Putting Food By

Is what families have done for centuries.

Summer harvest preserved for winter eating

Grandmother did it in order to have food for the winter,

Mother did it because she liked home canned green beans, she had a concord grape vine

and so "free" jelly, she preferred home canned peaches and the garden always yielded a lot o tomatoes.

A gift from a very generous friend, a five gallon pickle bucket of tomatoes

produced 11 jars of canned tomatoes, two jars of tomato and onion jam

and a jar of pickled green cherry tomatoes

To be put on the fruit cellar shelves

And some jalapeños from that same friend

Yielded 8 jars of hot pepper jelly

Every year, I also make the tutti fruiti

starting with the season's first strawberries and added fruit in season

Apricots are among the last of the fruits to be added

Stone fruit and berries and sugar and brandy 

An age old method of preserving fruit

All the fruit is now added -- time to sit on a dark corner of the

larder -- to age for a month to six weeks.

Also in the freezer (but not as picture pretty) are local strawberries, local blueberries, zucchini shredded and ready to add to cakes or bread, pimento peppers.

We try to save what we can for we prefer our own preserved fresh produce

rather than commercially processed fruits and vegetables.

Still on the agenda . . . more tomatoes, zucchini relish, bread and butter pickles, pesto, and peaches.

I'm an old fashioned canner in fact I use my mother's canner.

I'm a water bath girl -- for I'm fearful of a pressure canner.

Therefore, I do not can green beans (although mother did)

All of my canning is either sugar laden or laced with vinegar

I enjoy canning and I have a sense of pride when I see the shelves in the fruit cellar laden with my home canned produce.

And it is fun when I have company and they compliment me on the strawberry cobbler I'm serving for dessert that it is local and from the freezer!