DON’T KNOW NOTHIN’ BOUT CANNING NO KEIFERS

Condensation hangs wet and heavy upon all of my window panes this cold night nearing the full moon of November. And here I was concerned about not having the humidifier up and running as the temperature drops and the air turns dry...

A couple of years ago we lost a beautiful Celtic harp and a bamboo didgeridu to the desert-like conditions of our house in winter. With a sickening crack like the sound of a breaking shin, each of them in turn split as the moisture was sucked out of their respective marrows and into the thirsty air.

But not so today. Nope.

I have spent most of the day – about nine hours – canning. Not exactly the most “high-tech” thing to do, but it is work that I enjoy. It reminds me that, not so long ago, this type of activity was a necessity if one hoped to live through winter with enough food to eat. It is easy to forget the closeness of those realities in today’s pre-packaged with a shelf-life of six hundred and ten years shove it in aluminum / plastic / cardboard with enough preservatives to make Hammurabi look like a young boy again world.

Both of my grandmothers lived in that not-so-distant-world of the not-so-distant-past, and because I paid attention, that reality was passed along to me. As a child, I watched one of my grandmothers diligently put up food for the winter, pretty much all summer and autumn long. For hours in the hot afternoons of summer she would sit in the basement where it was cool, peeling, slicing, boiling, canning, bushel after bushel of food that she had grown. (She did the harvesting in the morning and evening when it was cooler outside.) I rode my tricycle around the basement pretending that she was the “gas station” where I would periodically fuel up on sliced apples, peaches, or whatever she happened to be preserving that day.

During this, I asked her the million questions you would expect from any four year old…

“What are you doing?” “Why do you have to boil it?” “How come?” “Can I have another apple?”

She patiently and thoroughly answered every question I asked. If only I had the power of total recall…

But since I don’t, it is lucky that I inherited her canning books and had the good fortune to be able to photo-copy all of her handwritten recipes.

From my other grandmother, I inherited the canner itself. When I expressed an interest in canning, she offered to give me her twenty-two quart pressure cooker / canner. It is HUGE. In it, I can process twenty pints at the same time and it weighs a bloody ton. Of course, it came with all of the dire verbal warnings about explosions…. They can blow, you know.

Apparently, I was witness to this sort of mishap as a child, though I have no memory of it. The steam valve became clogged while my mother was making tomato sauce, and when the offending bit of tomato finally dislodged itself in front of a heavy force of steam, the sauce blew all over the kitchen ceiling.

I was actually initiated into the Cult of Canning about a year ago. A friend of mine and I decided to can meat to take to camp with us, since when living outdoors for two and half weeks, it is impossible to keep meat refrigerated. Neither one of us had ever canned before, and with all the dangers of contamination with meat and our total lack of experience, we thought it wise to bring in an expert.

A friend of hers had a big, heavy duty, screw down the lid kind of canner, as well as years of expertise in the operation. Under her watchful supervision, we boiled jars, seared beef, ostrich, venison and chicken, shoved them into jars, brought up the pressure, then sat and watched the gauge like a flock of hawks for the next hour and a half.

The biggest mistake that folks make with a pressure canner is to walk away and not pay attention to it. If the pressure builds up too much, well, the whole thing can explode. This is especially unfortunate if one is canning at the time, because though food particles and boiling water are dangerous enough substances to be flying at high speed through one’s kitchen, the addition of broken glass adds shrapnel to the lava.

Never turn your back on the pressure canner. Never.

Aside from that, there isn’t a whole lot to worry about. Still, I admit that I was a bit nervous. Frankly, I would have felt perfectly safe, but only while wearing a welding helmet and a lead apron. However, that just seemed a bit over the top.

Instead of facing my fears, I learned a new skill instead. Welcome to the world of water bath canning where nothing is ever in danger of exploding…

Unlike meat, acidic fruit doesn’t really need to be brought to the high temperatures which only trapped steam can provide – boiling is quite adequate in this case. The friend with whom I had learned to can came over after work and helped out, making the job quicker and much more entertaining. She, too, had only worked with a pressure canner and meat, so the water bath method was new to her as well.

I had three grocery bags of Keifer pears which another mutual friend of ours had bequeathed to me since her tree bore more fruit this year than any six families could possibly consume. My grandmother passed along the recipes for canning Keifer pears that her mother had used, so with the aid of one grandmother’s books and the other grandmother’s verbal guidance, I set forth on my adventure.

First of all, the pears had to be peeled, cored and sliced, which took a great deal of time in and of itself. I had picked up a contraption that screws onto a table top at a thrift store last year which will peel fruit by the use of a crank handle, but the fruit must be VERY firm. If it isn’t, it just gets mangled in a truly unattractive way. (I found this out a few times today.) I also procured a ridiculously expensive, frighteningly sharp and very ergonomic paring knife which was definitely worth the investment.

Per my grandmother’s mother’s recipes, I made some with vanilla and some with pineapple. Just for kicks, I made some others with cinnamon, and yet others with combinations of all the ingredients. I put up twenty-two pints today, and still have one bag left for tomorrow, along with a half bushel of Fuji apples. With these, I intend to make apple-pear sauce, which is basically applesauce where half of the apples are pears. I am, however, nearly out of jars. Time to make a trip to my mother-in-law’s house to get more…

It’s funny to me how there are so many women involved in some way in my canning experience… The grandmothers who gave me the know-how, the recipes and the equipment, the mother who first introduced my sub-conscious to the horrors of pressure cooking explosions, the friend who offered all the pears I could carry, the other friend who happily spent her Friday night helping me can, the friend of hers who taught us how to do it in the first place, the mother-in-law who gave me the jars…

And now, on this chilly November night, my house is all warm, steamy and filled with the scent of pears, vanilla and cinnamon. As the jars cool on the table, I periodically hear the satisfying “pop” as another metal top gently implodes in the center signifying that another pint has achieved vacuum and successfully sealed. Ten years ago, this is not what I would have spent my Friday night doing, but frankly this is a lot more gratifying and hey – I’ve got pears for the entire winter.