Disclaimer: this is NOT a political "Yes we can" post of any kind. It truly is about Autumn canning; the process of preserving fruit and vegetables for later months.
Canning....I believe that for most people, canning is an activity that conjures up images of happy families, wholesome recipes, organic living, old world charm, happy grandmothers, etc. In fact, many people probably view canning with an special aura of nostalgia as in many parts of the world canning is a bit of a dying art...and I know why. Because all of that is...balderdash. It's just an fantastical nonsense perpetrated by myth and portrayed in YouTube videos.
To be more to the point, I'm convinced that canning was the actual cause of...yes...World War One. If you took the time to research this (because I have, in our never ending quest to discover some sort of unknown secret canning recipe that has been long-lost in a random pantry book) you'd discover that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand had nothing to do with politics, nationalism, or ethnic differences. Instead, the roots of geopolitical discourse lie in misery that comes along with canning. I can only imagine the Archduke's assassin, Gavrilo Princip, tormented by the Austro-Hungarian spices, screaming "too much paprika!" as he fired the fatal shots at the Archduke and his wife with the Archduke's actual dying words being"ensure that the jars are sterilized." True story.
Now, before going on and telling you of my own personal canning experience, trials and tribulations, I want to ensure that I have not left you with a fuzzy or unclear impression of how I feel about canning and what canning really means to families and would like to offer an allegory to better articulate my position on this.
I once heard that the true test of a marriage is for a husband and wife to take a long road trip together to an unfamiliar location. It's the journey that is a real test. I agree. So imagine, if this couple (perhaps you) live in New York and they decide to drive to Phoenix, Arizona because they've heard about the mystical "dry heat" and are convinced that it must be better than New York. They borrow a friend's in a 1987 Hyundai in July with a broken air conditioner. The husband is at the wheel of a stick shift (and of course, he only knows how to drive an automatic) and the wife is in the passenger seat armed with two large folding maps: one of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the other ....of Bucharest, Romania; both lovely cities in their own right, but have very little to do with your route. "No worries" the husband reassures his wife, "there are always be minor inconveniences, but this will be an experience to remember." This is EXACTLY how canning begins! Not having all the right instruments or ingredients and your armed with a whimsical"devil may care" attitude about what lies ahead, but the Yankee "can do" spirit keeps you fixated on the delusional belief that "it will be worth it." Right? right! So, back to the allegory. This should be a straight forward trip AND there are road signs, motels, restaurants and everything you could want in case you need it. What can go wrong? After all, Vikings crossed the Atlantic with no maps, less tools and convenience and set up colonies! And so begins their trip. By day two they can't find good music on the radio and forced to converse about the weather, what to expect, the neighbor's cat stealthily killing the garden azaleas, etc. By day three they're tired of conversation and she's fiddling with the radio (much to her husband's chagrin) after spending three hours wrestling with the maps in an attempt to fold them properly; often opening them in his face while he's driving, she just shoves it into the glove compartment out of frustration. He, meanwhile, is busy swerving through traffic, mentally calculating the distance that they have to the next gas station as the car is running on gasoline fumes as he searches for the next gas station because he knows that there just must be cheaper gas across the state line and he refuses to stop before then. By day four, tired and complaining about the exorbitant costs of the hotels and dining - after all, "they weren't that expensive LAST year," they simultaneously come to a sudden realization and as they turn to each other and exclaim in unison "What the hell! We're only in New Jersey?!" Now, IF you both actually make it to the intended destination alive - the marriage will last. If one of you is left at the gas station when you come out of the restroom or if we need to send out a search party for a body, well...perhaps it wasn't meant to be. THIS, my friends, is what canning is like!
Now I told you that to tell you this...
Every year, we convince ourselves that canning is a) beneficially economic ("This will save us SO much money!" and 2) that this is for our health and well-being ("homemade" dishes taste better and are so much better for you because you know what goes inside them"), etc. Granted, as history has repeatedly pointed out, what canning really does is every year - at minimum - turns the kitchen, the balcony, the hallway, etc. into a dirty war zone with kilos of fruits and vegetables; all of which contribute to the gnawing on the steely nerves of marriage. Little things that normally wouldn't bother you, now seem like nasty, vindictive, Machiavellian conspiracies and plots that interweave home cuisine with heartache...and "yes" I am still talking about canning!
Yet, we still attempt this in some sort of naive hope and expectation that it will have a different outcome, which I believe is the definition of insanity.
Regardless, we start out with discussions to mentally prepare ourselves for what lies ahead and get into "canning" mode. For us, canning "discussions" are sometimes (OK, often) become rather heated, loud and intense - every year.
Recipes and what to prepare: First we have discussions about what will be canned. This is based on time needed, popular favorites, staples, what's in season and experiments with new recipes. It sounds like we are making a plan, doesn't it? Happily there are favorites and staples like Tkemali sauce, Abjat sandal, marinated red bell peppers in garlic oil, marinara sauce, etc. Then there are traditional dishes that cause a bit more...consternation.
At morning coffee we ease into canning discussion...
"Ok, I need 7 kilos of eggplant for lecho" Madame DuPont announces
"Lecho? You want to make lecho again? I make a face and sip my coffee
"Of course I'm making it again!"
"We make it every year and honestly, I'm not so much of a lover of lecho. Let's make something different this year!"
"We can make lecho AND something different!"
"But think of the time that it takes to make that and then who eats it..."
"You don't have to eat it. Other people will eat it"
"Yeah, but I have to make it..."
"You don't make it! I do!"
"True, but I have to help you make it"
"So don't help"
"But if I don't help, the other food spoils and then we have to throw it away"
"Nothing will spoil"
"How do you know that?"
"Because I found some recipes on Internet!"
Oh boy! Imagine my joy when I know that we are making food that is not a popular favorite and thinking to experiment with new recipes.
Every canning season, Madame DuPont leaps on Internet for recipes as though it was a lifeboat in a sea of canning turmoil. True, every year, she does find many interesting and clever recipes to try and it's not that I'm against looking up new recipes and trying something new. The problem is that she intends to make twice the amount or more of something that we have never made before because it looks so good and so easy to make. Then becomes thoroughly disheartened when it doesn't turn out as she thought it would and swears that she will never do this again, which....we always do.
Preparation: The first thing to remember about canning is that if you actually believe that you will be saving yourself "so much money" during the winter and holidays that you must can good in large qualities for the masses. When we can, it's like we are "canning for prison." Don't think that you will be doing yourself any favors of you can like in YouTube videos or cooking shows where the host cans 3-6 1/2 liter jars of figs from a friend's garden and claims that she is now"prepared for the winter." No, my friends, if you are going to can, you can like Napoleon's army is on it's way to the front. This requires pots of various sizes, jars, instruments, more than one person to assist and who has recipes of their own. All at the same time - and unless you have some sort of industrial style kitchen in your home - all in one kitchen with one stove.
Ingredients: Now that we have all the jars and pots and plan (and I use "plan" in the very loosest of interpretations), we have to buy ingredients in - mass quantity, you know to make this economically beneficial for us. Now every year, we buy as much as possible on one trip to save us frequent trips to the bazaar. Plus, when you buy in mass, you get a better deal if you buy just a little extra. For example, if we only need 3 kilos of cucumbers, but are willing to buy 5 kilos, then we get a very good discount. Who wouldn't want that, right? or buy a potato sack of onions and not just per kilo and save yourself three dollars. Awesome. Now, here are the downsides for us buying in mass. First, we live in an apartment. As a result, we end up with a small bazaar of fruit and vegetables in EVERY room of the apartment as there is only so much room in the kitchen. Yes, we put some on the balcony and in the garage as possible, but even so, we track in dirt all over the apartment, trip over bags and compete with time as you need to can all of this as much as possible. Second, since we now have extra ingredients that need to be used up. We never want to add to the existing recipe as it would throw measurements off and there is not enough to make a second batch of the existing recipe. As a result, you have to find a new recipe to use the extra ingredients (i.e. going back to the Internet to now re-research for recipes), which leads us into the third problem: time. Food spoils (trust me). Remember that great deal we made on buying a potato sack of onions? Not only, does that "great deal" now contribute to the heartache of canning pain because never in the history of man has one family been able to utilize an entire potato sack of onions before the garage smells of fermenting onions,! but now we have also successfully limited our own precious time to prepare food in an orderly manner and now rush to can it as soon as possible. How does one remedy this? well...("spoiler" alert) - more than one person will be canning their own recipe at the same time in that one kitchen with that one stove. Yes, I understand all of this could have been avoided if we just canned what we had and would go back to the bazaar to buy ingredients as needed, but that is not how canning works. You buy before the season ends.
So now that there are mountains of vegetables littering the house, you begin to prepare the dishes...together...sharing one kitchen, one stove, and limited kitchen space. Sharing ideas and opinions (often the unasked for ones). Sharing limited instruments and needed pots. Sharing the sink to wash someone else pot while they wash their vegetables. Yeah..."SHARING." The only reason that you would see grandma alone gleefully canning away alone and not with the entire family is because she buried them in the backyard under the gladiolas for messing around and moving the pots and pans in her kitchen. Canning is the basis for the expression "too many cooks in the kitchen." When you cook - you are in charge..of YOUR dish. Granted, you ask for someone's thought about salt and maybe sugar, but in reality, you actually don't care! You're simply being polite. On the rare occasion that perhaps it needs a pinch of salt more, you OK with that. It doesn't compromise the dish and brings people together...or does it?
Watching and offering you opinion.
One day, I'm grating carrots and see that Madame DuPont is dumping a pile (what seemed to be a kilogram) of onions from her chopping board into the pot.
"What are putting in there?"
She pauses to look at me, looks down at the onions on the cutting board in her hand and looking back at me, she responds "A kitten! What does it look like? Onions of course"
"Onions?! No, no, no! Don't put too many onions in that!"
"What are you talking about?" slowly scraping the onions into the pot
"No one likes that many onions"
"What do you mean "no one likes that many onions?" You gotta have onions! I like onions!"
This is when I begin to feel like we are re-creating the prison scene from "Goodfellas," working in the kitchen in our bathrobes telling each other what to put in the dish.
"Yeah...but you're the exception. Seriously THAT is too many onions! Remember the last time you made pizza and put onions on top?"
"Yes, it was great and everybody loved it"
"It wasn't great and nobody loved it - except for you. People told you that it was too many onions"
"How can you have too many onions? You can't have too many onions!"
"Trust me - you CAN and you DO! The sauce is like Poland and the onions are like Nazis! They make you cry and will just take over the entire dish!"
"What are you talking about?! The onions add flavor and life to a bland dish! Without the onions this dish won't "live," it will just..."exist!""
"OK, OK, FINE! Add onions! But if no one eats..."
"Everyone WILL eat this and LOVE it!" followed by " or else!" muttered under her breath as she scraped the remaining onions from the cutting board into the pot.
Yeah, that's how we like to feed our guests - they eat out of fear and intimidation.
This year I decided to make plum preserves. Why? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I probably saw it somewhere on Internet or was getting a great deal at the bazaar. Regardless, I bought two varieties - red and violet. My idea was that the red kind would be for jam and the smaller violet kind to pit and preserve whole.
The red went beautifully. Rich, smooth, delicious. Absolutely no complaints.
The violet...not so much. For some reason, I couldn't remove the pits and keep the integrity of the plum that I wanted. Most of the time I would end up with a pulpy mess with a pit in one hand, a knife in the other and a rising blood pressure.
"What the...." I muttered struggling with the plums "Why you little...." at those slipping between my fingers "I swear..." voice rising "Godverdomme!!!" as I sat there with juice all over my clothes.
"What's wrong NOW?" Madame DuPont asked tired of my swearing and complaining and looking over from the stove
"What's wrong?! I've spent 4 hours of my life that I'll never get back trying to pit these plums! It's making me crazy! This should be so easy - just make a small incision into the plum, break it open just enough for the pit and the pit should come out! But does it come out? NO! Instead, I'm left sitting in the middle of fruit carnage!"
"Maybe you're not cutting the incision deep enough"
"If I cut it any deeper, the blade of the knife will go through the plum into my hand!"
"Maybe the plum isn't ripe"
"Isn't ripe?! Look at these plums! Any more ripe and they will be mush!"
"Maybe...."
"Because these are the plums from hell! OK? I can't get the pit out without destroying plum! The pit refuses to exit just to spite me! I dare say that these are Satan's plums!"
"Satan's plums?" she says raising her eyebrows
"Yes! Satanic plums! Oh we should have known it when we bought them from that toothless, old witch of a lady in the bazaar! "Tasty plums" she cooed. Hah! These plums are the plums of pure evil. They will cause the downfall of humanity!" A wee bit of an exaggeration on my part, but needed to bring my point home.
"Do you want some help?"
"Yes, go out and find me an exorcist"
"If is's so much trouble, then just throw them away!"
"Throw them away?!" I gasped. Obviously this woman doesn't know me! "PLEASE, I paid $2.30 for six kilo of plums! No, no, no! I'm not letting these plums get the best of me! I'll make jam and sauce out of each and every one of them if I have to!"
"Fine, sit there and suffer" Madame DuPont says while taking one of the plums and biting into it "but you know, for being the devil's plums, these really ARE tasty" and walked back to her pot on the stove.
Taste testing: Taste testing should be the best part about canning. Little samples of wholesome goodness throughout the day. Mmmm, Mmmm, good! Of course, in reality,it's more like walking blindly into a dark forest that is laden with bear traps.
Madame DuPont spoons a sample out to offer a taste
"I can't tell what it needs" she says walking over to me "Try this for me" she offers me a spoonful of something
"mmm...that's pretty good" tasting it and making contemplative face "what is it?"
"I'm not sure. It was just some recipe that I found on YouTube to use up the the Zucchini."
"I see. Well, perhaps it could use some salt"
"Why? What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing is "wrong" with it, but perhaps a bit more salt will help"
"Help? What do you mean "help"? Don't you think that will be too much salt?"
"If I thought it would be too much salt, I wouldn't suggest it! Honestly, I don't even know what it should taste like! Maybe it should taste like cotton candy! What does the video say? How much salt should you use?"
"I'm not following the video. I'm being creative"
"If you not going to follow the instructions, whats the point of having a recipe?"
"It was to give me ideas on how to use up the extra three kilos of Zucchini!"
"OK! But if you your not following the recipe, you don't know how much salt is needed and therefore, you really don't know how it should taste. So, in that case..it's fine as is"
Still holding the spoon in her hand Madame DuPont tastes the sample
"Really? I think it needs more salt" she says turning back to the pot
Of course as weeks of this go by, the whole "mood" on taste testing has changed. The DuPont kitchen is more like "Hell's Kitchen." Small, cramped, dirty loud, hot, steamy, air filled with various odors, pots on the stove, pots on the counter-tops, bags of vegetables creating a labyrinth of pathways to and from the stove to the sink,etc.
"Try this" Madame dryly offers taking a spoon from a pot cooking on the stove.
"No, I'm good" curtly without looking up from what I'm working on.
"Why not?"
"I'm sure it's ok"
"OK? You're sure it's just "OK"?" she says putting the spoon back into the pot and stares with hands folded across her chest
[oye] "I'm sure that it's better than "OK"
"How sure?"
"100% sure"
"100% sure?"
"yes! 100% SURE. I'm positive that it's better than "OK"!"
"But you won't KNOW until you taste it!"
"FINE" I retorted "I'll taste it" slapping the knife down on the counter top.
Walking over to the hot stove, waving away the steam, I forcefully grab the metal spoon from the pot while intently looking at Madame DuPont in defiance, shovels a heaping spoonful of the dish into my mouth.
Now...I forgot to blow on the spoon to cool it down. I was, however, reminded of this by the sound and smell of sizzling flesh as the spoon laid upon my tongue.
"ROLY RIT! RATS ROT" I gasped with mouth agape and sounding remarkably like Scooby Doo.
"What?! What's wrong with it?"
"AGAARRA! ROT! ROT! RIV ME OTTER!" I wildly exclaim with a lunatic expression eyeing the sink, frantically waving at an open mouth trying to cool down the steam mass of whatever it was.
"What? I don't understand" she stood there
Now, this is when you have to make a split second decision. Do you a) spit the scalding food out and thus insult Madame and provoke a greater argument of fury or b) swallow it along with your pride and care for your physical well-being of your internal organs. I chose "b," which was the equivalent of wrapping my lips around a hot soldering iron while swallowing liquid solder.
Of course, it does begin to cool to a frigid temperature of...molten lava...as it peels away the inner lining of my esophagus on it's way down into my digestive track. Leapfrogging over stools and practically hurdling Madame DuPont away from the sink, I struggle to get a glass from the cupboard and fumble with the faucet while the mental countdown of my life's expectancy ticks away. After drinking a liter of water in a record 3.6 seconds, I slowly regain the partial power of speech and look over at Madame who is eyeing me.
"So how did it taste?" she asked in anticipation
Still swallowing water "It's fabulous darling." I gasped "Let's can it and then you can take me to the hospital."
But those are for our own dishes. So imagine what happens when you "doctor" up someone else recipe, that's when the "real fun" begins...
I walked into the kitchen and I see Madame DuPont about to add something to my pot on the stove.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! what are you doing?" I suspiciously ask
"I'm tasting it"
"yeah, I saw that, but what's that in your hand? What are you planning to do?"
"I going to add some cumin"
"Cumin?! Why? The recipe doesn't call for cumin!"
"It's to enhance the flavor"
"No, no, no! No enhancing the flavor with cumin. This is spicy marinara! If you add that it will cease to be spicy marinara and will be...something completely different! I know how to make this dish! I've been making this dish for years!"
"Yeah, but I think it needs cumin!"
"What sort of psychotic puts cumin into spicy marinara? It's enhanced with pepper!"
"Then it's too spicy and little children can't eat it!"
"It's SPICY marinara! It's supposed to be spicy and it's not for little children! It's for people who know what good food is!"
"This will turn good food into GREAT food!!"
"Look, do I mess with your food and add into it?!" I argue
"Every year!!" she shoots back
"OK, true, but only because I want it to taste better!"
(By the way, if any of you like bit of spice to your food, go to Dino Ferri's site www.hotterthanel.com for GREAT hot sauce. His sauces are flavorful and not the "so hot I can't taste the food kind. FABULOUS sauces and salas!!)
So now, on to the "canning" process...
Lids: Obviously in canning, lids and seals are highly important. My personal preference are the screw top lids. They're easy. They're quick. No fuss, no muss. Madame DuPont on the other hand prefers the old fashion style of lids that require a special instrument to spin around the lid and seal it to the jar. I hate them. Not only do you have to have the correct instrument, good quality lids and gargantuan strength to ensure a tight seal, but the process requires two people: one to spin the tool to seal the lid to the jar and the other to hold the hot jar steady while trying not to cry.
Of course, by now tempers have flared and the other person is less willing to assist due to previous interaction.
"Are you going to help me by holding the jar?!" she asks me as I stand at the door and give her my "is that what you are going to do?" look
"Did you ask me to help?" I respond
"Do I have to ask you to help? You have eyes! You can see what I am doing. If you are planning to eat this, hold the jar. I need to seal it now."
"mmmmm" she hums ignoring me and shrugging her shoulders with indifference, focused more on spinning the canning tool around the lid for the 86th time than on the conversation.
"I think that you do this to make people feel guilty about all the work that goes into it"
She pauses and looks at me straight in the eyes "and THAT'S what makes it taste so good"
Now, over the years, I've been trying find new recipes for all the extra fruit that we have and have. After all, there is only so much jam a family can have and baby do we have it! So, I've begun experimenting with various liqueurs with various degrees of success. This year, because of all the violet plums we had (aka "Satan's plums"), I made plum liqueur.
After bottling some liqueur in an attractive bottle, I call Madame DuPont into the kitchen.
"Plum liqueur!" I announce as though I've discovered the elixir for immortality and doing my best "game show" pose to present the bottle on the counter-top.
"What's it made from?"
[pause]
"Grapefruit" I respond dryly taking out two small glasses from the cupboard "It's PLUM liqueur, so you tell me"
"I meant, what was the alcohol? You're not planning to put that on the table for guests, are you?"
"Oh, but I AM planning putting on the table for guests"
"For them to drink?"
"No, for them to clean the silverware with. Of course for them to drink. Look, it's not like it's turnip wine or anything. It's plum liqueur - plums, sugar, alcohol..."
"What if it isn't any good? What will happen to our guests?"
"Then they'll be dead before morning and we won't need to invite them for New Years. In my mind, a "win - win" situation" as I poured some into a shot glass.
"You can't just put that on the table without knowing how it is! People could get ill"
"Why do you think I called you in here?" handing her the glass "take a sip"
And so....by the end of this season, with blood, sweat and tears, the back of our garage looks like General Paulus' bunker as it is lined with jars and bottles of:
1. kim chi
2. marinated chili peppers
3. eggplant strips
4. spicy peppers and garlic in oil
5. grilled eggplant and vegetables
6. marinara
7. German saurkraut
8. Russian saurkraut (same thing as German, but with apples. I think it's just ploy)
9. Red plum jam
10. Violet plum jam
11. Whole preserved plums
12. Feijoa jam
13. Plum liqueur
14. Feijoa liqueur
15. Nocino (Italian walnut liqueur)
16. Limoncello
17. Lecho with carrots
18. Lecho with eggplant
19. Abjat sandal (Armenian eggplant dish)
20. marinated red bell peppers
21. Apple compote
22. Pomegranate compote
23. Cherry compote
24. Four types of mystery dishes
25. Pickles
26. Pickled tomatoes
27. Pickled garlic
28. Tkemali sauce
29. Abkhazian sauce
30. Plum compote
31. Carrots...something
32. Lemon jam for tea
and a couple more that I can't remember.
"So, if it is so much trouble, why do it?" you might wonder. Well.....Eh! (shrugging) It's something we can do together.
Canning....I believe that for most people, canning is an activity that conjures up images of happy families, wholesome recipes, organic living, old world charm, happy grandmothers, etc. In fact, many people probably view canning with an special aura of nostalgia as in many parts of the world canning is a bit of a dying art...and I know why. Because all of that is...balderdash. It's just an fantastical nonsense perpetrated by myth and portrayed in YouTube videos.
To be more to the point, I'm convinced that canning was the actual cause of...yes...World War One. If you took the time to research this (because I have, in our never ending quest to discover some sort of unknown secret canning recipe that has been long-lost in a random pantry book) you'd discover that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand had nothing to do with politics, nationalism, or ethnic differences. Instead, the roots of geopolitical discourse lie in misery that comes along with canning. I can only imagine the Archduke's assassin, Gavrilo Princip, tormented by the Austro-Hungarian spices, screaming "too much paprika!" as he fired the fatal shots at the Archduke and his wife with the Archduke's actual dying words being"ensure that the jars are sterilized." True story.
Now, before going on and telling you of my own personal canning experience, trials and tribulations, I want to ensure that I have not left you with a fuzzy or unclear impression of how I feel about canning and what canning really means to families and would like to offer an allegory to better articulate my position on this.
I once heard that the true test of a marriage is for a husband and wife to take a long road trip together to an unfamiliar location. It's the journey that is a real test. I agree. So imagine, if this couple (perhaps you) live in New York and they decide to drive to Phoenix, Arizona because they've heard about the mystical "dry heat" and are convinced that it must be better than New York. They borrow a friend's in a 1987 Hyundai in July with a broken air conditioner. The husband is at the wheel of a stick shift (and of course, he only knows how to drive an automatic) and the wife is in the passenger seat armed with two large folding maps: one of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the other ....of Bucharest, Romania; both lovely cities in their own right, but have very little to do with your route. "No worries" the husband reassures his wife, "there are always be minor inconveniences, but this will be an experience to remember." This is EXACTLY how canning begins! Not having all the right instruments or ingredients and your armed with a whimsical"devil may care" attitude about what lies ahead, but the Yankee "can do" spirit keeps you fixated on the delusional belief that "it will be worth it." Right? right! So, back to the allegory. This should be a straight forward trip AND there are road signs, motels, restaurants and everything you could want in case you need it. What can go wrong? After all, Vikings crossed the Atlantic with no maps, less tools and convenience and set up colonies! And so begins their trip. By day two they can't find good music on the radio and forced to converse about the weather, what to expect, the neighbor's cat stealthily killing the garden azaleas, etc. By day three they're tired of conversation and she's fiddling with the radio (much to her husband's chagrin) after spending three hours wrestling with the maps in an attempt to fold them properly; often opening them in his face while he's driving, she just shoves it into the glove compartment out of frustration. He, meanwhile, is busy swerving through traffic, mentally calculating the distance that they have to the next gas station as the car is running on gasoline fumes as he searches for the next gas station because he knows that there just must be cheaper gas across the state line and he refuses to stop before then. By day four, tired and complaining about the exorbitant costs of the hotels and dining - after all, "they weren't that expensive LAST year," they simultaneously come to a sudden realization and as they turn to each other and exclaim in unison "What the hell! We're only in New Jersey?!" Now, IF you both actually make it to the intended destination alive - the marriage will last. If one of you is left at the gas station when you come out of the restroom or if we need to send out a search party for a body, well...perhaps it wasn't meant to be. THIS, my friends, is what canning is like!
Now I told you that to tell you this...
Every year, we convince ourselves that canning is a) beneficially economic ("This will save us SO much money!" and 2) that this is for our health and well-being ("homemade" dishes taste better and are so much better for you because you know what goes inside them"), etc. Granted, as history has repeatedly pointed out, what canning really does is every year - at minimum - turns the kitchen, the balcony, the hallway, etc. into a dirty war zone with kilos of fruits and vegetables; all of which contribute to the gnawing on the steely nerves of marriage. Little things that normally wouldn't bother you, now seem like nasty, vindictive, Machiavellian conspiracies and plots that interweave home cuisine with heartache...and "yes" I am still talking about canning!
Yet, we still attempt this in some sort of naive hope and expectation that it will have a different outcome, which I believe is the definition of insanity.
Regardless, we start out with discussions to mentally prepare ourselves for what lies ahead and get into "canning" mode. For us, canning "discussions" are sometimes (OK, often) become rather heated, loud and intense - every year.
Recipes and what to prepare: First we have discussions about what will be canned. This is based on time needed, popular favorites, staples, what's in season and experiments with new recipes. It sounds like we are making a plan, doesn't it? Happily there are favorites and staples like Tkemali sauce, Abjat sandal, marinated red bell peppers in garlic oil, marinara sauce, etc. Then there are traditional dishes that cause a bit more...consternation.
At morning coffee we ease into canning discussion...
"Ok, I need 7 kilos of eggplant for lecho" Madame DuPont announces
"Lecho? You want to make lecho again? I make a face and sip my coffee
"Of course I'm making it again!"
"We make it every year and honestly, I'm not so much of a lover of lecho. Let's make something different this year!"
"We can make lecho AND something different!"
"But think of the time that it takes to make that and then who eats it..."
"You don't have to eat it. Other people will eat it"
"Yeah, but I have to make it..."
"You don't make it! I do!"
"True, but I have to help you make it"
"So don't help"
"But if I don't help, the other food spoils and then we have to throw it away"
"Nothing will spoil"
"How do you know that?"
"Because I found some recipes on Internet!"
Oh boy! Imagine my joy when I know that we are making food that is not a popular favorite and thinking to experiment with new recipes.
Every canning season, Madame DuPont leaps on Internet for recipes as though it was a lifeboat in a sea of canning turmoil. True, every year, she does find many interesting and clever recipes to try and it's not that I'm against looking up new recipes and trying something new. The problem is that she intends to make twice the amount or more of something that we have never made before because it looks so good and so easy to make. Then becomes thoroughly disheartened when it doesn't turn out as she thought it would and swears that she will never do this again, which....we always do.
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| Pot for marinara sauce |
Ingredients: Now that we have all the jars and pots and plan (and I use "plan" in the very loosest of interpretations), we have to buy ingredients in - mass quantity, you know to make this economically beneficial for us. Now every year, we buy as much as possible on one trip to save us frequent trips to the bazaar. Plus, when you buy in mass, you get a better deal if you buy just a little extra. For example, if we only need 3 kilos of cucumbers, but are willing to buy 5 kilos, then we get a very good discount. Who wouldn't want that, right? or buy a potato sack of onions and not just per kilo and save yourself three dollars. Awesome. Now, here are the downsides for us buying in mass. First, we live in an apartment. As a result, we end up with a small bazaar of fruit and vegetables in EVERY room of the apartment as there is only so much room in the kitchen. Yes, we put some on the balcony and in the garage as possible, but even so, we track in dirt all over the apartment, trip over bags and compete with time as you need to can all of this as much as possible. Second, since we now have extra ingredients that need to be used up. We never want to add to the existing recipe as it would throw measurements off and there is not enough to make a second batch of the existing recipe. As a result, you have to find a new recipe to use the extra ingredients (i.e. going back to the Internet to now re-research for recipes), which leads us into the third problem: time. Food spoils (trust me). Remember that great deal we made on buying a potato sack of onions? Not only, does that "great deal" now contribute to the heartache of canning pain because never in the history of man has one family been able to utilize an entire potato sack of onions before the garage smells of fermenting onions,! but now we have also successfully limited our own precious time to prepare food in an orderly manner and now rush to can it as soon as possible. How does one remedy this? well...("spoiler" alert) - more than one person will be canning their own recipe at the same time in that one kitchen with that one stove. Yes, I understand all of this could have been avoided if we just canned what we had and would go back to the bazaar to buy ingredients as needed, but that is not how canning works. You buy before the season ends.
So now that there are mountains of vegetables littering the house, you begin to prepare the dishes...together...sharing one kitchen, one stove, and limited kitchen space. Sharing ideas and opinions (often the unasked for ones). Sharing limited instruments and needed pots. Sharing the sink to wash someone else pot while they wash their vegetables. Yeah..."SHARING." The only reason that you would see grandma alone gleefully canning away alone and not with the entire family is because she buried them in the backyard under the gladiolas for messing around and moving the pots and pans in her kitchen. Canning is the basis for the expression "too many cooks in the kitchen." When you cook - you are in charge..of YOUR dish. Granted, you ask for someone's thought about salt and maybe sugar, but in reality, you actually don't care! You're simply being polite. On the rare occasion that perhaps it needs a pinch of salt more, you OK with that. It doesn't compromise the dish and brings people together...or does it?
Watching and offering you opinion.
One day, I'm grating carrots and see that Madame DuPont is dumping a pile (what seemed to be a kilogram) of onions from her chopping board into the pot.
"What are putting in there?"
She pauses to look at me, looks down at the onions on the cutting board in her hand and looking back at me, she responds "A kitten! What does it look like? Onions of course"
"Onions?! No, no, no! Don't put too many onions in that!"
"What are you talking about?" slowly scraping the onions into the pot
"No one likes that many onions"
"What do you mean "no one likes that many onions?" You gotta have onions! I like onions!"
This is when I begin to feel like we are re-creating the prison scene from "Goodfellas," working in the kitchen in our bathrobes telling each other what to put in the dish.
"Yeah...but you're the exception. Seriously THAT is too many onions! Remember the last time you made pizza and put onions on top?"
"Yes, it was great and everybody loved it"
"It wasn't great and nobody loved it - except for you. People told you that it was too many onions"
"How can you have too many onions? You can't have too many onions!"
"Trust me - you CAN and you DO! The sauce is like Poland and the onions are like Nazis! They make you cry and will just take over the entire dish!"
"What are you talking about?! The onions add flavor and life to a bland dish! Without the onions this dish won't "live," it will just..."exist!""
"OK, OK, FINE! Add onions! But if no one eats..."
"Everyone WILL eat this and LOVE it!" followed by " or else!" muttered under her breath as she scraped the remaining onions from the cutting board into the pot.
Yeah, that's how we like to feed our guests - they eat out of fear and intimidation.
This year I decided to make plum preserves. Why? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea at the time and I probably saw it somewhere on Internet or was getting a great deal at the bazaar. Regardless, I bought two varieties - red and violet. My idea was that the red kind would be for jam and the smaller violet kind to pit and preserve whole.
The red went beautifully. Rich, smooth, delicious. Absolutely no complaints.
The violet...not so much. For some reason, I couldn't remove the pits and keep the integrity of the plum that I wanted. Most of the time I would end up with a pulpy mess with a pit in one hand, a knife in the other and a rising blood pressure.
"What the...." I muttered struggling with the plums "Why you little...." at those slipping between my fingers "I swear..." voice rising "Godverdomme!!!" as I sat there with juice all over my clothes.
"What's wrong NOW?" Madame DuPont asked tired of my swearing and complaining and looking over from the stove
"What's wrong?! I've spent 4 hours of my life that I'll never get back trying to pit these plums! It's making me crazy! This should be so easy - just make a small incision into the plum, break it open just enough for the pit and the pit should come out! But does it come out? NO! Instead, I'm left sitting in the middle of fruit carnage!"
"Maybe you're not cutting the incision deep enough"
"If I cut it any deeper, the blade of the knife will go through the plum into my hand!"
"Maybe the plum isn't ripe"
"Isn't ripe?! Look at these plums! Any more ripe and they will be mush!"
"Maybe...."
"Look, do you what to know what the real the problem is?"
"What is it?""Because these are the plums from hell! OK? I can't get the pit out without destroying plum! The pit refuses to exit just to spite me! I dare say that these are Satan's plums!"
"Satan's plums?" she says raising her eyebrows
"Yes! Satanic plums! Oh we should have known it when we bought them from that toothless, old witch of a lady in the bazaar! "Tasty plums" she cooed. Hah! These plums are the plums of pure evil. They will cause the downfall of humanity!" A wee bit of an exaggeration on my part, but needed to bring my point home.
"Do you want some help?"
"Yes, go out and find me an exorcist"
"If is's so much trouble, then just throw them away!"
"Throw them away?!" I gasped. Obviously this woman doesn't know me! "PLEASE, I paid $2.30 for six kilo of plums! No, no, no! I'm not letting these plums get the best of me! I'll make jam and sauce out of each and every one of them if I have to!"
"Fine, sit there and suffer" Madame DuPont says while taking one of the plums and biting into it "but you know, for being the devil's plums, these really ARE tasty" and walked back to her pot on the stove.
Taste testing: Taste testing should be the best part about canning. Little samples of wholesome goodness throughout the day. Mmmm, Mmmm, good! Of course, in reality,it's more like walking blindly into a dark forest that is laden with bear traps.
Madame DuPont spoons a sample out to offer a taste
"I can't tell what it needs" she says walking over to me "Try this for me" she offers me a spoonful of something
"mmm...that's pretty good" tasting it and making contemplative face "what is it?"
"I'm not sure. It was just some recipe that I found on YouTube to use up the the Zucchini."
"I see. Well, perhaps it could use some salt"
"Why? What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing is "wrong" with it, but perhaps a bit more salt will help"
"Help? What do you mean "help"? Don't you think that will be too much salt?"
"If I thought it would be too much salt, I wouldn't suggest it! Honestly, I don't even know what it should taste like! Maybe it should taste like cotton candy! What does the video say? How much salt should you use?"
"I'm not following the video. I'm being creative"
"If you not going to follow the instructions, whats the point of having a recipe?"
"It was to give me ideas on how to use up the extra three kilos of Zucchini!"
"OK! But if you your not following the recipe, you don't know how much salt is needed and therefore, you really don't know how it should taste. So, in that case..it's fine as is"
Still holding the spoon in her hand Madame DuPont tastes the sample
"Really? I think it needs more salt" she says turning back to the pot
Of course as weeks of this go by, the whole "mood" on taste testing has changed. The DuPont kitchen is more like "Hell's Kitchen." Small, cramped, dirty loud, hot, steamy, air filled with various odors, pots on the stove, pots on the counter-tops, bags of vegetables creating a labyrinth of pathways to and from the stove to the sink,etc.
"Try this" Madame dryly offers taking a spoon from a pot cooking on the stove.
"No, I'm good" curtly without looking up from what I'm working on.
"Why not?"
"I'm sure it's ok"
"OK? You're sure it's just "OK"?" she says putting the spoon back into the pot and stares with hands folded across her chest
[oye] "I'm sure that it's better than "OK"
"How sure?"
"100% sure"
"100% sure?"
"yes! 100% SURE. I'm positive that it's better than "OK"!"
"But you won't KNOW until you taste it!"
"FINE" I retorted "I'll taste it" slapping the knife down on the counter top.
Walking over to the hot stove, waving away the steam, I forcefully grab the metal spoon from the pot while intently looking at Madame DuPont in defiance, shovels a heaping spoonful of the dish into my mouth.
Now...I forgot to blow on the spoon to cool it down. I was, however, reminded of this by the sound and smell of sizzling flesh as the spoon laid upon my tongue.
"ROLY RIT! RATS ROT" I gasped with mouth agape and sounding remarkably like Scooby Doo.
"What?! What's wrong with it?"
"AGAARRA! ROT! ROT! RIV ME OTTER!" I wildly exclaim with a lunatic expression eyeing the sink, frantically waving at an open mouth trying to cool down the steam mass of whatever it was.
"What? I don't understand" she stood there
Now, this is when you have to make a split second decision. Do you a) spit the scalding food out and thus insult Madame and provoke a greater argument of fury or b) swallow it along with your pride and care for your physical well-being of your internal organs. I chose "b," which was the equivalent of wrapping my lips around a hot soldering iron while swallowing liquid solder.
Of course, it does begin to cool to a frigid temperature of...molten lava...as it peels away the inner lining of my esophagus on it's way down into my digestive track. Leapfrogging over stools and practically hurdling Madame DuPont away from the sink, I struggle to get a glass from the cupboard and fumble with the faucet while the mental countdown of my life's expectancy ticks away. After drinking a liter of water in a record 3.6 seconds, I slowly regain the partial power of speech and look over at Madame who is eyeing me.
"So how did it taste?" she asked in anticipation
Still swallowing water "It's fabulous darling." I gasped "Let's can it and then you can take me to the hospital."
But those are for our own dishes. So imagine what happens when you "doctor" up someone else recipe, that's when the "real fun" begins...
I walked into the kitchen and I see Madame DuPont about to add something to my pot on the stove.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! what are you doing?" I suspiciously ask
"I'm tasting it"
"yeah, I saw that, but what's that in your hand? What are you planning to do?"
"I going to add some cumin"
"Cumin?! Why? The recipe doesn't call for cumin!"
"It's to enhance the flavor"
"No, no, no! No enhancing the flavor with cumin. This is spicy marinara! If you add that it will cease to be spicy marinara and will be...something completely different! I know how to make this dish! I've been making this dish for years!"
"Yeah, but I think it needs cumin!"
"What sort of psychotic puts cumin into spicy marinara? It's enhanced with pepper!"
"Then it's too spicy and little children can't eat it!"
"It's SPICY marinara! It's supposed to be spicy and it's not for little children! It's for people who know what good food is!"
"This will turn good food into GREAT food!!"
"Look, do I mess with your food and add into it?!" I argue
"Every year!!" she shoots back
"OK, true, but only because I want it to taste better!"
(By the way, if any of you like bit of spice to your food, go to Dino Ferri's site www.hotterthanel.com for GREAT hot sauce. His sauces are flavorful and not the "so hot I can't taste the food kind. FABULOUS sauces and salas!!)
So now, on to the "canning" process...
Lids: Obviously in canning, lids and seals are highly important. My personal preference are the screw top lids. They're easy. They're quick. No fuss, no muss. Madame DuPont on the other hand prefers the old fashion style of lids that require a special instrument to spin around the lid and seal it to the jar. I hate them. Not only do you have to have the correct instrument, good quality lids and gargantuan strength to ensure a tight seal, but the process requires two people: one to spin the tool to seal the lid to the jar and the other to hold the hot jar steady while trying not to cry.
Of course, by now tempers have flared and the other person is less willing to assist due to previous interaction.
"Are you going to help me by holding the jar?!" she asks me as I stand at the door and give her my "is that what you are going to do?" look
"Did you ask me to help?" I respond
"Do I have to ask you to help? You have eyes! You can see what I am doing. If you are planning to eat this, hold the jar. I need to seal it now."
"hmmph...I'm not sure if I even like that dish" sitting down to hold the jar
"I'll remind you of that the next time I see you eat the entire bowl full. Now just hold the jar. This will only take a minute."
That "minute" usually lasts about 11 minutes on average, and when you are trying to hold a very hot jar steady for that long it feels like your fingers are melting to the outside of it.
"Are you sure that you're holding it steady?" she inquires
"I'm sure! It's steady! Just seal the lid before my fingerprints get burned off!"
Trying to make small talk to kill time and distract myself from feeling that the nerves at the end of my fingertips are dying I ask Madame DuPont about her choice in lids.
"Why don't you just use the screw top lids?"
"I dunno. We don't do that"
"What do mean, you don't do that? Why not?"
"We've always done it this way" she says while inspecting the seal so far "it's..tradition"
"Tradition? really? It's tradition to create needless suffering?"
Giving me a dirty look "no, but when you seal jars this way, the seal is tighter and keeps in the flavor so the food lasts longer and tastes better."
"huh" I utter in plausible agreement "You know what I think?""mmmmm" she hums ignoring me and shrugging her shoulders with indifference, focused more on spinning the canning tool around the lid for the 86th time than on the conversation.
"I think that you do this to make people feel guilty about all the work that goes into it"
She pauses and looks at me straight in the eyes "and THAT'S what makes it taste so good"
Now, over the years, I've been trying find new recipes for all the extra fruit that we have and have. After all, there is only so much jam a family can have and baby do we have it! So, I've begun experimenting with various liqueurs with various degrees of success. This year, because of all the violet plums we had (aka "Satan's plums"), I made plum liqueur.
After bottling some liqueur in an attractive bottle, I call Madame DuPont into the kitchen.
"Plum liqueur!" I announce as though I've discovered the elixir for immortality and doing my best "game show" pose to present the bottle on the counter-top.
"What's it made from?"
[pause]
"Grapefruit" I respond dryly taking out two small glasses from the cupboard "It's PLUM liqueur, so you tell me"
"I meant, what was the alcohol? You're not planning to put that on the table for guests, are you?"
"Oh, but I AM planning putting on the table for guests"
"For them to drink?"
"No, for them to clean the silverware with. Of course for them to drink. Look, it's not like it's turnip wine or anything. It's plum liqueur - plums, sugar, alcohol..."
"What if it isn't any good? What will happen to our guests?"
"Then they'll be dead before morning and we won't need to invite them for New Years. In my mind, a "win - win" situation" as I poured some into a shot glass.
"You can't just put that on the table without knowing how it is! People could get ill"
"Why do you think I called you in here?" handing her the glass "take a sip"
And so....by the end of this season, with blood, sweat and tears, the back of our garage looks like General Paulus' bunker as it is lined with jars and bottles of:
1. kim chi
2. marinated chili peppers
3. eggplant strips
4. spicy peppers and garlic in oil
5. grilled eggplant and vegetables
6. marinara
7. German saurkraut
8. Russian saurkraut (same thing as German, but with apples. I think it's just ploy)
9. Red plum jam
10. Violet plum jam
11. Whole preserved plums
12. Feijoa jam
13. Plum liqueur
14. Feijoa liqueur
15. Nocino (Italian walnut liqueur)
16. Limoncello
17. Lecho with carrots
18. Lecho with eggplant
19. Abjat sandal (Armenian eggplant dish)
20. marinated red bell peppers
21. Apple compote
22. Pomegranate compote
23. Cherry compote
24. Four types of mystery dishes
25. Pickles
26. Pickled tomatoes
27. Pickled garlic
28. Tkemali sauce
29. Abkhazian sauce
30. Plum compote
31. Carrots...something
32. Lemon jam for tea
"So, if it is so much trouble, why do it?" you might wonder. Well.....Eh! (shrugging) It's something we can do together.
