Canning and Preserving

We tend to think of canning and preserving as belonging to the farmstead, but you might be surprised how many urbanites can, pickle and preserve their own food. In my neighborhood in Queens, it took trips to three stores to get enough jars for this year's canning. When I asked, the proprieters of all three said that they had a run on canning supplies. This was confirmed by my greengrocer, who was selling fresh fruit as quickly as his staff could display it. The Greek lady with whom I split the last flat of half-pints was going to perserve summer's fennel with capers and lemons; mine went to cherries macerated in brandy. Both will find their way to tables of the autumn and winter, and bring with them memories of that day in August when the heat broke records.

As I've written before, for my grandmother, a survivor of the Great Depression, summer canning and preserving were as expected a part of the yearly cycle of homekeeping as spring plowing or fall planting. I still remember jelly bags hanging off of the same tree that the apples came from, dripping amber to "feed the ground." A sweet simmer of raspberries from the briars by the wellhouse perfumed the air as an apronned church woman stirred a big enamel pot on the stove. A group of women sat at the kitchen table, each perfectly preparing vegetables from their own gardens for chow-chow: Mrs. Eden's green tomatoes, Mrs. Clark's peppers, Mrs. Cross' cabbage, my grandmother's onions. To me and my tiny hands (and, unlike my siblings and cousins, thanks to my interest in doing it) fell the task of washing jars in tubs of suds and setting them to dry on racks.

I admit that I am viewing this through the lens of memory -- colored, therefore, by nostalgia -- but it seems that these women worked together instinctively. I recall no arguing, no competitiveness among them. I understand that, as I was a child, they may have shielded me from contretemps, but I really don't believe there were any. These were women who had survived long, hard times -- some on the same collective farm where my own grandmother had weathered the Depression with a husband who literally worked himself to death and three stairstep kids -- because they worked collectively. They even learned how to turn necessity, which can so easily become a chore, into an expression of positivity; practicality into hope. Every jar of tomatoes was a meal of the future, even if it was to be heated on coals and served over what was left of the white rice. Every jar of jam is a promise that things were once good, and will be good again -- so much a promise that uncapping the jar was as much a celebration of the moment as the popping of any champagne cork.

Appearing on Martha Stewart's tv show a while back, Martin Franklin, Chairman of Jarden (home of the Ball jar), mentioned that home preserving sees a spike upwards during times of economic uncertainty. Whatever other pleasures they offer, canning and preserving are fundamentally insurance against future want. But what a beautiful expression that insurance takes, for canning and preserving are also a way of preserving moments -- the moment of peak freshness, and the moment of opening the jar.

Here is the tally of this year's promise: pear and cranberry jam, apple jelly, pepper jelly, macerated cherries, tarragon vinegar, chile vinegar, dill pickles, and fennel relish. This fall, I'll make filling for Thanksgiving pies, chow-chow for relish trays, and some of the spiced apple rings that speak of another grandmother, whose stories were not of the Oklahoma dust bowl but the Pennsylvania mountains.