Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

You heard it here, folks---canning is the new baking. We've seen a surge in baking during the downturn as people look for fruitful, economical ways to spend their time. We are approaching the fruit season, at least in the South. Canning fruits is literally fruitful, as well as enjoyable and useful. I canned this apple butter last fall and am now enjoying the results. All sorts of other foods can be canned, too. A batch requires some care for sterilization and cleaning but doesn't take a whole lot of time. Canning is the activity we need for these times. The old ways have their uses...

Given my abundance of apples, I decided that I had enough apples for both applesauce and apple butter. Applesauce is a simpler dish. Apple butter is cooked longer to make it thicker, cooked in apple juice or cider for extra flavor, and is heavily spiced. Here are the apples in the pot at the start of the cooking process. Once the apples were soft, I ran them through the food mill to break them down and separate the peels. The milled apples were put back into the pot for more cooking. Once everything was done I loaded it into jars and put them into the pressure canner. I have consumed one jar of applesauce which was delicious; the rest will last me through the dinner.

Canning two crates of peaches takes a considerable effort. The first step is to peel the peaches. The most efficient way is to put them in boiling water for a few minutes to loosen the skin. Once the peaches have been peeled and diced, I cook them with pectin and sugar, then pack the preserves into sterilized jars while everything is still hot. Processing the peaches from one crates requires three batches of canning in my pressure canner. The canner, of course, takes time to cool off after every batch.

I love figs. Their taste is just a little sweet and just a little earthy. I love their texture too, which doesn't translate well into jam. But even minus the texture, fig jam makes a wonderful treat in the dead of winter. This is the time of year to find fresh figs in the produce section and I always try to take advantage. Here are the figs, some water, a little lemon juice, and the low-sugar pectin. After cooking down the fruit for a few minutes, I added sugar. I brought the mixture back to a hard boil for one minute. I loaded the cooked jam into jars and processed them in the pressure canner. They will join their canned fruit bretheren on the shelf to see daylight later this winter.

I have finished my fruit preserves. I have 30 pints of peach preserves at a cost of about $1.50 per pint; I also saved peaches for four pies. I also have 27 pints of strawberry preserves at a cost of about $1.25 per pint. These are all low-sugar preserves. All this took me over two weeks of steady work, first prepping the fruit and storing it in the freezer, then steadily canning it batch by batch. Some of this will be given away as gifts, the rest will keep me going until next spring. I use preserves almost every day. I may have overdone it a little bit this year but I do make good use of them. When I give them away, I counsel my friends to not open the jar right away but to wait for a cold winter's day to brighten things up.

Now that I have bought all those peaches, I need to prep them for canning. I put the peaches into hot water for a few minutes until their skins are loose. The water is steaming but not boiling. About five minutes is usually enough. Once I pull them out, I take off the skins quickly to help them cool more quickly. After a few minutes, when they are cool enough to handle, I pit them and cut the flesh into pieces. I then put them into a plastic bag along with a little sugar to absorb the peaches' water. I can freeze the bag until I have a little more time to cook and can the preserves.

Good tomato sauce requires a balance. On the one hand, it needs to be thick, which means removing water. On the other hand, it needs to taste fresh. Cooking the sauce for a long time increases its acidity and makes it taste less fresh. I stumbled upon an interesting technique to reduce the water content of the sauce without cooking---I froze the tomatoes. I bought a case of roma tomatoes for canning. Thanks to a clogged kitchen sink, I couldn't make and can the sauce when I planned. Desperate, I put the tomatoes in the chest freezer for a few days---I put them on trays lined with parchment. When I got back to the tomatoes, they were frozen solid and quite pretty, particularly after a little frost accumulated on them from the open air. I filled my pan with tomatoes and started to heat them. The liquid that came out was perfectly clear. As I drained off several batches of liquid, I started to get a little particulate matter, but the liquid was still mostly clear. Heating no...

Summer is a wonderful time of year for anyone who loves food. The harvest brings a cascade of flavors, smells, and sights. Canning allows us to capture those sensations and replay them in the cold winter. And the canning process is fun in itself. Here is my updated process for tomato sauce. I've been canning sauce for about 20 years and I am still working on my technique. This batch comes from Osage Farms, my favorite farm stand, just north of Clayton. I start by taking the stem connectors out of the tomatoes (Romas) and cutting them in half. I then cook them on the stove for a few minutes. Once cooked, I can drain off excess water. The longer you cook tomato sauce, the more acidic it gets. Draining water helps reduce the cooking time; the water is pretty clear so it doesn't take out much flavor. This step also loosens the skins which I can pick off with a fork. I also sweat some onions. I throw everything into the crock pot. For a long time, I cooked my...

I got into the habit of canning tomato sauce when I lived in New Jersey.  There's a reason that Campbell's Soup is headquartered in New Jersey---they have a heck of a lot of tomatoes.  I would make at least one, and sometimes two bushels of Roma tomatoes into sauce, can it, and then have it to eat all winter long. I bought my box of tomatoes at the Buford Highway Farmer's Market for about $20.  I keep my canned sauce simple, adding just some onions, a tiny bit of salt, and a little basil.  When I use the sauce, I have plenty of opportunity to add things to the sauce as the situation demands.   This year, I tried two new techniques that worked out pretty well.  After cutting up the tomatoes and cutting off the stem area, I heated them in the microwave before I put them into the pot.  As the tomatoes cooked, they let off water, which I drained off.  The water had a little bit of tomato taste but not too much---I tasted it to be sure. Both ...