Others may dust off thebrlarge stock pots, canning racks and mason jars they have in storage and brushbrup on new recipes and preservation safety guidelines. Some may even expandbrtheir repertoire with a dehydrator or vacuum sealer, or experiment withbrfreezing, sun dryers or low-temperature oven drying.
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I’mbrfortunate to have grown up around people that preserved food as a yearlybractivity. My mom was an avid canner, as was my dad’s mother. While we had abrsmall city backyard garden that grew a few tomatoes, peppers and maybe somebrlettuce, my grandparents on both sides devoted much of their backyards tobrfull-sun vegetable gardens, as well as some fruit.
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My grandmother’s raspberry bushes produced abrseemingly endless supply from which she made dozens of jars of jewel-red jambr(jelly was too time consuming with all the cheesecloth straining andbrrestraining). What couldn’t be processed was frozen for winter use. I alsobrrecall her making countless jars of tomatoes and fabulous bread-and-butterbrpickles.
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They also had grapevines:brconcords in Antioch and “grapes” at my grandma’s house in the city. I recall mybrmom bringing home baskets full of ripe grapes to make a natural-style juicebrthat we enjoyed in the winter, as well as grape jam. My grandma’s neighbors hadbran abundant damson plum tree, and they eagerly shared the excess fruit. Onebryear, my mom found recipes for canning plum butter, which was quickly followedbrby pear butter (pear trees in Antioch), and also by peach butterbr(store-bought). Butters combine ripe fruit with spices for a flavorful jelly andbrjam alternative. After college, I made butters for a couple of years using mybrmom’s canning equipment. I still own her large stockpot and jar racks and lookbrforward to trying some new recipes this year, as well as continuing tobrdehydrate or freeze tomatoes and other veggies.
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Interested in trying yourbrhand at food preservation? We hope you are! To get you motivated, JuliebrPeterson spoke with some Chicago area food preservation experts, and offersbrtips for easy ways to get started in her article, “Preserving the Harvest,” asbrwell as some great recipes in print and on our website at NAChicago.com. Do you have a favoritebrpreserved food recipe you’d like to share? Please email it to us at [email protected] and we may add it to ourbrweb recipe collection. If canning doesn’t fit your lifestyle right now, we havebrplenty of other great articles for you to enjoy this month, as we focus onbrholistic dental care, plus self-care tips, fitness, good eating, green living,brnatural Chicago and healthy pets.
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As always, I urge you tobrplease make your best effort to step outside each day, observe the season’sbrnatural progression, look for monarchs and other butterflies, silently observebra tree in the breeze, dance in the rain if you’d like and savor the latebrsummer. Be well, please continue to stay safe and take daily action to makebrpositive change happen in our world.
Peggy
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