here. My wife had, for many years, complained of lactose intolerance. She suffered through it out of love for Cheese and Ice Cream, as I would likely have.

After some badgering, I convinced her to start taking Lactase supplements, which helped quite a bit. The interesting thing is, since we switched to drinking whole milk, she hasn’t needed it. It turns out that lactose is more concentrated in the liquid portions of milk, and therefore dairy with a higher fat content, is going to naturally have less lactose to be processed. But that’s far, far from the whole story.

Ultimately, the problem isn’t that most Americans tend to buy 2%, 1%, or even Skim milk instead of whole milk (which usually has under 4% milk fat), the real problem, is that we drink pasteurized milk.

That’s right, pasteurization is absolutely destroying our ability to process milk. My father has even commented on the fact that, when he was younger and they were drinking milk that had fat floating on it’s surface, he never had digestive issues with it. Now, one could argue that this is related to age, since most people developing difficulty with milk with age, but among European Americans, the incidence of lactose intolerance tends to be around 10-15%. There is a biologic predisposition in mammals toward the body stopping production of the lactase enzyme, however, it seems that among peoples who consistently have access the lactose, the gene is far less likely to shut off. Even among the Japanese, who typically developed a near 100% lactose intolerance after weaning, are starting to become happy milk drinkers, even into adulthood. I’m no geneticist, but it seems that the gene is generally turned off when the lactase is no longer needed. Makes sense, but I’d like to see more research on the subject, myself.

Still, even among people who consistently enjoy Milk products, it seems that lactase production does slow with age. That genetic predisposition, poking it’s head up again. I believe this can be linked directly to the pasteurization of milk. But, let’s start at the beginning while we form this argument.

Pasteurization was ‘invented’ by Louis Pasteur in 1862. I put ‘invented’ in quotes, because people had been performing the basic process for literally thousands of years by this point, but Pasteur did codify the scientific basis for the practice, and that does deserve some respect. Pasteurization is basically cooking. It’s raising the temperature of food to the point where various microorganisms can no longer survive, or at least so that enough don’t survive that what’s left can be easily dealt with by the bodies natural immune system.

Now, heat does break apart the microorganisms, but it also breaks apart a lot of other chemicals in the food. This changes the way the food tastes (sometimes for the worse), and can break apart proteins and other structures. It changes the chemical structure of the food, and this is one potential problem with the process (but it’s fairly minor in my opinion). And with milk, where ‘ultra-pasteurization’ is often used, this process involves quickly taking the dairy from ambient temperature to 250 degrees Fahrenheit, and back down within a fraction of a second.

So, this is meant to kill disease right? What could possibly be wrong with that?

The stated purpose is honorable, I’ll agree. The problem is that pasteurization doesn’t just kill the bad microbes, it also kills a lot of the good ones. Including, in milk, some bacteria that naturally help the body break down the lactose. But, 1862 was at the height of the industrial revolution. More people were moving into the cities, and living denser than they ever had before. The lack of refrigeration required perishable food sources, including dairy, to be close to the cities. People didn’t truly understand at that time what was responsible for causing disease, and standards for food safety were non-existent.

Cow got sick, and it’s milk contained blood or pus? That didn’t matter, ship it to the waiting customers. Cows all covered in shit and it’s falling into the buckets as they get milked? No problem! If you’re luckily, the milker will pick it out quickly. Contamination was common, partially due to ignorance, partially because the customers didn’t bother to ask, and the Dairies weren’t being held accountable.

This just isn’t true anymore. In this country we have the Food and Drug Administration who has set out standards for food production because consumers weren’t able to make an educated choice for healthier products. However, even the FDA occasionally gets the science wrong. The FDA, as recent as 2004 has still been against Raw Milk. Now, I’m of the opinion that this is largely due to the Dairy Lobby in this country, who tends to work really hard to stop people who don’t want to play by their rules.

Luckily, the FDA hasn’t tried to completely stop the sale of Raw Milk. They’ve left that power up the individual states. In Washington, it is possible to get licensed to produce Raw Milk commercially (interesting fact: Raw Milk in Washington must have a lower bacterial content that that which is allowed in already pasteurized milk). Idaho technically could have a Raw Milk dairy, but the state hasn’t licensed anyone for decades, and that is seen as unlikely to change. However, the FDA has banned interstate commerce of raw milk, so a Washington Dairy can’t transport it’s product to Idaho for sale. Which is too bad, because the local organic food Co-op here in my area, is in Moscow. But, if you own your own cow, or participate in a Cow Share, you can still have access to Raw Milk pretty much anywhere in the US.

As I’m not a Food Scientist, I’m going to defer to some people who are. The Weston A Price Foundation has begun the Campaign for Real Milk (a cute play on Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale from years ago), and that site has tons of information on why you should want raw milk, and how to get it in your state. They suggest reading ‘Medical Maverick’ Dr. William Cambell Douglass II’s book, The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness Is Not Pasteurized. I suggest to do so as well.

There is big, big business in the milk market. The factories which pump out the pasteurized milk, are owned by a small group of companies, and they can sell their product hundreds of miles away from where they bottle it because of pasteurization and refrigeration. And the US Government has essentially forced this system on us since the 1930s. Raw Milk is more expensive, no doubt about that, but mostly that’s because so few people are producing it. If we move to a less centralized dairy system where Raw Milk is more economically feasible, the price will drop. Will it drop to what we’re paying for milk today? Maybe not, but since it won’t have to travel as far, or go through as much processing…it just might.

Cooperatives have been around for centuries to serve as a means for people to work together in a business context in a democratic context in order to serve some common need for all their members. They’ve been common in agricultural areas, as a means for farmers to combine their resources to get better prices at market, and are still quite common in that area.

This is not the kind of Co-op I’m talking about today, but it’s a similar idea. Many areas have begun forming Grocery Co-ops for people who are interested in buying local, organic, and sustainable. For us, in the Pullman-Moscow area, we’ve got the Moscow Food Co-Op, which is now in it’s 35th year of operation. In Bozeman, we had a coop that had opened around 2002, but I like the Moscow one far more.

Co-ops serve an interesting community place. Yes, they’re specialty grocers who carry a lot of organic foodstuffs, but more than that, they often serve as sort of gateways into the community. Moscow’s Food Co-Op offers live music, gourmet food, community-driven cooking lessons, and access to local producers.

Admittedly, I don’t buy into the “Organic” keyword they way many people do. I prefer food produced in a more natural way, with less chemistry. Non-hormone pumped beef, raw milk, fresh fruits and vegetables, etc. I love it, but unfortunately, the laws regarding ‘certified organic’ have changed in recent years such that many growers who grow in what most people would consider to be an ‘organic’ method, can’t get certified because the paperwork, fees, and other expenses are too high. Organic has been legally taken by large farms who can more easily afford the extra certification, which has also led to the added expense of ‘organic’ food. Talk to your growers, read food labels, and don’t just believe in the hype surrounding the words. Organic has become a marketing term, and organic food isn’t necessarily good for you. Hell, tobacco is organic, it’s grown without pesticides, and often without chemical fertilizers, but it’s still not good for you.

But I digress. Co-ops are great, and definitely worth checking out. We buy most of our bread at our Co-op, and some of our snack-type food since it tends not to have high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and various other chemicals we’d like to avoid. We’re planning to start getting more involved in the community activities, as we’ve been members of our co-op since June (It was $10, and we get every 11th loaf of bread free, it’s worth it). Plus, it’s the only place in the area we can get non-homogenized whole milk. No [raw milk] unfortunately, while it’s not technically illegal in Idaho, the state hasn’t licensed any Raw Milk producers in a very long time, and the Washington producers are closer to Spokane. Actually, I haven’t done a Milk post yet, so that’ll be coming.

Anyway, even if you’re not into the whole ‘Organic’ thing, there is a very, very good chance that your co-op offers something you can’t get at your normal grocery, or stuff that may well be higher quality. Plus, the community focus of most co-ops is important to living a sustainable lifestyle, feel yours out, it may well be worth it for you.

As we wind down Gardening (and thus Canning) season, there is still a bit more to discuss on these issues. This week, I’m going to be talking about Beets. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of beets, but Catherine loves them, and so we planted a bunch at the garden this year. And boy, did we get some monsters. Below is a photograph of the biggest one we got, sitting next to my 8” Chef’s Knife.

I’ve talked about Beets before, briefly, on the post regarding Kvass, but with this batch of beets, we opted for a different approach. Beets get their deep red/purple color from betalain pigments, which is different from most red/purple plants. And beets are all different, we planted two varieties, one which was a deep purple, while the other was more red with some white striping. Incidentally, the deep purple was far, far easier to peel, but we’ll get there in a few moments.

Just as important as the beets, are the greens coming out of their tops. If you want to harvest these (and you really should), you’ll need to cut them off as soon as possible. They can be cooked and served as Spinach, or served raw in a salad. The danger here is that, while the roots can remain at room temperature for a fair while (particularly if that room is a root cellar), the greens should be washed and refrigerated quickly. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of greens because we were busy last week with the tomatoes.

For preparing all the beets, we opted for pickling, specifically canning pickles. To start, we washed the beets as thoroughly as we could (root vegetables get dirty, go figure). Then I chopped them up into smaller pieces, that were roughly equitable with the smallest beets we had (and we had some small ones, thin out your beets when you plant from seeds people!) Put them in simmering water for about thirty minutes. This was tricky as even the biggest pot I had could barely handle all those beets and water. After about thirty minutes, I dumped out the water, and poured ice onto the pot, and refilled the pot with cool water.

While I should have begun peeling immediately, Catherine got home with food for dinner, so we sat and ate for a bit before getting back to work. Once we finished, Catherine started peeling the beets, while I began chopping the beets into roughly half-inch pieces before packing them into jars. We got 5 quarts and 7 pints packed. Quite a bit of beets. With that done, I began warming the jars and making the brine. The brine was a simple brine.

• 3.5 cups Vinegar (I used Apple Cider)
• 2.5 cups Water
• 2 cups Sugar
• 1 tbsp Allspice
• 2 cinnamon sticks

Bring all that to a rolling boil, then drop the temperature to a simmer for 15 minutes. This was enough for about 3 quarts, so I did have to adjust the recipe a bit, but scaling is fairly easy. Once the jars were warm and the brine was ready, I pulled the jars off the heat, and filled them with the brine. Beets and Brine should leave about 1/4” of head-space in the jars. Once all the jars are filled, put hot lids on them, screw them down, and drop the jars into boiling water to heat process for about 30 minutes.

Two days later, the contents of the jars is a deep, deep purple, and we’ll be leaving them to age for about a month before we start to open them, but this should result in a slightly sweet pickle which will be good in salads or just as a snack. Plus, the pickling should fortify the vitamin C content, and beets have about nine times as much protien as fat, if you concern yourself with such things, making them an all around healthy food. In Australia and New Zealand, they use Pickled Beets on Burgers the way we use Tomatoes or Onion, that may well be worth trying, if like me you’ve never been the biggest fan of this red root.

A combination of unfortunate weather and late planting conspired together this year to leave a lot of unripened tomatoes on our various vines. All told, when we went out on Saturday to pick the last of the fruit from the vine, we picked over 30 pounds of tomatoes, the vast majority of which were ‘green’.

So, what do we do with over 20 pounds of green tomatoes? They’re unsuitable for any normal application of tomatoes, since they’re more tart than sweet (raw they taste sort of like apples). While one of the ladies we ran into at the garden suggested Green Tomato Pie, we weren’t quite daring enough to go that route. Instead, Catherine spent some time coming up with a few recipes: Green Tomato Ketchup, Sweet Green Tomato Pickles, and Sour Green Tomato Pickles. Between those, we’re going to be rolling in Green Tomato for quite a while.

For the Green Tomato Ketchup: Chop Tomatoes and some White onions, layering them in a pot, adding salt to each layer. Let this soak overnight. The next morning, pour out the liquid and rinse everything well. It’s incredibly salty right now, and you don’t want all that salt in the final product. Add Vinegar and Sugar to the mix and boil, the onion and tomato will break down. Then just can and go. Green Peppers, Onion Seed, Coriander, and Garlic can all make welcome additions, but as with most things, I’d suggest starting basic before you start experimenting too much.

For the pickles, Catherine chose to use our green Yellow Pear tomatoes, at least partially because my Mom is such a fan. Actually, the recipe for these are almost identical to the ketchup, though allspice apparently makes a welcome addition to the herbage added after the brine. Also, you’ll want to cut the tomatoes larger. With our Yellow Pears and Gold Nuggets, we just halved them and left it at that.

Gardening and Sustainability force you to reconsider a lot of things. While I’d never even consider buying green tomatoes from the grocery store, with the Garden it’s more likely we’re going to end up with produce that we can still use, that we wouldn’t have normally bought. People have been doing this for years, and it’s only responsible that we keep this knowledge alive. I shudder to think about how many unripened tomatoes are left to rot in the big commercial farms every year, as I can think of very few commercial foods that use green tomatoes, even though they can certainly have a good place in your kitchen.

Tomatoes have long been a popular fruit to cultivate by those of us in the Western World. A member of the Nightshade family, tomatoes are perennials when grown in warmer climates, but as far north as we are, we’re pretty much stuck with raising them as annuals. Luckily, the seeds aren’t terribly hard to keep.

Unlike a lot of other plant’s seeds, Tomato seeds do require a bit more work. The seeds won’t simply sprout with just a bit of dirt and water, they need to be fermented first. The process is simple, simply scoop out the seeds with the ‘goop’ that they rest in from a halved tomato, put it in a cup with some water, and cover it in plastic wrap. Poke a whole in the plastic wrap so that air transfer can still happen, and let it sit for a while. Eventually, the seeds will be ready for planting next season. Plus, if you find some tomatoes you like, you can probably just take the seeds out of one, and you’ll be about to plant them next year. The only unfortunate caveat here is that some lines of tomatoes are hybrids, which don’t produce viable seeds. If you have any questions, ask the grower at your local market, they likely know.

One of the nice things about Tomato is that it’s one of the few fruits we can grow today that still exists in a large variety of cultivars. Sure, you usually only see three, maybe four, types of tomatoes at your local grocery store, but in our garden we had no fewer than seven types of tomatoes this year, from large heirloom varieties, to tiny ‘gold nuggets’ a delicious small yellow tomato, to a purple-fleshed tomato. This is fantastic, at least partially because the more different types of plants grown, the less likely they’ll fail due to disease and pests.

If you really want to experience everything that tomatoes have to offer, you’ll have to grow them yourselves. Now, I’m not the gardener in our house. I cook the plants, my wife grows them. But I will share what little I know. My wife has found that growing them in large plastic buckets full of good soil tends to work really well, the belief is that the buckets help keep their roots warm, which the tomatoes quite like. However, they do really well in the ground as well, so if you have a good patch of garden, be sure to plant there. Our tomato beds are a little below the walkway level, in order to make it really easy to water, since we can just put the hose on that part of the plot, and fill it up with water. No muss, no fuss.

One thing to note, is that mandrakes are kind of rough on soil, they tend to drain a lot of nitrogen in them, so you’ll want to be careful to rotate which part of your garden is tomato from year to year. On the question of cages, my wife feels that the plants do better when you use stakes that you tie the plants to. This has the added benefit of making it easier to pick the fruit, since the plant isn’t surrounded by as much metal and it is able to spread out a little bit more.

As I said, in our part of the country, tomatoes are effectively annuals. When the weather turns cold, and the ground begins to freeze, the plants soon die. If the year is anything like this one, and you planted at all like we did, you’ll likely have a large number of under-ripe tomatoes still on the vine. We do this year, but we’ve left all of them on the vine for the next week or so. This is partially in hopes that they might still ripen, but also because we have a lot of ripe tomatoes to process. But we fully intend to pick those tomatoes soon, and we’ll can them as we are with our ripe ones.

Next week, I’ll talk about what we’ve done with our tomatoes, including the green ones, and provide some recipes.

I’ve mentioned the Moscow Farmer’s Market here before, but while I’ve mentioned it, I’ve never really gone into detail about the value of the Farmer’s Market.

Most communities have some form of Farmer’s Market that runs for some period during the year. Here in the Moscow/Pullman area we’re lucky enough to have one that runs from May through October. Millwood Presbyterian Church in the Spokane Valley has their own market that runs a similar time frame. And from what I understand, that is merely one of several markets available in the Spokane area.

Farmer’s Markets serve several important roles. First, they provide a place for people who engage in Craft business to peddle their wares, like the Soap, but beyond that they provide a place for you to buy fruits and vegetables directly from growers. Often this food is certified organic, which frankly, I care little about, and even the stuff that isn’t certified, often fits the definition of organic, the growers just don’t want to be bothered with the paperwork.

I’d suggest going to your local market. We go almost every week, picking up a certain selection of standard sundry fruit and vegetables, and occasionally getting special goods (like the 25 pounds of peaches we bought a few weeks back. What’s more, we’ve established who our favorite vendors are, so we know who to get to first, as they’re quality and prices are the best.

The Farmer’s Market allowed us to get our garden up and running at fairly low cost, and allows us to find high-quality produce at prices I wouldn’t dream of seeing at any grocery store. Plus, you’re buying local, which I don’t think anyone would argue is a bad thing.

In our Garden this year, we decided to plant a single Zucchini plant, which has become one of the most prolific producers on our little patch. Catherine’s ecstatic. I’m not a big fan of Zucchini, but when my wife brought this beast home, well, I had to do something with it.

But why is Zucchini worth growing? Well, it’s low calorie, and high in certain vitamins (A) and minerals (folate, potassium and maganese). It’s easy to prepare in a variety of ways, and it contains a lot of water, which can be useful in a variety of preparation, I plan to share two preparations that I actually enjoy.

First, is the old standby Zucchini bread, which is slightly sweet and makes for a tasty breakfast. You can get two loaves of bread from about two cups of shredded zucchini, and the loaves make great breakfasts or snacks. The recipe is simple

2 cups shredded raw zucchini 3 eggs 1 3/4 cups sugar 1 cup vegetable oil 2 cups flour (I use Spelt) 1/4 tsp baking powder 2 tsp baking soda 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp salt 2 tsp vanilla 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Strain and press the excess water out of the zucchini, and set it aside. Mix your eggs, sugar, and oil together in a mixing bowl, then stir in the dry goods until everything has just combined. Fold in the zucchini, and finish mixing, then place in two greased and floured 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pans.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour, at least until a toothpick put in the center comes out almost completely clean.

The next preparation is meant more for snacking or an appetizer. Fried Zucchini is healthy and tasty, and takes only a few minutes to prepare. First, dredge slices of zucchini through a couple of beaten eggs, then through breading (bread crumbs and Parmesan is very tasty), set aside. Bring a couple of inches of olive oil to temperature on a medium-high burner and slip the breaded zucchini in, and let fry until golden brown.

Zucchini, like many squash is a healthy and versatile plant. Taking a little time to find a preparation that works for you is good in the long run. Plus, they are very, very easy plants to grow, and a great way to get a start in your own garden.

Barley is one of the top cereal grain crops in the world, in fourth place behing Corn, Rice, and Wheat. However, it is probably one of the most underrated of all the cereal grains, particularly in the US, where the vast majority of it is used as feed for livestock, and most of what isn’t used for animal feed is used in the production of Beer. Sweet, sweet beer.

Don’t get me wrong, Beer is a fantastic thing, and so is livestock, or at least the meat that comes from Livestock, but Barley is a very tasty grain, that simply doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Barley comes in a few different varieties, probably the most popular being Pearl Barley, the kind you’ve most likely seen in your beef and barley soup, but I’m here to advocate you resist the lure of pearl barley, which gets it’s white color by removing the nutrient-rich bran coat, and stick with the healthier dehulled barley.

So, what is barley good for? Besides Beer and Animal feed? Well, Barely can be used just about anywhere that rice can, and with similar results, though different flavor. I wouldn’t try barley sushi, but aside from that, I’d feel free to experiment. But, there are some very common preparations, such as the aforementioned Beef Barley soup, and there is my personal favorite barley salad, whose recipe I’ll share shortly.

Beef Barley soup is a classic soup that is very easy to make. Brown some beef in a pot, cheap meat is good for this, and then add water, onions, celery, carrots, barley, whatever else you want really, and let it cook. Easy and fairly fast. But worth it, particularly on a late fall day.

But my favorite barley recipe is a simple barley salad, that I typically construct as follows.

Serves 2 People

1 c Barley

1/4 large onion, julienned

1/2 fennel bulb, chopped

Several slices of bacon

Cut the bacon into smaller pieces, and fry it up. Reserve some of the bacon drippings. Turn the heat down to low on the bacon drippings and add the onion, a pinch of salt, and let it sweat.

Once the barley is done cooking, rinse it in cool water, to bring it down to a cool temperature, then put in a bowl. Add the bacon bits, fennel, and onion to the barley and toss the salad. Serve with a lemon and oil dressing.

It’s delicious, and fast, and simple. And it may just help you discover how great a grain this is.

Continuing our series on improving self reliance and depending less on industrial foodstuffs, both for health and economic reasons, I’d like to talk a bit about canning. Catherine and I (well, mostly Catherine) spent the majority of Sunday this weekend processing the 25 pounds of fresh peaches we’d bought at the Moscow Farmer’s Market, which incidentally cost only $17.50 for the case. Farmer’s Markets are awesome.

The problem, of course, with buying 25 pounds of peaches is that you then have 25 pounds of peaches. Even if you have a large family, this is a ridiculous amount of fruit, and if you just try to eat it all, your entire family is likely to be sick of peaches by the time you’re all out. Of course, the majority of the canning process does apply to any fruit, we had peaches, so that is what I’m planning to address today.

One thing that is fairly consistent with all fruit is the need to skin them, luckily peaches, and other soft-fleshed fruits, make this pretty easy. To skin a peach, it’s best to employ that blanch. A blanch is a simple process of putting a fruit or vegetable in boiling water for a short period of time (it depends on the fruit/vegetable), and then removing it, and putting it in an ice bath. With peaches, this interval is between 20 and 30 seconds. Once in the ice bath, it’s easy to pluck the peach from the icy water, and simply wipe the skin off with a paper towel. Perfectly skinned peaches in no time at all. This is best done with two people, one handling the boiling phase, and other skinning the peaches.

Once you’ve got your skinned peaches, the time has come to process them. Generally this begins with slicing the peaches, but from there it really depends on what you’re trying to do. For the Peach Butter, we put them in the food processor and processed them until we had mostly a paste. You don’t want it completely smooth, only mostly. Then, add the peaches to a pan, with some sugar and boil for a little while. Preserves and Jam are both similar, though they involve chunkier chops, and the addition of pectin to the mix as a thickening agent.

I’d give recipes, but to be honest, I’m not 100% sure we’ve figured it out yet. Catherine used the recipes from the Ball Blue Book of Presevering, but the bit of Jam that I tasted (which was the dregs on the bottom of the pan) was insanely sweet, having added 7.5 cups of sugar to about 4 pounds of peaches. This may well be related to the freshness of the peaches we were using. Alton Brown explains in the Season 10 episode of Good Eats, “Peachy Keen”, that once a peach has been plucked from the tree, it’s sugar content is locked, but it will continue to soften. This suggests that peaches sold in your average large supermarket are picked early, so that they’re at a good level of firmness by the time they reach the store, though they’ll never be as sweet as more local peaches. Of course, I could be off-base, and the jam may be the perfect level of sweetness, but I suspect that fresh peaches from local growers should probably have less sugar added than peaches bought at the supermarket. They’re just going naturally sweeter because the time to market is so much less.

Anyway, on to the actual canning process. First, you need a collection of jars, and lids with rubber locking seals. These are inexpensively found at most hardware stores, but expensively found at most supermarkets. Buy smart. You’ll also want a canning rack for each size of jar you intend to can, and a canning pot, both of which are fairly inexpensive. Canning is a simple matter of bringing the jars to temperature, since adding hot liquid to cold glass is begging a huge mess. Plus, boiling the glass will sanitize it. Place the hot jars in the canning rack, which rests conveniently on the side of your canning pot, which should have near boiling water in it. Fill the jars, then screw the lids on, and drop the rack. Heat processing depends on the size of the jars, and your altitude, but is usually in the neighborhood of 15 minutes. Use your jar lifter to pull the jars out of the water, and set them on the counter to cool. As they cool, you should hear the sound of the rubber seals sucking shut. This is a good sign.

Needless to say, I’ve mentioned at least three pots of boiling liquid in the above description. This is a hot process, and given that yesterday was one of the hottest days in the summer, it was kind of unpleasant. But then, we were canning for close to ten hours, so as long as you don’t marathon it, and spread out the work over a few days, it should be bearable. Unfortunately, Canning is a summer/early fall activity, since that is when the food you want to preserve is available.

After twelve hours or so, the jars should be cool enough to store. One thing to note, is that you should remove the locking ring, as it can hide problems, and make sure that all the lids don’t open easily. If any do, you can still re-heat process them at this stage, but later, an unsealed jar is likely a sign of botulism, and you should stay away. Unless you like paralytic death, I guess.

So please, look into canning. With practice, it should go fairly quickly, and be reasonably easy. It takes time, but most of that time is waiting for water to boil, so other activities can be pursued while the water boils. Plus, you know exactly what’s in your food, and it can often be cheaper. It’s a matter of priorities, certainly, but it’s worth considering. In the near future, I hope to get some old recipes for canning, both from Catherine’s Great-Grandmother, and perhaps my own, so that I can provide better recipes. In the meantime, the Ball Blue Book is pretty good, and again, not terribly expensive.